The Mark of Cain: Sovereign Negation and the Politics of God

Hannah Arendt calls for the “abolition of sovereignty from the body politic.” In this article I affirm some key elements of Arendt’s critique, arguing against versions of Christian ethics that try to deploy divine authorization for particular policies, institutions, goals, or virtues. But I also argue that the attempt to abolish sovereignty allows the political process itself to become a sovereign good and erodes the forms of life that can sustain the kind of vision and politics that Arendt desires. The better alternative to the usual politics of sovereignty is not the absence of sovereignty, but a changed – and negative – conception of the relationship of sovereign power to the political order. In developing this argument I contend with Arendt’s reading of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd and, behind that, her reading of the biblical story of Cain and Abel. I argue that the city of Cain is made possible not by Cain’s murder of his brother, but by the mark with which God negates the legitimacy of both the murder and the violence to avenge the murder. Sovereign negation makes the polis possible.