Book Review: Mihai Murariu, “Radical Peripheries: Heterodoxy, Modernity, and Totality in Japan and Romania”. București: Editura Eikon/Eikon Publishing House, 2019. 200 pp.

Abstract

In a sense, the present volume is something of a continuation of the author’s earlier, more extensive investigation of totality, charisma, and authority in his 2017 volume, entitled Totality, Charisma, Authority. The Origins and Transformation of Totalist Movements, published by Springer Verlag. While only a passing reference in the first book, here Mihai Murariu, who is already making a name for himself as a very promising, innovative researcher in the field of political science and ideology, takes on an ambitious intellectual endeavour by examining how totalist ideas and ideologies developed in Romania and Japan, moving from the periphery to the mainstream and making their mark on the 20^th century political evolution of the two countries which, at first glance, have very little in common and would not easily lend themselves to a comparison.