Race (Jesus and the white faciality machine)

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Deleuzoguattarian theory provides a particularly potent resource for peeling back and scrutinizing the layers of whiteness that the ancient Mediterranean Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, has accrued since the dawn of European colonial modernity, and for opening up the “abstract machine of faciality” (as Deleuze and Guattari style it) that produced, and still produces, whiteness as such. Indeed, the “Year Zero: Faciality” chapter/plateau of A Thousand Plateaus assigns pivotal significance to Jesus as the retroactive linchpin of the faciality machine that fabricates white masculinity as Christian universalism. Bringing Deleuze and Guattari into dialogue with seminal Black thinkers on race, notably, W. E. B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Stuart Hall, and James Cone, this chapter attempts to ponder anew the intersections of Christianity, empire, and whiteness, together with certain of the New Testament texts that white Christendom claims as its own.</jats:p>