Edible Entanglements: On a Political Theology of Food

By S. Yael Dennis

Obesity in the Global North and starvation in the Global South can be attributed to the same cause: the concentration of enormous power in the hands of transnational agricultural corporations. The food sovereignty movement has arisen as the major challenger to the corporate food regime. The concept of sovereignty is central to the discursive field of political theology, yet seldom if ever have its theoretical insights been applied to the concept of sovereignty as it appears in global food politics.

Food politics operates simultaneously in several registers: individual, national, transnational, and ecological. A politics of food takes a transdisciplinary approach to analyzing Schmitt's concept of sovereignty in each of these registers, employing Giorgio Agamben's political philosophy to elucidate vulnerability in the national and transnational registers; Jane Bennett's vibrant materiality, Karen Barad's agential realism, and nutritional science to describe the social production of classed bodies in the individual and national registers; data from climate science and the political ecology of Bruno Latour to examine the impact of sovereignty in the ecological register. Catherine Keller's theology of becoming and Paulina Ochoa Espejo's people as process will be explored for their capacity to enliven a democratic political theology of food.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Mar 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781532643651

S. Yael Dennis

S. Yael Dennis is the Faculty Chair of Health Sciences and Sustainability.

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Edible Entanglements

On a Political Theology of Food

S. Yael Dennis

31416.png

Edible Entanglements

On a Political Theology of Food

Copyright ©

2019

S. Yael Dennis. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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Cascade Books

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paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-4363-7

hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-4364-4

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-4365-1

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Dennis, S. Yael, author.

Title: Edible entanglements : on a political theology of food / S. Yael Dennis.

Description: Eugene, OR : Cascade Books,

2019

| Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers:

isbn 978-1-5326-4363-7 (

paperback

) | isbn 978-1-5326-4364-4 (

hardcover

) | isbn 978-1-5326-4365-1 (

ebook

)

Subjects: LCSH: Political theology. | Sovereignty. | Food—Religious aspects. | Agriculture—Religious aspects. | Schmitt, Carl,—

1888–1985

.

Classification:

br115.n87 d45 2019 (

print

) | br115.n87 d45 (

ebook

)

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

11/14/18

Table of Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I: Sovereignty in Theory and Action

Chapter 1: Fertilizing the Garden

Chapter 2: Full Bloom

Chapter 3: Food Drives

Part II: Sovereignty Undone

Chapter 4: Banished from the Sovereign’s Table

Chapter 5: Deciding What to Eat

Chapter 6: Deciding upon the Exception in an Exceptional Climate

Part III: A Tehomic Political Theology of Food

Chapter 7: Reimagining the Sovereignty of God

Chapter 8: A Timely Popular Sovereignty

Conclusion

Bibliography

"How odd, given the consuming global challenge of food, that so little of the discourse of eco-social justice, let alone of political theology, has focused on the matter. With this multi-faceted yet attractively accessible work, S. Yael Dennis has rectified the situation. Reconsidering the notion of ‘food sovereignty,’ it provides an interdisciplinary introduction to political theology that takes the latter where it has never gone. Edible Entanglements makes a brilliant contribution to political, economic, and ecological studies in religion."

—Catherine Keller, Author of Political Theology of the Earth: Our Planetary Emergency and the Struggle for a New Public (

2018)

The political, religious, and philosophical thinking surrounding issues of food production and distribution are of the highest importance in the face of continued neo-liberal globalization and the return of nationalisms. Anyone concerned about food justice should read this book. S. Yael Dennis interrogates the theological and philosophical understandings of ‘sovereignty’ and ‘anthropology,’ and human-earth relations, bringing nutritional science into the discussion as well, in order to interrogate the violence of the contemporary corporate food regimes and lift up the more egalitarian food regime of the food sovereignty movements, which recognize that we are all dependent upon (and thus vulnerable to) the rest of the planetary community which sustains our lives on a daily basis.

—Whitney Bauman, Florida International University

In this book, Shelley Yael Dennis develops a political theology of food that engages the important idea of sovereignty. On the one hand, sovereignty is the nation-state’s unified power to decide, based on the work of Carl Schmitt. On the other hand, food sovereignty offers an important site of resistance to the onslaught of corporate capitalism and its food security regime. Dennis combines excellent theoretical analysis with valuable ecological applications. Anyone concerned about access to food in the context of climate change should read it!

