83

Journal for the Study of Radicalism, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2010, pp. 83108. Issu 1930-1189.
2010 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved.
sIxou srttxks aIf uuIvLasIf?, LLaouauL, rusfarLIr
Hakim Bey
Repopulating the Temporary Autonomous Zone
T
he poet and essayist Peter Lamborn Wilson is widely known for his
anarchist manifesto Te Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ),
developed across a series of essays written from :8: to :88 and
published in collected form in :: as T.A.Z.: Te Temporary Autonomous
Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. Te essays were attributed
to Hakim Bey, Wilsons infamous pseudonym, and the writing itself
was a potent brew of mysticism, historical narratives, autonomous Marx-
ist politics, and French critical theory. Te overall aim was to highlight
indeterminate zones within late capitalism, everyday occurrences that
refuse, whether by accident or design, to be incorporated into dominant
narratives. Tis enabled Te TAZ to become an extraordinarily infuential
(and divisive) text in anarchist circles, and in various pop cultural move-
ments. But has that moment passed? Can the concept hold any meaning
for observers in the early twenty-frst century? Tis essay will argue that,
although the cultural capital of the TAZ has undoubtedly become degraded
through overuse, the circumstances of its cultural reception are indeed
worth returning to and remembering. Repopulating the TAZ can reward
us now (as it did at inception) with valuable insight into the perceived role
of critically engaged literature and philosophy as an activator of political
potential, illumining a debate regarding the supposed (in)compatibility of
lefist theory and politics that continues today.
84 Simon Sellars
The TAZ and cyberculture: Life in the trenches
Te TAZ may have remained a fringe work if it wasnt for cyberculture, where
it proved to be among the more resilient memes in alternative art and culture
from the mid-:8os to the mid-:os. Te original electronic networks that
became the prototype for todays commercial Internet were developed in the
:8os, a development of the frst interconnected computer channels produced
in the :oos for U.S. military purposes. As Franois Cusset summarizes:
Tese networks embodied, for some, a space for resistance, a social dead
zone, a territory that was still imperceptible, in whose shelter they could build
a new community and undermine the ruling powers . . . the frst groups of
hackers emerged [and formed,] in Bruce Sterlings words, a veritable digital
underground.
:
In cybercultures incandescent popcult moment, the gritty
noir futures of cyberpunk science fction, built upon the template forged
by the ascending reputations of novelists William Gibson and Sterling, and
extrapolated from present-day technological developments, were cited as
metaphoric portrayals of a real world in thrall to the nascent Internet and to
the implications for mediated life it held. Cyberphile magazines like Mondo
:ooo (and later, Wired and ::C) spliced cyberpunk attitude with digital cultures
bleeding edge, carrying advertisements for dial-up modems, cu-voms, and
pixel art sofware in between articles and interviews exploring every facet
of cyberculture: from body modifcation to the emergent politics of the net,
from new strains of cyberpunk fction and rave music to the bumper sticker
libertarianism leaking from cybercultures startling new cachet.
:
Fermented within this heady frontier atmosphere, manifestos were
abundant. John Perry Barlow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation drew
up A Declaration for the Independence of Cyberspace, demanding that
the netthe new home of Mindbe forever self-governing, forever free
from corporate and governmental restriction.
,
Douglas Rushkof produced
a book-length vrit document of life in the trenches of cyberspace (or
Cyberia), where cyberians believe the age upon us now might take the
form of a categorical upscaling of the human experience onto uncharted,
hyperdimensional turf . . . Whether or not we are destined for a wholesale
leap into the next dimension, there are many people who believe that
history as we know it is coming to a close.

But with its call to dowse for

potential free zones within the globalized economy, couched within an explicit
Hakim Bey 85
terminology that drew upon Sterlings work and the jargon surrounding
the Web and the net, Te TAZ quickly became the clarion call. Bey, the
so-called anarchist Suf, seemed to deliver precisely the kind of liberated
mind state that Barlow had so dramatically hoped would be delivered, and
that Rushkof had so eagerly tried to imagine. Efectively, Te TAZ became
a blueprint for a full-scale ecology that could be inhabited by true believers.
