Locating the sacrifice zone in capitalist and anti-capitalist political theology

Abstract

An increasingly prevalent element of capitalism’s uneven regime of accumulation is the ‘sacrifice zone’, where environmental injustices related to harmful toxins, ecological devastation or military testing are concentrated so that the environmental health and economic sustainability of other places can be maintained. All over the world, collectives are mobilising against sacrifice zones, making sacrifices of their own to do so. How might we understand the making and resisting of sacrifice zones? Although a rather nebulous concept, I posit that political theology offers a useful interpretive frame for studying how capitalism reproduces sacrifice zones through neocolonial relations, and how anticapitalist resistance is mobilised against sacrifice zones. It is thus with political theology that I attempt in this article to engage critically with the material and affective processes inherent to establishing, living within, and refusing sacrifice zones. To do so, I draw on political theology to consider the kinds of political faith, radical sacrifices and modalities of making sacred that form part of a community-led struggle for socioecological liberation in South Africa. By way of conclusion, I offer some reflections on what a political theology of the sacrifice zone might look like.