—Clayton Crockett, University of Central Arkansas

"This singular book explores the concepts of sovereignty, how religion has shaped and molded such concepts, as well as the direct and unyielding consequences these power structures have had, and are still having, on environmental health, food security, and global environmental politics . . . Edible Entanglements rips off the blinders and explores not just how religious concepts have played into power structures and thus impacted our planet, but considers how religious thought may help us get out of the mess we are in."

—Elizabeth J. Ruther, Coastal State-Federal Relations Coordinator, Oregon Coastal Management Program

For Kelsey, Connor, and Ethan . . .

If not for you, there would be no me.

Acknowledgments

This book has been years in the making, and I cannot hope to pay adequate tribute to the many people who have played a role in its final shape. Many patients, names long forgotten, inspired my initial questions about the material effects of social inequalities upon specific bodies. Many books and articles I read early in my professional career doubtless influenced the directions of my thought. Casual conversations, passing glances at headlines, all played a role. Yet while the list of debts cannot be completed, nonetheless there are some specific individuals whose contributions were sufficiently recent or substantive to capture a few memory cells.

I am forever indebted to Hilary Giovale, without whose insistence I would never have approached Dr. Sandra Lubarsky to inquire about the Sustainable Communities Program at Northern Arizona University. In turn, Dr. Sandra Lubarsky and Dr. Marcus Ford introduced me to process philosophy—absolutely indispensable for thinking through the complex issues brought forth in this political theology. Dr. Rom Coles energized the political in political theology, enlightening me about the nitty gritty of grassroots, inclusive democratic processes.

Dr. Catherine Keller tirelessly guided me through the acquisition of philosophical knowledge and skills necessary to articulate what were vague—but intense!—concerns about the public health impacts of social structures I perceived as socially unjust and environmentally unsustainable. Drs. Chris Boesel, Laurel Kearns, and Summer Harrison contributed generous amounts of time and energy refining my thinking and expression in all matters theological, sociological, and food studies-related.

Friends and colleagues at Rio Salado College, where I have the good fortune of chairing a wildly interdisciplinary department, encouraged my research, including, but not limited to, assistance from Hazel David, Kirsten Thomas, and the rest of the library faculty and staff. Dr. Stephen Fomeche was an especially stellar acountabilibuddy. And Tristan Marble kept me sane and focused on the big picture.

Numerous friends and family cheered me on from the sidelines, among them Chana Seligman, my children Kelsey, Connor, and Ethan, and my grandson William (who gave me writing breaks that were the most fun ever!). Elizabeth Ruther did the heavy lifting; this book would never have happened without her indefatigable support.

I would like to extend my deepest, heartfelt gratitude to the entire team at Cascade Books, who have helped shepherd me through the publishing process from beginning to end: Charlie Collier, Sallie Vandagrift, and Daniel Lanning who have entertained my seemingly endless questions, as well as the countless others who have devoted time and energy to bringing this project to fruition.

Introduction

In the late 1980s and early 1990s I completed medical school and residency on Chicago’s Near West Side. During that time I became pregnant with my first child and was advised to take one milligram of folic acid daily in order to reduce the likelihood that my daughter would develop spina bifida, a condition in which the developing neural tube fails to close, a feat that typically completes by day twenty-eight of pregnancy.¹ I marveled that such a miniscule amount of any nutrient (less than a single tablet of ibuprofen spread out over twenty-eight days!) could make a visible impact on the development of the nervous system. I could only speculate about the invisible impact of malnutrition on my patients, most of whom received welfare and food stamps. It seemed to me that my patients might have been hobbled coming out of the gate by poor nutrition. What role, I wondered, does poor nutrition play in the cycle of poverty?

My concerns in this regard were not mirrored in the wider world around me. Admittedly, as a busy medical student I was only peripherally aware of the political discourse surrounding welfare reform in the early 1990s, but much of what I gleaned during my morning commute implied that America, being the land of opportunity, afforded us all equal possibilities for financial success provided we were willing to work hard. Mainstream media seemed to amplify voices of the Religious Right preoccupied primarily with denouncing homosexuality, criminalizing abortion, assuring that creationism made it into school curriculum, and preventing governments from interfering with free markets. They seemed somewhat more concerned with providing school prayer than school lunches.

These priorities puzzled me greatly, having been an avid reader of sacred text since early adolescence. I had been raised in a strictly secular home, however, and my reading was uninformed by the sedimentations of tradition in the thousands of years between the writing of those texts and the political milieu at the end of the twentieth century. Therefore, I was aware of the numerous biblical injunctions to feed the poor and liberate the captive, whereas I couldn’t recall any injunctions insisting that we implement prayer in public schools or support free-market capitalism. I could not understand the seeming lack of concern about ecological issues; after all, Scripture held that God both created and declared this world very good. The political agenda of the Christian Right seemed—from my admittedly remote perspective—to be disconnected from the priorities I encountered within Scripture.

