Indeterminate Crises, a Nuclear Continuum: Abe Kōbō’s The Ark Sakura and the Structures of Technological Discourse in the Nuclear Age

Abstract

Be it the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the escalations of the Cold War, or the triple disaster at Fukushima, the problem of representing disaster remains an exigent yet precarious one. Published amid rising global tensions, Abe Kōbō’s The Ark Sakura (Abe, 1984) questions the limits of representation within this perplexing discursive landscape. In this article, I will examine the text’s engagement with the concepts of governmentality, time, and representation, with special consideration towards an overarching structural critique of the role of information – more specifically, the flow and distribution of information – within Cold War nuclear discourse. Just as the tunnels of the quarry in the novel amplify and distort every sound and utterance into confusing, often duplicitous signals, the discourses surrounding nuclear disaster have always had to traverse complex topologies of frequently conflicting signs and signifiers, including but not limited to corporate, geopolitical, and ideological interests. To that end, I propose a reading of the novel alongside a reconceptualization of nuclear discourse as belonging to a larger genealogy of technological narratives, media compositing, and networked power, and in so doing, attempt to situate it within ongoing modalities of how techno-ecological disaster is imagined and discussed.