Inside the TAZ: An intensication of everyday life
Previously, Wilson had formed the Autonomedia publishing house with
the academic Sylvre Lotringer, publishing works by Paul Virilio and Jean
Baudrillard as well as the infuential magazine Semiotext(e). In :8, he
also conceived and coedited (with Robert Anton Wilson and Rudy Rucker)
Semiotext(e) SF, an anthology of science fction and speculative fction that
featured writing from the three editors as well as Sterling, Gibson, J. G. Ballard,
Ian Watson, William S. Burroughs, Colin Wilson, Robert Sheckley, Philip
Jos Farmer, and others. In light of this literary background, what exactly is
the TAZ: another experiment in speculative fction,
,
an academic essay, or
a serious political manifesto?
Te TAZ is largely informed by Guy Debords treatise on the Society of the
Spectacle, which describes how the simulacra of mass communications and
advertising fll all available social space. For Debord, rebellion is inevitably
turned into product, a dynamic force generated within an all-encompassing
media landscape in which modern conditions of production prevail, all of
life [presenting] itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything
that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.
o
For Bey,
the dream of real-world revolution (opposition in its most literal sense)
remains unobtainable within the terms of the Spectacle, that is, within the
late-capitalist era of interlocking communications technology, mass media,
and corporate control. All revolutionary movements, he reckons, will succumb
to the Spectacles natural state of absorption once the revolution has been
fomented, set in train, and triumphed:
Absolutely nothing but a futile martyrdom could possibly result now from a
head-on collision with the terminal State, the megacorporate information State,
86 Simon Sellars
the empire of Spectacle and Simulation. Its guns are all pointed at us, while
our meagre weaponry fnds nothing to aim at but a hysteresis, a rigid vacuity,
a Spook capable of smothering every spark in an ectoplasm of information,
a society of capitulation ruled by the image of the Cop and the absorbent eye
of the TV screen.
,
Tis was a process already occurring with cyberpunk itself, as the Mondo
:ooo crew was to note archly in a :, interview:
Te term cyberpunk has been used to describe music, lifestyles, and artistic
sensibilities, but it really describes one narrow school of science-fction writ-
ers, [Chris] Hudak says. God, it was a good word . . . poetic, effcient, and
romantic. Distance and passion. Machine and man. Technology and attitude.
Cyberpunk. Great fuckin word. And what the hell; we stole it. . . .
When did cyberpunk die? I ask.
:,, smirks somebody. Te release of the Billy Idol record.
8
Beys solution to mainstream recuperation of revolution is to study closely
past and future stories about islands in the net

to look for folds in the

information matrix where spaces can be opened out to radical potential
and then closed again before commodifcation recuperates. Beginning with
an evocation of eighteenth-century Pirate Utopias, the TAZ maps out
the information network created when sea rovers and corsairs secreted
themselves on remote and uninhabited islands, trading booty and equipment
and creating minisocieties that were defantly set up to exist beyond the
reach of established law. Onto this historical superstructure, Bey mapped
psychospatial coordinates from Sterlings novel Islands in the Net (:88),
described as:
a near-future romance based on the assumption that the decay of political
systems will lead to a decentralized proliferation of experiments in living: giant
worker-owned corporations, independent enclaves devoted to data piracy,
Green-Social-Democrat enclaves, Zerowork enclaves, anarchist liberated zones,
etc. Te information economy which supports this diversity is called the Net;
the enclaves (and the books title) are Islands in the Net.
:o
Hakim Bey 87
Within this stereoscopic overlay of past with future, pirates with hackers,
Bey divines resistance as embodied in everyday instances or moments that
refuse to engage directly with the Spectacle, that lie outside of simulation
and recuperation, inhabiting cracks and vacancies only to disappear and
re-form elsewhere, thus avoiding detection and invasion. Such spaces he
terms temporary autonomous zonesan uprising which does not engage
directly with the State, a guerrilla operation which liberates an area (of land, of
time, of imagination) and then dissolves itself to re-form elsewhere/elsewhen,
before the State can crush it.
