Sacropolitics

Abstract

Abstract Two decades into the twenty-first century, a panoply of formerly separate movements, interests, organizations, and individuals have converged around shared anxieties about the future of life on earth. This article focuses on the implicit logic on which this “cult(ure) of extinction” is based. We refer to this logic as sacropolitics—the politics of mass public sacrifice. We suggest that sacropolitics describes a practical reimagining of the political emergent across the world during periods of acute crises, such as our shared present. Sacropolitics draws on multiple dispersed, decentralized sources and has emerged during a period of great turbulence and acrimony in the public sphere, when the very notion of truth is up for grabs. Despite its ambiguity, sacropolitics offers a range of related, collectively generated intimations or visions of what the future might be.