A Political Theology of Negative Sovereignty

“A Political Theology of Negative Sovereignty is an unsettling book. With extraordinary conceptual ambition and ethnographic force, Claudio Lomnitz gives us a new vocabulary for understanding violence, sovereignty, and the moral worlds taking shape around them. Lucid, fearless, and deeply original, this is anthropology at its most consequential.” - Kevin Lewis O’Neill, University of Toronto

“A phenomenal analysis of Mexican cartel and state narco-violence and racketeering. Claudio Lomnitz dives into a vast range of popular and scholarly literature, personal experience, and photographs of murder memorials to make sense of the incomprehensibly bloody narco-terror violence hijacking much of Mexico. Beautifully written, this book is itself both a unique archive and contemporary ethnography of Mexican criminal violence and salt-of-the earth suffering.” - Philippe Bourgois, author of In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio