episteme issue 9 presents a symposium on Ken Kawashima’s new translation and edition of Uno Kozo’s classic Theory of Crisis (1953).

episteme

issue 9: Uno Kozo’s Theory of Crisis: A Symposium

october 2022

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preface

episteme issue 9 focuses on Ken Kawashima’s newly released translation and edition of Uno Kozo’s Theory of Crisis, published in the Historical Materialism book series (Brill/Haymarket). Uno’s text, originally published in 1953, constitutes a major intervention in the Marxian theory of crisis as well as an important addition to the archive of modern Japanese intellectual history. Kawashima’s edition not only situates and contextualizes Uno’s understanding of crisis, centered on the labor-power commodity, but also actualizes his thought as a critical tool for theory and history in the present. Here we present four texts that aim to treat various aspects of this work and its relations to the role of crisis in the Marxian critique of political economy, the theory and philosophy of science, the ecological field in the time of the climate crisis, and the historico-philosophical orientations that inform this significant contribution to the global canon of Marxist thought.

— Gavin Walker, editor