::
Ultimately, he claimed, the TAZ was a tactic
of disappearance,
::
a sympathy with autonomist Marxism that is clarifed
when compared with Michael Hardt and Antonio Negris account of the latter:
Te city is a jungle. Te urban guerrillas knew its terrain in a capillary way
so that any time they can come together and attack and then disperse and
disappear into its recesses. Te focus . . . was increasingly not on attacking the
ruling powers but rather on transforming the city itself . . . Te great struggles
of Autonomia in Italy in the :,os, for example, succeeded temporarily in
redesigning the landscape of the major cities, liberating entire zones where
new cultures and new forms of life were created.
:,
Bey suggests that psychic nomadism could help to locate any potential
TAZ. Tis is a tactic that draws on Deleuzoguattarian rhizome theory to follow
unexpected tangents, charting a course by pursuing strange stars, which
might be luminous clusters of data in cyberspace, or perhaps hallucinations
. . . unexpected eddies and urges of energy, coagulations of light, secret
tunnels, surprises.
:
Although the TAZ firts with cyberspace imagery, as in
this quote, and devotes a section to the potential countercultural value of the
net and the Web, Bey insisted that the aim was not to transcend the fesh
in favor of the type of clichd virtual reality found in the cheapened versions
of cyberpunk that so irked Mondo :ooo. Instead, the goal was to seek out the
kind of autonomy already existent within consciousness:
Te Web does not depend for its existence on any computer technology.
Word-of-mouth, mail, the marginal zine network, phone trees and the like
already suffce to construct an information network . . . Te Web is like a new
88 Simon Sellars
sense in some ways, but it must be added to the othersthe others must not
be subtracted from it, as in some horrible parody of the mystic trance. Without
the Web, the full realization of the TAZ-complex would be impossible. But the
web is not the end in itself. Its a weapon.
:,
It is heavily ironic, then, that Te TAZ would become so associated with
cyberculture, as Wilson has made no secret of his Luddite tendencies. Indeed,
in the preface to T.A.Z.s second edition, published in :oo,, Bey reiterates
this in no uncertain terms, taking aim at those who took the books small
section on the Internet to be the philosophys main theme:
I think perhaps the least useful part of the book is its section on the Internet
. . . Whats lef of the Lef now seems to inhabit a ghost-world where a few
thousand hits pass for political action and virtual community takes the
place of human presence . . . Te TAZ must exist in geographical odorous tactile
tasty physical space . . . otherwise its no more than a blueprint or a dream.
:o
For Wilson/Bey, the net was only ever envisioned . . . as an adjunct to
the TAZ, a technology in service to the TAZ, a means of potentiating its
emergence.
:,
Instead of a mediated life, Bey wanted an intensifcation of
everyday life,
:8
looking for instances that might be found, say, in a no-car
zone in the city, where pedestrians appear might reclaim the streets for a
brief moment, or in a more serious register, when a mob at a demonstration
holds its own against the police, forming a zone that not only cannot be
breached, but also that can break apart and re-form elsewhere. Bey further
idealized the TAZ as festival, celebrating those moments where the elements
of spontaneity, joy, and community are inbuilt as the template for what a
temporary autonomous zone could and should hope to achieve:
Participants in insurrection invariably note its festive aspects, even in the midst
of armed struggle, danger, and risk. Te uprising is like a saturnalia which has
slipped loose (or been forced to vanish) from its intercalary interval and is
now at liberty to pop up anywhere or when . . . Fight for the right to party
is in fact not a parody of the radical struggle but a new manifestation of it,
appropriate to an age which ofers TVs and telephones as ways to reach out
and touch other human beings, ways to Be Tere!
