This article uses the case of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to make a conceptual argument about sovereignty. Despite its aura of natural order, sovereignty is ultimately self-referential and thus somewhat arbitrary and potentially unstable. At the heart of this unsteadiness, we posit, lies the paradox between the systematic tenets of rational governance and the capricious potential of sublime violence. Both are highly relevant to the LTTE case: the movement created de facto state institutions to mimic governance, but simultaneously deployed an elaborate transcendental register of sacrifice, meaning, and intractable power wielded by a mythical leader. To capture this paradox, we connect the literature on rebel governance with anthropological debates about divine kingship. We conceptualize sovereignty as a citational practice that involves the adaptation, imitation, and mutation of different idioms of authority: political and religious, modern and traditional, rational and mythical. Understanding sovereignty in this way debunks the idea that insurgent movements are merely lagging behind established states. As sites of mimicry, bricolage, and innovation, they transform the way sovereignty is practiced and understood, thus affecting the frame that sovereignty is.

The interpretation of the Royal Graves at Ur, Mesopotamia, by their excavator, Sir Leonard Woolley, has long been accepted. Woolley implies that the people sacrificed along with the dynasts went willingly to their deaths out of loyalty, devotion, and faith in the dead monarchs; but other interpretations are plausible. One is that these graves are the remains of dramas portraying a ‘public transcript’ played out in a public theatre of cruelty staged by rulers claiming divine status. State power united with supernatural authority can create extraordinarily powerful ‘sacred or divine kingdoms’; but ‘sacred’ or ‘divine’ kings need continuous contact with the supernatural and affirmation of their divinity. They are obliged to practise acts of public mystification, of which the Royal Graves appear to be examples. Ur's kings may indeed have been strong and their subjects loyal, but it is equally likely that they were weak and vulnerable and that they practised ritual sacrifice to terrorize a restive citizenry and convince themselves and others of their right to rule. Other examples of public transcripts made manifest in state-sponsored theatres of cruelty confirm that the Royal Graves at Ur are not unique but represent a phenomenon of wider historical generality.