A Political Theology of Negative Sovereignty

Claudio Lomnitz excavates the metaphysical foundations of violence in contemporary Mexico by exploring the theological imaginaries that emerge from the decay of state sovereignty and the rise of criminal syndicates. Accelerated economic and political changes have sparked deep changes in public morality, and Lomnitz identifies and defines “negative sovereignty” as the core phenomenon driving a deeply unsettling moral revolt. Negative sovereignty arises where the state has ceded or forfeited its authority to govern to illegal organizations that thrive on violence and extraction. Lomnitz explores the political theology that has emerged alongside this phenomenon, a moral cosmology in which Death, not God, is the metaphysical sovereign of choice. A Political Theology of Negative Sovereignty dissects the relationship between violence and public morality; in the process, Lomnitz challenges the theoretical assumptions underlying dominant views of contemporary governmentality.