:
Hakim Bey 89
Onto this festal culture, he grafed Stephen Pearl Andrewss metaphor of
the dinner party as the model for anarchism, where a spontaneous and basic
desire to create mutual aid is embodied in the desire for good food and
cheer, dance, conversation, the arts of life; perhaps even for erotic pleasure,
or to create a communal artwork.
:o
Individuality is admitted within the
group, which comes together as a result of mutual attraction, forming a
celebratory space where friendship and community are the only authority,
what Andrews calls the seed of the new society taking shape within the shell
of the old.
::
Tus, the TAZ was armed with a potent mix of radical politics,
modish French theory, and memorable phraseology. (Te manifestos high,
ornate narrative style follows from the classifcation Bey itself, which is a
Turkish title equivalent to chiefain; Hakim, intentionally or not, connotes
hackers and hacking.) It carried the right amount of cultural cachet: aside
from anarchism, it also became a major rallying cry for the embryonic rave
generation in Englandindeed, for any movement looking to reterritorialize
perceptions of time, space, and identity.
The TAZ takes o: Almost a poetic fancy
An indication of the TAZs sphere of infuence can be gleaned from a simple
literature review. Besides numerous academic essays and popular culture
articles, there is a startling array of book titles that make some use of the
concept to think through all manner of methodologies, ideas, and ideologies.
Tese diverse titles include:
M. T. Kato, From Kung Fu to Hip Hop: Globalization, Revolution, and
Popular Culture: I am partly inspired by Hakim Beys concept TAZ . . .
I am, however, using his concept in a much broader sense than he does
(which is focused on clandestine movements without confrontation with
the State)
::
(:oo,).
Michale Gardiner, Te Cultural Roots of British Devolution (:oo).
Chris Carlsson, ed., Critical Mass: Bicyclings Defant Celebration: I ride
[in Critical Mass] because I fnd the mass creates a temporary autonomous
zone . . . a place where bicycles do have the right of wayand not just on
paper
:,
(:oo:).
90 Simon Sellars
H-Dirksen L. Bauman, ed., Open Your Eyes: Deaf Studies Talking: In setting
aside ones own . . . national cultures [with the use of sign language], one
enters what has been characterized elsewhere in postmodernist writing
as a Temporary Autonomous Zone
:
(:oo8).
Charlie Hailey, Campsite: Architectures of Duration and Place: Hakim Bey
. . . describes [the] confation of camp and virtual space. His formulation
of the Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ) as ephemeral uprising builds
on the possibility that such camps rely on clandestine, sometimes virtual,
nomadic routes
:,
(:oo8).
Randy P. Conner, Blossom of Bone: Reclaiming the Connection Between
Homoeroticism and the Sacred (:,).
Barbara Bender, Stonehenge: Making Space: Hakim Bey defnes what he
calls Te Temporary Autonomous Zone: pirate economics, living high
of the surplus of social overproduction
:o
(:8).
Onyekachi Wambu, ed., Hurricane Hits England: An Anthology of Writing
about Black Britain (:ooo).
Jacqueline V. Brogan and Cordelia C. Candelaria, eds., Women Poets of
the Americas: Toward a Pan-American Gathering (:).
Charles H. Lippy, Faith in America: Changes, Challenges, New Directions:
I could not partake of Te Pirates of the Caribbean [at Floridas Disney-
world] without thinking of the notion of pirate utopias as historic zones
of freedom, anarchy, and temporary autonomy, as proposed by cultural
theorist Hakim Bey
:,
(:ooo).
Tony Mitchell, ed. Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop outside the USA (:oo:).
John L. Jackson, Jr., Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity: . . . for a
gloss on sincerity as political manifesto, see Hakim Bey, T.A.Z.
:8
(:oo,).
Devon W. Carbado, ed., Black Men on Race, Gender, and Sexuality: A
Critical Reader: Standing there in that temporary autonomous zone, I
experienced Washington, D.C., as a free person, for the frst time
:
(:).