Furthermore, it seemed to me that if the United States of America were really a Christian nation, as those folks insisted, then its economic organization would reflect more concern for the disenfranchised and less resentment of them. Caring for God’s creation would be a number one priority since it is among the first of God’s commandments (scripturally speaking). Something seemed off to me. Was it possible, I wondered, that more or less secular concerns found purchase in religious communities and masqueraded as Christian dogma? At any rate, a competing worldview not entirely consistent with the economic messages of the Bible—yet somehow consistent with other tenets dear to the Christian Right—certainly seemed operative.

While these loudly conservative Christian voices drew support from the Abrahamic traditions for free-market-based agendas, or what I have come to call neoliberal economics, I encountered within the Bible both justification of and challenge to their perspective. This contradiction plagued me throughout my fifteen-year medical career, most of which entailed serving the poor in public mental health facilities. Even after establishing a private practice, I noted that similar socio-political and economic forces seemed to bear heavily upon the well-being of my clients, although with differing intensities.

Those experiences planted the seeds for this political theology of food. I returned to graduate school on a vague quest to study the nexus of religion, worldview, gender, and ecology that would account for what I observed but could not express. In truth, I sought a ready-made explanation that had thus far eluded me, some well-established truth that my medical school had overlooked in its curriculum design. What I discovered instead was a mosaic of theological and philosophical perspectives that illuminate one or another aspect of this interconnection, including process philosophy, new materialisms, feminist theory, and progressive theologies. Above all, it was the discursive field of political theology that invigorated and clarified the armchair observations I made about this nexus as a practicing physician.

The Theological and the Political

Scholars in the field of political theology hail from both secular and religious orientations, and concern themselves with the appearance of theological concepts in the political arena. The contemporary discourse often engages the work of Carl Schmitt, who famously declared that All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts.² The political and the theological draw sustenance from one another. Up close, the line between the two blurs as each seems to seep into the other. Theologies suggest particular social arrangements. Social structures profess theological commitments (albeit often disavowed).

As Mark Lewis Taylor describes it, the political refers to certain mode[s] of organizing the human practices that structure social interaction.³ Taylor identifies the theological as a dimension of the political. The discourse of the theological is tasked with critical reflection upon motions of power in a politics characterized by conflict.⁴ Motions of power are integrally entwined with the resolution or perpetuation of these tensions, not infrequently leaving a trail of suffering in their wake.

The full title of Taylor’s volume, The Theological and the Political: On the Weight of the World raises a central question: What about the weightiness of the world? Taylor describes this weight as perception of the inescapability of participation in the system that differentially visits harm and privilege on those within it. He goes on to say that the weight felt can be regarded as a sense of shared humanity being disrupted by oppressive social arrangements that impose heavy burdens of suffering. By this account, the weight of each of the emaciated bodies of the nearly seven million people who die of starvation every year is rather heavy—indeed may in fact be heavier than the bodies of the eight million people suffering from obesity, although in truth our global food system can be said to be serving neither bodies very well. Drawing upon Taylor’s verbiage, motions of power have much to do with who starves, who becomes obese, and who retains a slender, well-nourished figure.

Borrowing Taylor’s terms, a political theology of food concerns itself with the theological in its critical analysis of ongoing injustices in food politics, calling attention to the motions of power that perpetuate them. Although it carries distinctive theological implications, a political theology of food does not constitute a constructive theological intervention into what Taylor refers to as Guild Theology, or theology of the formal, academic, and doctrinally committed variety. Why use the world theological, if I do not intend such an intervention? Again, I turn to Taylor for clarification: even those who reject [Guild Theology] must work in the ruins of its failure.⁵ This is a particularly salient point, since the remains of theological concepts persist within secular theories. One such failure of Guild Theology, I contend, is the classical notion of sovereignty, particularly in its secularized versions endorsed by Schmitt.⁶

Theologically, a sovereign God is envisioned as all-powerful, unchanging, and most importantly transcendent as regards the material world. This God establishes natural laws; suspends them when a miracle is called for; metes out punishment; and guarantees justice. We may not like the decisions of this God, but those who espouse this theology assure us that even the bad things are a meaningful part of the ultimate plan. When this concept is applied in the secular arena, it supports numerous related ideas. First, the idea that a nation is territorially defined and more or less autonomous, thus entitled to self-rule. And second, the idea that a single political leader is capable of securing the borders of a nation and providing for the welfare of its citizens, with the right to rule over others (i.e., noncitizens, rebels, etc.) if they threaten the welfare of the state. Thus, the notion of sovereignty refers to concepts as divergent as autonomy and the right to self-rule on the one hand, or supremacy and the right to rule over others on the other hand.

