Thaumazein at the Nuclear Anthropocene

This reflective essay brings to light the career and thought of nuclear chemist Jinzaburo Takagi (1938–2000), who devoted his whole career to the critique of nuclear power generation and the promotion of citizen-centered science. Looking at his life history, one recognizes some clear turning points. However, Takagi’s true engagement with the nuclear question began when he came face-to-face with the ubiquitous contamination of the earth by human-made radiation. It was a deep, revelatory astonishment that shook Takagi into radical questioning of his vocation as a scientist. It was, so to speak, an experience of “thaumazein at the nuclear anthropocene,” involving his whole person as a human being. In 1975 Takagi co-founded Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center in Tokyo, and he became a catalytic “citizen scientist” in the anti-nuclear power movements through his nation-wide and international activities spanning over a quarter-century. Takagi was a prolific and engaged writer, and he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1997. Soon after, however, he was diagnosed with a variety of last-stage cancers. He penned books entitled To Live as a Citizen-Scientist, Liberation from Nuclear Power: Nine Spells that Would Annihilate Japan, and Why Are Nuclear Accidents Repeated? These books would be read widely, though quite belatedly and with deep regret, after the Fukushima disaster in 2011. This essay is a look at the warning messages Takagi emphasized in the books he left as his testaments not to repeat the disaster.

On Hearing the Daughters’ Call

This article offers an interpretation of anti-feminicide maternal activism as political in northern Mexico by analyzing it alongside Hannah Arendt’s concepts of freedom, natality, and the child in The Human Condition. While feminist theorists often debate whether maternalism strengthens or undermines women’s political participation, the author offers an unconventional interpretation of Arendt’s categories to illustrate that the meaning and practice of maternalism radically changes through the public performance of motherhood. While Arendt does not seem the best candidate to navigate this debate, her concepts of freedom and the child provide a productive perspective to rethink the relationship between maternalism and citizenship. In making this claim, this article challenges feminist political theories that depict motherhood as the chief source of women’s subordination. In the case of northern Mexico, anti-feminicide maternal activism illustrates how the political is also a personal endeavor, thereby complementing the famous feminist motto.