At the end of August, an important book was published by Bloomsbury Academic, written by Carl Raschke, titled:
“Sovereignty in the 21st Century: Political Theology in an Age of Neoliberalism and Populism.”
When governments become increasingly subject to the power of global corporations, when collective movements of people intensify, when cross-border political disruptions grow, and environmental disasters increase, what does sovereignty mean for the 21st century? This book explores the meaning of sovereignty in both its historical and contemporary contexts, demonstrating how the concept can be expanded beyond politics. It examines how class, race, and dominance shape the content of sovereignty, transforming it into not just a political issue, but an economic and social one as well.
The book also delves into sovereignty within the ever-changing boundaries of personal and social identity. With the accelerating disintegration of the monarchical model of sovereignty in the early modern period of the 21st century, contemporary critical theory has well-documented how politics has been overtaken by so-called “culture wars” and other ideological mechanisms that obscure systems of economic exploitation and dehumanization. Increasingly, the pursuit of sovereignty is caught in a conflict between two culturally and economically formed, and at a certain level, religiously informed movements: neoliberalism and populism. However, both neoliberalism and populism assume forms of governance and political responsibility that take us into a strange new world, with references to sovereignty that are nothing like the concept of sovereignty during the time of Jean Bodin. Today, we find ourselves in the midst of what might be described as a historical struggle between neoliberalism and populism—a conflict where sovereignty has once again been fatefully extracted from the nation-state. The working class, with its traditional values and unique loyalties, mistakenly referred to as “nationalism,” aims to transform “native citizens” into “global citizens,” or an inexplicable force that may seem either benign or malicious, an agent of order or chaos. Ultimately, it is this force that makes politics comprehensible while also directing what we consider the public good towards a happier end. The only source of this drive, whether it comes from a single executive decision from above or a complex, multi-layered set of electoral signals from below, is what we mean by “political monopoly,” or what has traditionally been known as “sovereignty.”
The book is divided into three parts. The first part addresses the problem of sovereignty as it has been classically presented as a challenge to “political theology,” seeking to modernize it in light of contemporary critical theory and post-colonial studies. The second part deeply explores the role of religion, including the academic study of religion, in discussions about the meaning of sovereignty. The third part lays the foundation for what we might call “the political theology of popular sovereignty.”
The opening chapter offers an initial analysis of the problem of sovereignty as presented by Jean Bodin and Carl Schmitt, arguing that the conceptual framework these thinkers outlined is no longer productive. It claims that the pursuit of theoretical precision in what we mean by “sovereignty” proves elusive because it assumes an internal, primary principle—akin to Aristotle’s “unmoved mover”—while, in reality, the cause is purely transcendent. However, such sovereignty cannot be attributed to a “pre-concept” in the Kantian sense. Instead, it remains a historical rupture, an “exception.” Sovereignty should not be seen merely as a principle or a procedure, but as a force. As such, the issue of sovereignty does not belong solely to the political order but precedes it. It consists of a force that can only manifest through the coherent arrangement of its visible elements—namely, as a political group. The pursuit of sovereignty is not confined to the task of political theology as much as it pertains to the theory of power and its distribution throughout the “body politic.” In an earlier era, this force aligned with what political theorists considered a form of natural order. Today, however, what Max Weber called the “disenchantment of the world,” along with the evaporation of any meaningful sense of transcendent order, has rendered this force arbitrary and chaotic.