The political concept of sovereignty has superimposed the image of a transcendent, sovereign God upon a human sovereign figure, with a similar hope of preservation of identity. As Bruno Latour notes, environmental politics are no exception; even self-proclaimed secular politics resorts to using nature as a transcendent that becomes sovereign.⁷ Still more intriguing, the concept of national sovereignty emerged in the context of the global spice trade in order to establish the right of a governing body to rule over a bounded territory for the purposes of conducting and profiting from that trade,⁸ yet it ironically has reached its own crisis point due in part to transnational global food trade, for reasons that will become clearer in Part I.⁹ Even more to the point of a political theology of food, free-market-based economic policies are imposed upon developing nations by multilateral agencies presuming the right to rule over others—one aspect of sovereignty. Meanwhile, the food sovereignty movement has arisen in opposition to those maneuvers, claiming not so much the right to rule over others as the right to self-determination.

While attending to the conceptual dimensions of food, a political theology of food must also attend to the material dimensions of food—its production, distribution, and consumption. A political theology of food is therefore also informed by biological sciences and quantum physics. It presumes life on earth to be characterized by dynamically entangled becoming, in which no boundaries—including between one nation and another, human and nonhuman, or even between life and death, can be definitively settled once and for all. Boundaries, including national boundaries and declarations of sovereignty, remain subject to disruption. For what appear at first glance to be firm boundaries reveal themselves to be porous sites of interchange, and the surface appearance is perpetually in the (re)making.¹⁰ Consequently, decisions, both large and small, must be continually made and remade. Thus the theoretical positions of process philosophy, new materialisms, and science studies constitute some of the transdisciplinary tools most useful for a political theology of food.

Charting the Course

Transdisciplinary inquiry is vital to a political theology of food, since food politics operates simultaneously in several registers: individual, national, transnational, and ecological. It may seem more reasonable in some regards to tackle only one of these registers for the sake of simplicity. And indeed, much scholarship takes precisely that approach. Because sovereignty is central to political theology, a political theology of food interrogates how the concept of sovereignty permeates food politics within each of these registers. This analysis reveals how sovereignty comes undone within each of them around one of at least three fault lines: the suspension of law, claims to unity, or promises of security.

Theoretical disagreements between German jurist Carl Schmitt and German Jewish literary critic Walter Benjamin will form the axis around which much of this political theology of food revolves. Both men disagree passionately about the concept of sovereignty and about the proper role of the theological within the political. Schmitt espouses an orthodox theological model of divine sovereignty, and bases his description of political sovereignty upon just this notion of unilateral, top-down, absolute, authority. Benjamin also endorses something of a traditional theological model of sovereignty, but in his case this model serves to upend any pretense to human sovereignty. The underlying dilemmas to which both men point resurface as especially relevant to food politics in the context of climate change. These finer points of disagreement between Schmitt and Benjamin as relevant to a political theology of food receive concentrated attention in chapter 1.

In the aftermath of the 2011 bombing of the World Trade Center academic interest in political theology has experienced something of a renaissance, and with it a resurgence of the debate between Schmitt and Benjamin. As will become clearer in chapter 2, despite the deep divisions between Schmitt and Benjamin, the food sovereignty movement could potentially draw support from political theologians favoring either one—at least to a limited degree. The radically democratic processes and lack of formal rules in the movement resonate with radically left-leaning political theologians who tend to favor Benjamin’s approach, while the food sovereignty movement’s nationalist origins and demand for world-wide recognition of their nation-state would alienate those same theorists. The misalignment between the food sovereignty movement and the radically progressive political theologies that might otherwise support the movement are, I contend, related to the paradoxical motions of power exhibited in global food trade.

Paradoxical motions of power in global food trade will be accounted for by drawing upon the concept of food regimes and rhetorical framing in chapter 3. The concept of food regimes was developed by Harriet Friedmann and Philip McMichael, and describes settled structures and practices in global food systems. In their schema, the current regime is referred to as the corporate food regime. Madeleine Fairbairn contributes an analysis of political frames in global food politics, delineating the rhetorical framing of the corporate food regime and its major contender, the food sovereignty movement. Examining motions of power in food politics reveals that economic renditions of Schmittian sovereignty are carried out by the corporate food regime under the political frame of food security, artfully sidestepping—or presuming?—the question of their right to the sovereign decision, while never overtly claiming to possess sovereignty. Furthermore, a disjuncture between the political frames and systemic practices of the food sovereignty movement is at least partially responsible for its enigmatic claims to sovereignty.

Connecting social injustices inherent in our contemporary global food system to enactments of sovereignty on the part of the corporate food regime will be the task of chapter 4.¹¹ This will involve an application of Giorgio Agamben’s homo sacer and state of exception to the context of food politics, constituting a new approach to the analysis of motions of power in the global food system. When viewed through the lens of Agamben’s homo sacer and state of exception, it becomes clear that despite the sovereign’s promise to provide security, enactments of sovereignty can, and frequently do, increase vulnerability. Jacques Derrida’s critique of Agamben will shift the site of inquiry from the political to the ethical. An examination of Judith Butler’s ethic of nonviolence as a response to precarity in the global food system closes the chapter.

The materialization of human bodies in the context of the global food system receives concentrated attention in chapter 5. Feminist ethics, new materialist methodologies, and scientific data from nutritional research will contribute to an account of the social production of malnourished starving and obese bodies through the workings of an oppressive food system. The intercalation of bodies thus produced into social hierarchies retroactively reinforces and legitimates the original oppression.¹² Demonstrating the social production of classed bodies calls attention to both the necessity for and possibility of shifting unjust social practices.

Not only does food’s boisterous dynamism mark the vulnerability of the human body, but it also marks the vulnerability of food itself. Chapter 6 enumerates the environmental impact of the corporate food regime, and also the resulting susceptibility of global food production to those environmental impacts. Bruno Latour’s Politics of Nature surfaces as an imperfect yet potent challenge to the concept of Schmittian sovereignty in the context of global climate instability. Pivotal to Latour’s contribution is a critique of dualist metaphysics that prioritizes substance over material, expert over layperson, and Being over becoming. Latour’s nondualist metaphysics lends support for a political theology of food that situates itself in a relational ontology on a planet characterized more by a dynamic becoming than by a static Being.

The theological integrity and metaphysical accuracy of Schmitt’s application of orthodox theological models will be assessed in chapter 7. Schmitt’s secularization of sovereignty is not at all in keeping with orthodox theologies, at least not as interpreted by Karl Barth. However, even Barth’s theology no longer squares entirely with the metaphysical image of our era. Subsequently, a political theology of food must seek theological models consonant with both traditional sources and contemporary science, such as Catherine Keller’s theology of becoming.

Finally, Paulina Ochoa-Espejo’s popular sovereignty will be interrogated for its capacity to inspire the formation of resilient multiplicities of communities and ecosystems in the face of climate catastrophes in chapter 8. Although arguing against a top-down sovereignty operative within a tightly bounded territory, this chapter will nonetheless legitimate the demand for national sovereignty on the part of those in the food sovereignty movement while attempting to avoid the pitfalls of Schmittian sovereignty.

The questions awakened in me as a young medical student have increased in number and intensity in recent years. On a planet currently facing numerous catastrophic weather events annually due to climate change—due in part to high-input agricultural practices—I ask: does it make sense to permit the continued unification of the global agricultural system into this highly mechanized and notably destructive set of practices? Especially when climate change will make it even harder to grow food? Unification of agricultural practice is supported not only by the undeclared sovereignty of multilateral agencies and transnational corporations. It is also implicitly supported by the disavowed integration of secularized orthodox theological concepts into secular thought. A political theology of food questions such unification on theological, political, and ecological bases and calls attention to the threat that such unification poses in the context of climate change. While questions alone will not solve anything, they do permit a fresh perspective.

1. Since this discovery was made in the late

1980

s folate has been added to most cereal and bread products to reduce the likelihood of spina bifida.

2. Schmitt, Political Theology,

36

.

3. Taylor, Theological and the Political,

5

.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.,

11

.

6. More problematic from a theological, rather than political, perspective is the problem of theodicy. For example, as will be discussed in later chapters, the failure of the transcendent God to halt the brutality unleashed during the First World War decidedly scarred political theorist Carl Schmitt. But an exhaustive account of theodicy is well beyond the scope of the present study.

