Radiation and Revolution

“Writer, political activist, and translator Sabu Kohso provides a timely intervention into discussions of the catastrophic event that overwhelmed Japan's Fukushima Prefecture on March 11, 2011. Kohso has brilliantly captured both the sad singularity and complex generality of the event and the unyielding process of its global consequences. At the heart of Kohso's account lies a nuclear industry now worryingly indistinguishable from global capitalism's new lease on life.” -- Harry Harootunian, author of * The Unspoken as Heritage: The Armenian Genocide and Its Unaccounted Lives *
“Turning the discussion of the Fukushima disaster and its ecological and social consequences into a reflection on the history of Japanese society and government from World War II to the present, Radiation and Revolution is a powerful, imaginative, and much-needed book.” -- Silvia Federici, author of * Beyond the Periphery of the Skin *
“With regards to the creativity both of its content and its form, Radiation and Revolution constitutes a unique work, fulfilling Deleuze’s call for philosophy to invent ready-made concepts which could seize the singularity of reality. Kohso’s notions of ‘life-in-struggle’, ‘transmutations’ and his opposition between the ‘World’ and the ‘Earth’, will assuredly find echoes in other contexts, all marked by the radiation-like planetarization of politics.” -- Philippe Blouin * Marx and Philosophy Review of Books *
"Comparing Fukushima to other nuclear incidents, such as Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, Kohso (who also goes by Kōso), a writer and an activist, posits that these disasters are symptomatic of another problem—that of authoritarian, capitalist power over Earth’s inhabitants, who live under persistent threat of catastrophe. The fleshing out of these ideas displays Kohso at his best, using careful research and interviews to create a compelling argument for confronting nuclear and other challenges with a global movement. . . . Recommended. Advanced undergraduates and graduate students."

  -- J. M. Morri * Choice *

"Radiation and Revolution uses crucial concepts in explaining how the knot of nuclear power, global capital, and the nation-state constricts our autonomy, existential necessities, and planetary relations. ... Kohso’s analysis of the roots of the Fukushima crisis takes the reader beyond the archipelago and back again, illustrating how capitalism has been immortalized in the apparatus of nuclear war, nuclear power, and waste management. [An] expansive, theoretical, and deeply invested work." 

-- Christine L. Marran * Journal of Asian Studies *