The second chapter examines how this delegation of power has historically developed. Sovereignty, if we can still use that term, is no longer “political” in the classical sense. It has become what we might call “the sovereignty of influence,” a phrase borrowed from the speculations of global theorist Klaus Schwab. This expression suggests that non-governmental actors, agencies, and interests—rather than official political offices and institutions, through which the modern concept of sovereignty was originally formulated—are the ones limiting collective tensions in the emerging 21st century. The current conflict between “progressive” neoliberalism and populism is the clearest example of this profound shift. The latter has fostered its own form of global cultural dominance, which seeks to reimagine comprehensive social and economic conflict under the banner of “identity politics.” The replacement of deep-rooted systemic imbalances with cultural signifiers has served well to cement the new cognitive elites—fantastically dubbed “masters of the universe,” as the Silicon Valley moguls are known—in power. Political governance has become outdated, and what we now have instead is what Michel Foucault called “governmentality.” This peculiar state, arising in the postmodern era of “sovereignty without sovereignty,” or at least sovereignty without any clear or tangible sovereign principle, stems from what might be termed the “modern liberal enchantment.” It begins with the fine alchemy of the 16th-century view of sovereignty as the temporal expression of transcendent authority, leading to the 17th-century notion of “sovereignty” as the secular right to own and control any surplus material production (i.e., “capital”) one creates. This phenomenon is referred to as the “liberal miracle,” for it transforms sovereignty into a kind of “wonder-working” or performing worldly miracles that we associate with modern systems of goods production and technological innovation. If sovereignty in its broadest sense can be seen as the ability to “lead,” then “capital,” or the means to transform nature and society, now rules as the sovereign. Moreover, the very principle of sovereignty itself, as colonial expansion historians have pointed out, derives from the “principle of discovery” that first and foremost granted property rights to those whose conquest and subjugation of indigenous peoples they “discovered” on their expeditions was considered a privilege, if not a right, due to the sovereignty of their religious beliefs.
In the third chapter, the author examines how humanity’s new condition in the early modern era was deeply influenced by strong religious motivations, particularly the ideas of Calvinist clergy. This period witnessed the glorification of a measured, rational self and the dehumanization of entire groups of people, which can be described as a “dialectic of subjugation and humiliation.” Over time, this strange “dialectic” can be seen as a kind of historical role-playing, following a vague script and obscure directions behind the scenes. This led to the end of sovereignty as the unifying element of the Christian empire, embodied by the devout king, and brought to prominence a new secular saint (what Weber called “the worldly ascetic”), who transformed the temporal realm through moral discipline, cunning, and purposeful work.
However, this new dynamic understanding of how things were organized required a universe full of dramatic oppositions and contradictions, where the cosmic economy in extreme cases was one in which the faithful triumphed unequivocally, while sinners were decisively rejected. True “sovereignty” now became what Marx defined as capital—an ambiguous, soulless intentionality, manifesting in the world through Adam Smith’s “invisible hand.” As a result, the political function of sovereignty itself was diminished. The marginal unit of economic output became of paramount importance. In order to enhance production margins, entire demographic units—African slaves for the benefit of sprawling plantation economies that transformed the Indies, and disenfranchised agricultural workers who flocked to cities to form the urban proletariat that fueled the Industrial Revolution—had to be marginalized. Consequently, the rising commercial and industrial classes, worshippers of capital, formulated a new and comprehensive “modern” cognitive theory, one that led to levels of violence and suffering never before witnessed on the planet. These classes overthrew the old landowning elites under the pretense of granting a new popular sovereignty to the lower classes. However, what emerged was neither an era of republican virtue nor the fully realized “participatory democracy” envisioned later. Instead, it was the most insidious marker of sovereignty without sovereignty, which modern theoretical literature has labeled “neoliberalism.”
Chapter four addresses neoliberalism as the dominant “religious” worldview that solidified its triumph at the dawn of the current millennium, creating rules for this new kind of “sovereignty without sovereignty.” It shows how neoliberalism mirrors the efforts of European states in the modern era to justify their subjugation and exploitation of foreign peoples as a spiritual or moral project, the so-called “civilizing mission.” Neoliberalism, together with the epistemological framework known as “modernity,” has conspired to bring the world to this current impasse. Neoliberalism engages in what historian of religion David Chidester calls “triple mediation,” combining the seemingly diverse logic of imperial dominance, cultural formation, and manipulation of marginal factors, identities, and symbolic remnants into a grand performance called “classification and conquest.” The so-called “science of religion,” invented in the 19th century, has been modernized, revised, and renewed to stabilize the semiotic mechanism of the new shadowy “sovereignty.”
