| abstract |
This dissertation circumambulates two central themes: How do political and economic structures--particularly those involved in production and
distribution of food--shape the materialization of bodies in ways that perpetuate the cycle of poverty? And what is the relationship between
those structures and concepts that could rightly be called religious or theological? These questions are socially pressing, as obesity and
starvation are increasing globally. Ominously, the global food system is noted to be simultaneously causative of and vulnerable to global
climate instability, and projected food shortages consequent to climate change are likely to affect the poor disproportionately. Food scholars
attribute obesity, starvation, and climate consequences of the global food system to the same cause: the concentration of power in the hands
of transnational agricultural corporations and multilateral trade organizations operating conjointly as what some refer to as the "corporate
food regime." The movement that has arisen as the major challenger to this regime is entitled the "food sovereignty movement," underscoring the
numerous proclamations, enactments, and contestations over sovereignty rampant in global food politics. Though the notion of sovereignty is
central to the discursive field of political theology, its theoretical insights have not yet been applied to the contestations over sovereignty
arising in global food politics. Political theologians frequently engage the concept of sovereignty developed by Carl Schmitt in his 1922 Political
Theology, a formulation of sovereignty perceived by many as indelibly inscribed onto the nation-state. While theorists on both ends of the political
spectrum share Schmitt's disdain for liberal democracy, his nationalist proclivities are generally endorsed by conservative political theorists, and
soundly denounced by those on the left in favor of radically democratic approaches. Global food politics operate simultaneously in several registers:
individual, national, transnational, and ecological. This dissertation takes a transdisciplinary approach to the analysis of sovereignty in each
of these registers. It employs Giorgio Agamben's political philosophy to elucidate vulnerability in the national and transnational registers; Jane
Bennett's vibrant materiality and Karen Barad's agential realism to describe the social production of classed bodies in the individual and national
registers; and Bruno Latour's political ecology and science studies to assess sovereignty in the ecological register. In each dimension, top-down
sovereignty will be shown to destabilize around one of several fault lines: its claims to unity, the suspension of law, or the failure to provide
security. Schmittian sovereignty also succumbs to theological critique, as the secularization of orthodox theological models is called into question.
Catherine Keller's theology of becoming and Paulina Ochoa Espejo's "the people as process" are invoked for their capacity simultaneously to reject
Schmittian, absolute sovereignty reframing political theology so as to support the material , ethical, and political demands of the food sovereignty
movement.
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