Variations on desire

Colonialism, zone of non-being and plane of immanence

Abstract

We focus here on the problem of desire in Fanonian writing and its projections to the space of Deleuze-Guattari´s philosophy. We hold that the figure of desire in Fanon’s texts is gradually transformed from an idea of desire articulated as lack, to an idea of desire as positivity, which is adapted to the postcolonial conditions of the political imagination and it agrees with -from different analytical marks-, the ways in which Deleuze-Guattari discuss the plane of immanence. This makes Fanon and Deleuze-Guattari’s intellectual itineraries and their writings precise each other. In this passage two crucial processes occur, the first is the critique of the compensatory logics of categories facing colonialism, and the second is the critique of representation. Last but not least we suggest and emphasize that both writings overcome these processes and produce spaces not regulated by the modernity-coloniality relationship.