Ward Churchill, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Refections on the
Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality: Te idea here
goes far beyond that expounded by Hakim Bey in his useful but overly-
celebrated TAZ, Te Temporary Autonomous Zone
,o
(:oo,).
Most of these titles pay lip service to the concept, but the review is useful
insofar as it demonstrates one important principle that Bey had outlined as
a precondition for the TAZ to take root:
Hakim Bey 91
Despite its synthesizing force for my own thinking, however, I dont intend the
TAZ to be taken as more than an essay (attempt), a suggestion, almost a poetic
fancy. Despite the occasional Ranterish enthusiasm of my language I am not
trying to construct political dogma. In fact I have deliberately refrained from
defning the TAZI circle around the subject, fring of exploratory beams.
In the end the TAZ is almost self-explanatory. If the phrase became current it
would be understood without diffculty . . . understood in action.
,:
As self-prophecy, this is remarkably prescient. Judging by the above examples,
the phrase did become current, able to be understood without diffculty,
but perhaps in a way that was not intended: redolent with loaded meaning
anarchy and freedombut without any meaningful signifcation. Te TAZ
as vague referent stoked the ire of detractors such as the anti-civilization
activist John Zerzan, who bemoaned Beys hip-sounding, three-word solution
. . . in capital letters.
,:
However, the sense Bey intended is better captured by
Colin Ward, who, despite initial skepticism, concluded:
Plenty of us must have been in situations when we refect that we all have certain
experiences that seem to us to be the way things would happen if we were living
in an anarchist society . . . [O]nce the phrase Temporary Autonomous Zones
lodges in your mind you begin to see it/them everywhere: feeting pockets of
anarchy that occur in daily life. In this sense it describes a perhaps more useful
concept than that of an anarchist society, since the most libertarian societies
that we know of have their authoritarian elements, and vice versa.
,,
In this reading, the three-word solutions in the above examples are less
hip posturing and more a recognition of an intrinsic dynamic rooted within
and informed by fundamental spatial, temporal, and ontological experiences
of capitalist society.
Accordingly, commentators began to map a full-scale ecology of difer-
ence using the TAZ as foundation. As mentioned, rave culture in the United
Kingdom was particularly strident in applying the concept to its rhetoric of
liberation of sound, space, and consciousness. At the most basic level, this was
a perfect ft: the well-documented history of the nascent rave scene (from the
late :8os to the early :os) is told through a series of narratives detailing
running battles involving party organizers and partygoers versus the police
and the state, with illegal parties consistently broken up and moved on only
92 Simon Sellars
to regenerate and re-form elsewhere. According to James Ingham, Beys
characterisation is a pretty exact description of the political situation of the
illegal party scene.
,
Ingham used the concept to articulate his own concept
of cultural geography: the sense of suspended memories and feeling of
autonomy he perceived as being instilled in participants at warehouse parties
in Blackburn during :8:o. He saw in the TAZ the ideal framework for
what he describes as a sensory experience of the [illegal] space . . . an outcome
of both repetitive music and altered perceptions . . . ofen characterised as
a suspended moment, a foating feeling.
,,
For Ingham, this perception of
time and space is (relatively) feeting, temporary, and ultimately, profoundly
liberating:
[Te music relies on an] highly complex technological-physical interface: the
mix, the DJ, the drugs, the body and the crowd, without which there would
have been no TAZ in Blackburn . . . Te musical interface creates a narrative for
both the individual and the social gathering, an ever-changing narrative that is
charged from the emotional tension caused by anticipation and experience
playing of each other. It was this narrative that drew people to the warehouse
parties and generated the value of a TAZ in their participants.
,o
Indeed, the concept came to be a default setting for music writers attempting
to articulate what was so signifcant about this moment in time. Documenting
the free party scene in the early :os, Simon Reynolds enthuses:
Te . . . movement constitute[s] an uncanny fulflment of the prophecies of
Hakim Bey. In his visionary prose poems . . . the anarcho-mystic writer called
for the rebirth of a new festal culture based around spiritual hedonism
and tribalism . . . Te illegal free rave, with its lack of entrance fee or security,
is a perfect real-world example of Beys temporary autonomous zone, aka
TAZ . . . [Beys] cracks and vacancies sounds like the abandoned air bases
and derelict government buildings taken over by traveller sound systems for
a few days or weeks.
