1. Rather than looking to Liberation Theology as a blueprint for a normative political vision, we should think of it as a prophetic discernment of the ‘State of Exception’. Liberation Theology’s addressee is the human being as ‘pre-political’ homo sacer, existing under the condition of ‘bare life’. Here is the mistake, acknowledged by Hugo Assmann, of summoning this figure to be both individually and collectively a ‘subject of history’. This may be correct in identifying the exclusion from political existence that typifies the homo sacer and seeking to redress it. Nevertheless, the summons is uselessly counter-productive, insofar as it is addressed to people with no realistic immediate prospect of political empowerment.