A Post-Occidental Ontology of Desire and Subjective Return in Gregorio Martínez's Crónica de músicos y diablos

Abstract

How can this inherent force facilitate the parallel development of material and subjective production? Can we rely on desire and the subject's loss of the self to the environment as ways to think about freedom and slavery today? Before addressing these questions through Deleuze and Guattari's understanding of desire and returns, I shall introduce a summary of the novel Crónica de músicos y diablos by Gregorio Martínez (1991). I then contextualize Martínez-Navarro's literary connections and his role in ongoing economic trends that make authors agents of thematic deterritorializations, a process that led Martínez-Navarro to be part of a tension with authors from Lima. I then engage in a reading of the second half of the text that addresses the question of freedom and enslavement by looking into the difference between the desiring subjects's involvement in revolt and reactionary manifestations of revolution. Finally, I show Martínez-Navarro's understanding of desire as a force able to resist and transform the paralyzing power of seemingly revolutionary yet oppressive structures.