7. Latour, Politics of Nature,

12

,

200

.

8. Gupta, A Different History of the Present,

29

–

46

.

9. Ray and Srivinas, Curried Cultures,

38

.

10. As evidence of the consistent remaking of the bodies’ boundaries, allow me to mention two biological phenomena. First, the normally very short lifespan of epithelial cells—the cells forming both the skin and the inner lining of the intestine. These cells live only a matter of days, typically three to five, after which time they are sloughed off and a new layers of cells emerges to the surface. Yet only in the case of medical emergencies does it occur that dead skin falls off without another layer present to take its place. The ongoing replication of cells maintains the appearance of an enduring surface despite frequent loss of skin cells. The second is the acute version of a pathological condition known as disseminated intravascular coagulation, a clotting abnormality occurring at the end stage of other illnesses such as cardiogenic shock or heat stroke. In this condition, numerous tiny blood clots form throughout the vascular system, depleting the body’s clotting factors. As a result, there are no clotting factors available to repair the many microscopic wounds that the body typically repairs without one’s awareness. Subsequently, bleeding typically occurs from such obvious sites of recent injury as the site of yesterday’s blood draw, but also from the nose, mouth, and ears. What this demonstrates is that tiny ruptures occur on multiple surfaces of our bodies many times a day, but due to the remaking of our bodily boundaries by our clotting system, we are typically unaware of these threats to bodily integrity. Peters et al. Disseminated Intravascular Coagulopathy,

419

–

23

.

11. Agamben, Homo Sacer, and Agamben, State of Exception will inform this section.

12. Bennett’s vibrant materiality emphasizes the effect that food has on human behavior. Barad’s agential realism is founded upon the notion that the primary ontological unit is not independent objects with independently determinate boundaries and properties but rather what Bohr terms ‘phenomena’ (Meeting the Universe Halfway,

33)

. According to Barad, these phenomena intra-act such that, for example in the case of food, neither the dinner nor the diner are considered distinct in an absolute sense but are only distinct in relation to their mutual entanglement. Each will, through their intra-action, shape what the other becomes.

Part I

Sovereignty in Theory and Action

Chapter 1

Fertilizing the Garden

Carl Schmitt’s Sovereign in Interwar Germany

Despite the importance of the concept of sovereignty to the politics of food, few have endeavored to trace the historical trajectory of sovereignty as a political concept as it appears in global food trade. Historian and political theorist Daniele Conversi is among the handful to do so. Conversi opens his historical contextualization of the food sovereignty movement by arguing that the link between sovereignty and food sovereignty has scarcely been theorized across human and social science disciplines.¹³ And indeed, with the notable exception of the 2015 issue of Globalizations, including Conversi’s, there is a dearth of such analysis.

Conversi begins his account of the concept of sovereignty with the Peace of Westphalia, which established territorial boundaries within which a given monarch could legitimately rule without interference.¹⁴ The territorially bounded nature of sovereignty carried forward as monarchical rule gave way to the nation-state, and the sovereignty of the king was supplanted by the (presumably unified) will of the people as the hallmark of legitimate sovereignty.¹⁵ Conversi flashes forward to our current era, which he characterizes as post-sovereign, because the contemporary transnational economic situation has differentially fortified the sovereignty of certain nation-states while eroding that of others.

Thus historically contextualized, food sovereignty appears as the most significant incarnation of the historical notion of sovereignty according to Conversi.¹⁶ The significance of this movement is attributed in no small part to the dual nature of the claims to sovereignty: While sovereignty [in the food sovereignty movement] still concerns the state’s right to adopt and shape food policies, the subject has moved from the state to small-scale producers mobilizing, with or without the state, to defend their ‘models of production and reproduction.’¹⁷ Rhetorically, the food sovereignty movement deploys the term sovereignty in a new register that simultaneously fortifies, relies upon and destabilizes the sovereignty of the state itself.

According to theorists in the field of political theology, the historical notion of sovereignty with which Conversi concerns himself derives from theological concepts.¹⁸ Yet Conversi situates food sovereignty within the broader historical trajectory of sovereignty in its political forms, altogether ignoring the religious motifs animating the concept of sovereignty. Similarly, the discourse of political theology has yet to grapple with the concept of sovereignty as it appears in food politics or to wrestle with the central role of global food trade as a driver of geopolitics. A political theology of food attempts to bridge that gap.

I will focus on two primary eras: an interwar Germany between 1918 and 1939 and a post-9/11 United States.