The fifth chapter delves into the social psychology and symbolism of neoliberalism, especially in its progressive form, analyzing how the crisis of postmodern sovereignty affects our daily lives. It also highlights the relationship between the neoliberal mindset and what has become popularly known as “woke,” which essentially refers to a synthesis of attitudes that support the ideology of neoliberal elites in the 21st century. This “woke” phenomenon points to the nihilistic specter Nietzsche once warned about, representing a “malignant tumor of modernity” that brings to a grim conclusion what Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano called the “colonial matrix of power.”
Chapter six explains how the eclipse of sovereignty under neoliberalism paralyzed the liberation project that emerged in the early modern period. Modern liberation theory calls for a historical goal of universal salvation, according to distinguished Argentine political thinker Ernesto Laclau. It also requires recourse to a kind of metaphor, a determinant that embodies the universal goal, like Marx’s proletariat, to effect historical change. Rousseau’s opening of the concept of sovereignty as “general will” paved the way for revolutionary movements over several centuries, aimed at redefining sovereignty as “popular” rather than princely. Yet neoliberalism instead captured the liberatory impulse and turned systematic “representation” of marginal identities within the black box of language management into a hollow substitute for the project itself.
Chapter seven launches a thought experiment on how the global reaction against neoliberalism intensifies the need for a radically new theory of popular sovereignty. It begins by interrogating the most extreme implication of Hegel’s philosophy of “right.” This book draws on Alexandre Kojève’s view that any theory of right in Hegel revolves around the possibility of mutual recognition.
Hegel’s principle of mutual recognition also forms the key to what he calls the “concrete universal,” a more formal term for conveying the idea of intensified universality. For Hegel, civil society must embody the important dimension of interpersonal awareness and responsibility.
The twin challenges of personal recognition and political rights culminate in the question of citizenship, or the qualification of the purely political self as a citizen, which Hegel calls the “citizen-subject.” Citizenship is the condition for what Étienne Balibar describes as “equality,” a condition in which the claim to freedom cannot be achieved without an accompanying push towards equality. Citizenship, which forms the main axis of acquiring political “rights” within the state, henceforth points to a new and richer concept of sovereignty that has yet to be realized, one that exposes the neoliberal fraud of democracy through “diversity” and “inclusion.”
The eighth chapter anticipates the Marxist critique of the re-evaluation of the liberation project. However, it shows that Marx himself was the first to recognize what popular sovereignty means as an “intensified universality” in a very concrete sense. Marx indeed spoke of sovereignty in this literature, though he abandoned the term entirely once he moved to England. For Marx, sovereignty could be seen as a revolt against the liberal miracle and a reclamation of the productive forces by the producers themselves. But Marx’s later efforts to refine political economy into a kind of inverted Malthusianism, in which capital replaced population as an impersonal force, described as “dialectical materialism,” took his thought in a completely different direction, with disastrous consequences for the human story.
What is missing from Marx’s later writings is his historical discovery before the 1848 uprisings: that sovereignty and society are indelibly intertwined. Sovereignty is neither a stronghold for decision-making nor a representative structure, but rather a formula for belonging. This neglected aspect of Marx’s contributions now stands out in any attempt to radically reimagine sovereignty in the 21st century.
Thus, the final chapter poses the fundamental question to the 21st-century audience—”Who then are we, the people?” The book does not directly answer the question but instead suggests that we somehow seek an answer in what neoliberal elites across the world have largely condemned as a radioactive wasteland: the emerging world of political struggle, commonly called “populism.” It asserts that the populist uprising is not merely a reactive social formation caused by the tensions of globalization, but a heartfelt cry seeking, in some way, to establish a new foundation for the “common good.” While the populist shift in the overwhelming majority of secular democracies is undoubtedly tainted by the familiar regressions of racism, xenophobia, and the oppression of minorities, the deeper drive behind populist discontent is the pursuit of their exclusion from civil society life.
