Revolution, fascism and resistance: from Fanon to Zapatismo

This thesis explores the relationship between revolution and fascism. While subjectivities produced by revolution are assumed to be inherently antifascist, through a sustained analysis of contemporary theories of revolution and the theory and praxis of Frantz Fanon, this thesis will argue that revolution's bio- politics, Prometheanism and accelerated temporality inevitably cause revolutionary projects to reproduce the very fascistic structures they intended to dismantle. This thesis will conclude with an analysis of zapatismo, the theoretical praxis of the zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico. Arguing against reading zapatismo as a classic Marxist revolutionary system or Orientalizing it within anthropological terms, this thesis will demonstrate how zapatismo functions as what Felix Guattari terms a “metamodel”, and opens up a system of revolutionary change that is achieved through a practice of constant resistance. As it is used in this thesis, fascism is explicitly not limited to statist manifestations of totalitarian regimes, what will be termed “macro” fascisms. Rather fascism represents any form of domination of one group over another. This is explicitly not limited to totalitarian states, but also located within smaller social groups and individuals, what Deleuze and Guattari termed “microfascisms”. The term fascism is intended to have an affective response and through its use this thesis intends to illicit a critical reading that would make an internal diagnostic mechanism, a mechanism for movements to analyse the ways in which power operates within the movement, integral to all revolutionary projects