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While the concept of precariousness denotes the condition of vulnerability and interdependence shared by all living beings, precarity refers to the unequal distribution of precariousness, the differential exposure to risk and insecurity that reflects asymmetrical relations of power within and between different groups and societies. Recent debates have taken up earlier critiques of the blindness of "precarity talk" towards issues such as race and gender, yet the concept's anthropocentric purview remains largely unaddressed, with precarity implicitly being regarded as something that only affects human beings. Focusing on post-3/11 Japan, this essay argues that thinking precarity beyond the human can help us make sense of the co-constituting, life-supporting bonds between species that are integral to the functioning of capitalism, including attempts at putting both human and nonhuman life "back to work" after cataclysmic disasters such as the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima. Types of nonhuman reproductive and affective labor such as the feline companionship offered by Japan's popular cat cafés serve to alleviate the degradation of human life under the conditions of capitalism. Other forms of animal life, however, such as a population of radioactive wild boars in the exclusion zone around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, not only flourish in a space in which the rule of capitalism has been suspended but even hinder the reclamation of damaged infrastructures: obstructing rather than serving the government of precarity, these disruptive creatures constitute an example of "life on strike," antagonistically prolonging the moment of capitalism's critical dysfunctionality.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-92504-2_5

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