Introduction incarnate politics beyond the cross and the sword

Abstract

This introduction outlines an anthropological concept of ‘theopolitics’ emergent from ethnographic engagements with the old-est site of European colonialism—the (Latin) Americas. Defined as a query into the sensorial regimes enabling incarnate forms of power, theopolitics focuses on the sovereignties from below that are immanent in struggles between the universalisms of Christian imperialisms and the autochthonous forces they seek to police and unmake. The articles comprising this special issue advance this query by exploring processes of attunement to the prophetic voices of the dead and life itself, of the elasticity of incarnate forms of political charisma and crowds, and the potencies of precious matter and touch as domains for rethinking rela-tionships among political anthropology, political economy, and political theology beyond a focus on the state.