Vertigo in the City: Urban Crime, Consumerism and the Theopolitical Act

Abstract

This article explores some theological points of contact and development arising from an understanding of the city not yet receiving sustained attention in urban theologies—crime and punishment. It gives an account of the expressive criminality of late modern cities and the attendant sociology of vindictiveness that shapes practices of punishment. It demurs from an influential but highly pessimistic vision of the persistence of consumerist desire, the only escape from which comes in a largely unsustainable politics of renunciation (Steve Hall drawing on Slavoj Žižek). It begins to develop an account of non-consumerist desire and political subjectivity though a critical dialogue with Žižek’s exposition of Romans 7. It suggests that the fragmentary urban practices of Christian mercy (offender reintegration, education programmes, anti-gang social projects, youth work) enact a form of asceticism which more satisfactorily parallels the covenantal and participatory thrust of Romans 5–8.