Abstract

This chapter examines the theorization of the extreme form of subjective destitution and subjectivation through the figure of Christ. The analysis focuses on two explicitly theological and political uses of Christ as the figure of redemptive destitution, in the work of Michel Henry and François Laruelle. In different ways they approach the problem of subjectivation through what we could call, after Laruelle, the ‘Christ-Subject’. This tracing of this line of thinking is a sceptical one, focused on the problem of the political reversal from a position of destitution and powerlessness into a position of power. This form of subjectivation speaks to Marx’s analysis of the proletariat, risks a valorization of suffering and destitution that may not become activated politically. The possible foundering of this reversal indicates a crucial problem in contemporary theoretical and philosophical turns to the value of life as the central operator of subjectivation.