Sovereignty as a Relation to the World: Three Regimes of Power

Sovereignty is not one. It fractures into regimes of power that resist reduction to a single logic. Before considering their possible articulation, we must first distinguish them in their singularity. Three voices emerge here, each proposing a distinct modality of relation to the world: technical mastery in Spinoza, where sovereignty is measured by human power; cosmic equilibrium in Kopenawa, where it is inscribed in a non-human order; and political illusion in Mbembe, where it dissolves into transnational flows. These three propositions do not yet engage in dialogue. They assert themselves first as incommensurables.

Sovereignty as Power: Spinoza and the Affection of the World

Spinoza does not speak of sovereignty as such. He speaks of affection, of power, of what prevails—or fails to prevail—over human actions. Sovereignty, for him, is not a political concept but a question of force relations. It plays out in the capacity of one affection to dominate others, to impose itself as the determining principle of action.

That is why the affection relating to a thing considered as absent is not of such a nature as to prevail over the other actions and the power of man (see Prop. on this subject).

The absence of the thing does not annul its power. It displaces it, transforms it, but does not suppress it. Spinozan sovereignty is thus a question of presence and absence, of what persists despite distance. It is measured by the capacity of an affection to determine man, to orient his power. If one affection prevails over others, it becomes sovereign. It imposes its law.

This sovereignty is not an attribute of the state but a property of bodies and minds. It is immanent, always at play, always contested. It is not decreed; it is won in the clash of forces. Human power is never absolute: it is always relative to what determines it, to what exceeds it. Sovereignty, here, is a precarious equilibrium, a domination always threatened by other affections, other powers.

Spinoza does not offer a theory of political sovereignty. He offers an ontology of power, where sovereignty is a matter of force relations. It is not an ideal to be achieved but a state of fact, always provisional, always called into question.

Sovereignty as Harmony: Kopenawa and the Power of Omama

For Davi Kopenawa, sovereignty is not a question of mastery but of equilibrium. It does not belong to human power but to a cosmic order in which the human is but one actor among others. Sovereignty, here, is a matter of relations, of correspondences, of what maintains the harmony of the world.

It is with it that Omama routs the malevolent beings of the forest and the beings of epidemic.

Omama is not a sovereign in the political sense. He is a force, a power that acts through the world, protecting it, maintaining its equilibrium. Sovereignty, for Kopenawa, is not domination but protection. It is what allows the world to persist, to resist destructive forces.

The malevolent beings of the forest, the beings of epidemic: these are powers that threaten the cosmic order. Omama does not dominate them by brute force but by a power that routs them. Sovereignty, here, is not a question of control but of resistance, of preservation. It is what prevents the world from collapsing into chaos.

This sovereignty is not human. It is cosmic, shared among beings, spirits, and forces that populate the world. The human is not its center but a participant. Human power is not sovereign; it is relative to that of other beings, to that of Omama. Sovereignty, for Kopenawa, is a matter of relations, of what keeps the world alive.

It is not an attribute but a process. It is not possessed; it is lived, shared. It is not domination but harmony, always fragile, always threatened.

Sovereignty as Illusion: Mbembe and Cosmopolitan Law

Achille Mbembe does not speak of sovereignty as a reality but as a fiction. A necessary fiction, perhaps, but a fiction nonetheless. Sovereignty, for him, is a political concept that collides with the reality of transnational flows, commercial relations, and forces that traverse borders.

The idea of the world as a surface traversed by commercial relations that cross state borders and threaten to render their sovereignty obsolete is, in many respects, contemporary with the birth of international law, civil law, and cosmopolitan law, whose aim is to guarantee “perpetual peace.”

State sovereignty is an illusion, for the world is no longer a juxtaposition of enclosed territories. It is a surface traversed by flows, exchanges, relations that ignore borders. International law, civil law, cosmopolitan law: these legal constructs emerged to respond to this reality, to attempt to regulate it, to domesticate it. But they also reveal the obsolescence of state sovereignty.

Perpetual peace, here, is not an ideal but a horizon. A horizon that constantly recedes, for commercial relations, transnational flows, and economic forces cannot be contained within legal frameworks. Sovereignty, for Mbembe, is a fiction that barely withstands the reality of exchanges, circulations, and dependencies.

It is not a power but a fragile construct, always threatened by what exceeds it. It is not harmony but an attempt at mastery, always incomplete, always contested. Sovereignty, here, is a political illusion, a necessary fiction, but a fiction nonetheless.

Mbembe does not propose rejecting it. He proposes seeing it for what it is: a construct, a tool, a fiction that allows us to think the world but does not fully grasp it. Sovereignty is not a reality but a regime of power, a way of thinking relations between states, individuals, and flows.

Three Regimes of Power, an Irreducible Tension

Spinoza, Kopenawa, Mbembe: three voices, three propositions. Sovereignty as power, as harmony, as illusion. Three regimes of power that resist reduction to one another.

For Spinoza, sovereignty is a matter of force relations, of what prevails over other affections. It is immanent, always at play, always contested. It is not an attribute but a state of fact, a domination always provisional.

For Kopenawa, sovereignty is a matter of cosmic equilibrium, of what keeps the world alive. It is not human but shared among beings, spirits, and forces that populate the world. It is not domination but harmony, always fragile.

For Mbembe, sovereignty is a political fiction, a construct that attempts to grasp a reality that exceeds it. It is not power but an illusion, an always incomplete attempt at mastery.

These three propositions do not yet engage in dialogue. They assert themselves first as incommensurables. Spinozan power cannot be reduced to Kopenawan harmony, nor to Mbembean illusion. Cosmic equilibrium cannot be grasped by the categories of technical domination, nor by those of political fiction. Sovereignty as illusion does not merge with sovereignty as power, nor with sovereignty as harmony.

Yet these three voices are not without points of contact. They share a common tension: that of a relation to the world that resists enclosure in a single definition. Sovereignty, in Spinoza, Kopenawa, and Mbembe, is always a question of relations, of what resists, of what persists, of what eludes.

Spinoza proposes sovereignty as power, but a power always relative, always contested. Kopenawa proposes sovereignty as harmony, but a harmony always fragile, always threatened. Mbembe proposes sovereignty as illusion, but a necessary illusion, always at play.

These three propositions do not resolve into a synthesis. They remain incommensurables, distinct ways of thinking the relation to the world. But they open a tension, a question: how to think sovereignty without reducing it to one of these three modalities? How to hold together power, harmony, and illusion?

The answer, perhaps, lies not in convergence but in the tension itself. In the recognition of these three regimes of power, of their irreducibility, of their incommensurability. Sovereignty is not one. It is multiple, fragmented, always at play. It is power, harmony, illusion. And it is in this multiplicity that it unfolds.