Anti-Oedipus, Kinship, and the Subject of Affect: Reading Fanon with Deleuze and Guattari

This essay reads Frantz Fanon and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari together based on their critiques of an Oedipal model of kinship. Though they have divergent reasons for rejecting this structure, merging these discourses brings into relief their overlapping interest in non-Oedipal relations. It also allows us to reconsider the theoretical implications of their work. On the one hand, it allows us to look more carefully at the affective implications of Fanon’s rejection of the Oedipus complex and understand his focus on solidarity in a new light. On the other hand, it renders Deleuze and Guattari’s abstractions more concrete and allows us to review the ethical stakes of their project by providing a historical foil for their theories. Ultimately, I argue, reading them together allows us to revisit queer concepts of kinship from different historical and theoretical frames.