Sovereignty and the Sacred

Sovereignty and the Sacred challenges contemporary models of polity and economy through a two-step engagement with the history of religions. Beginning with the recognition of the convergence in the history of European political theology between the sacred and the sovereign as creating “states of exception”—that is, moments of rupture in the normative order that, by transcending this order, are capable of re-founding or remaking it—Robert A. Yelle identifies our secular, capitalist system as an attempt to exclude such moments by subordinating them to the calculability of laws and markets. The second step marshals evidence from history and anthropology that helps us to recognize the contribution of such states of exception to ethical life, as a means of release from the legal or economic order. Yelle draws on evidence from the Hebrew Bible to English deism, and from the Aztecs to ancient India, to develop a theory of polity that finds a place and a purpose for those aspects of religion that are often marginalized and dismissed as irrational by Enlightenment liberalism and utilitarianism.

Developing this close analogy between two elemental domains of society, Sovereignty and the Sacred offers a new theory of religion while suggesting alternative ways of organizing our political and economic life. By rethinking the transcendent foundations and liberating potential of both religion and politics, Yelle points to more hopeful and ethical modes of collective life based on egalitarianism and popular sovereignty. Deliberately countering the narrowness of currently dominant economic, political, and legal theories, he demonstrates the potential of a revived history of religions to contribute to a rethinking of the foundations of our political and social order.

“"Yelle's work demands the attention of religious scholars, political theorists, sociologists, anthropologists, and even economists...Yelle makes a compelling case for both the relevance of the history of religions in the academy and attending to the religious and theological dimensions of political life."”

"In the models Yelle explores, sovereignty and the sacred appear inextricably bound to violence. . . The problem of necessary violence also raises the question of economy: must there always be some payment? Must a transaction occur? Violence and economy converge on the question: must there be a victim? . . What is clear is that Yelle's comprehensive and perceptive study establishes an essential launching point for such concerns and shows us where the boundaries lie (arbitrary as they may be). The task now is to transgress such lines. Surely, such transgressions can be
called sacred."-- "Religious Studies Review"
"Tremendous. With an incredible depth and range of scholarship, Sovereignty and the Sacred makes a strong case for the continuing importance of the field of the history of religions and the comparative study of religion, and it makes a crucial intervention in theorizing religion. Yelle's argument is rich, important, and deeply erudite. And it is just really interesting. This book will be essential reading for theorists of religion, political theologians, theorists of modernity and the secular, and those interested in religion and economics and religion and violence."--Tyler Roberts, Grinnell College, author of "Encountering Religion: Responsibility and Criticism After Secularism"
"In The Language of Disenchantment, Yelle explores various Protestant perfidies, including the suspicion of Indic ritual, myth, languages, and religious laws that structured British efforts to explain religion in India and to reform Hinduism accordingly. Sovereignty and the Sacred continues this work with a more sweeping version of the aim: to revive--or perhaps create--a history of religions uncorrupted by the distortions of disenchantment and its modern, Christian-esque presuppositions. . . . Dazzlingly layered and provocatively debatable."--Nancy Levene "History of Religions"

Robert A. Yelle is professor of the theory and method of religious studies at Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich. He is the author of Explaining Mantras: Ritual, Rhetoric, and the Dream of a Natural Language in Hindu Tantra; The Language of Disenchantment: Protestant Literalism and Colonial Discourse in British India; and Semiotics of Religion: Signs of the Sacred in History.

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