What Terra are we terraforming? Lessons from the 2011 triple disaster in Japan

Abstract

The process of terraforming − or planetary adaptation- started in sci-fi literature but has recently become increasingly studied by hard sciences, social sciences, as well as popular culture. While terraforming refers to the core idea of making other planets fit for human life, in the times of socioecological crisis of the Anthropocene, marked by unprecedented disasters and accelerated climate change, different stakeholders in and outside of academia have started to recognize the pressing need of “terraforming Terra (Earth)”: bringing our planet back to a presumed original state, which usually follow a utopic western imaginary that flattens and erases difference. The aim of this article is to look at the idea of Terraforming Terra and “constructively deconstruct” its cardinal element: that of “Terra” (Earth), borrowing from posthuman geographies and critical approaches to postcolonial studies. Reflecting on how processes of terraforming are socio-politically and ideologically oriented, and on the fact that they refer to a mostly-western imaginary, my article inquires on what spatio-temporal iteration of Earth is being described and created in practices of terraforming Terra, and who has the authority to conflate such plurality of world visions and epistemologies into a unified blueprint for Earth. This theoretical question will be analysed utilizing the empirical case of the recovery process in post-disaster Tohoku, Japan. This coastal area was destroyed and reconstructed after a “triple disaster” which took place on March 11, 2011: an earthquake, a tsunami which, in its highest point, reached a height of over 30 m, and a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.