,,
But it wasnt only in the spaces of spiritual hedonism that the concept
gained traction. It of course became a viable blueprint within anarchist
circles, even though, as Reynolds implies with the term prose poems, the
Hakim Bey 93
TAZ as manifesto is very much a literary application: social criticism, to
be sure, but an exercise in imaginative, creative writing nonetheless (recall
Wilsons own words: almost a poetic fancy.) According to Jef Shantz, the
TAZ injected much new energy into anarchism, especially among younger
adherents, who took Beys call for poetic terrorism as inspiration for
the waves of @-zones (anarchist community centres) which emerged in
inner-city neighbourhoods across North America in the :os. In addition,
the debates it inspired in the pages of Anarchy magazine and various do-
it-yourself publications within the anarchist milieu were among the most
lively in decades.
,8
Shantz himself devotes considerable space to the TAZ,
which he considers to be the most extensive and exhilarating theoretical
expressions of explicitly anarchist future-presents.
,
But not everyone came
to the party: Others (most notably Murray Bookchin) condemned Bey for
supposedly ofering up apolitical post-modern bohemianism in the guise of
anarchism,
o
a stigma of supposed inauthenticity that Bey would continue
to wear over the years.
First backlash: Word-salad posturings
John Armitage argues that the TAZ concept is extremely problematic in
that it fails to consider the importance of class struggle and misrepresents
libertarian philosophy as well as the politics of everyday life.
:
For Armit-
age, Beys attitude toward cultural politics is intellectually conservative, a
political obscurantism that inverts real-world events to ft an all-purpose
theoretical framework. He quotes, and agrees with, Richard Barbrook, who
takes Bey to task for:
unashamed support for reactionary political positions. For instance, Bey claims
that the seizure of the Croatian city of Fiume by DAnnunzios supporters in
:: was a forerunner of contemporary Temporary Autonomous Zones . . .
Yet, the Fiume incident not only pioneered the style and ideology of Italian
fascism, but also led directly to the imposition of totalitarianism on Italy.
:
But this is a somewhat deceitful citation, as it neglects to mention Beys own
admission:
94 Simon Sellars
DAnnunzio, like many Italian anarchists, later veered toward fascismin
fact, Mussolini (the ex-Syndicalist) himself seduced the poet along that route.
By the time DAnnunzio realized his error it was too late: he was too old and
sick. But Il Duce had him killed anywaypushed of a balconyand turned
him into a martyr.
,
Yet by focusing on DAnnunzios later fate, Armitage and Barbrook ironi-
cally prove Beys central thesis: that revolution will always be annexed by
the super-absorbent powers of the state. For Bey, we must therefore return
to those moments when there is suspension between the old world and the
new, a suspension of old beliefs and ideologies, of political consciousness,
realizing and reinhabiting an indeterminate zone where rigid attitudes toward
social organization are challenged and, in many cases, overturned, however
feetingly. Honoring the spirit of suspension, then, means foregoing the
ideal of permanent revolution in favor of ongoing temporary revolution that
continues to replicate, indefnitely, the rolling suspensive zones suggested
by the Fiume incident. Whatever ones own views regarding the validity of
this tactic, taking Bey to task for adhering to the logic of the framework he
himself has set in train seems misguided. In any case, Bey fnds an echo (if
not in the idea of suspension, then certainly in the tactic of reappraisal of
historical circumstance) in the philosophy of Slavoj iek, who returns to
the roots of Stalinism as a tool to unwork the current deadlock between
competing Marxist ideologies: Even if we conclude that the Stalinist terror
was the necessary outcome of the Socialist project, we are still dealing with the
tragic dimension of an emancipatory project going awry, of an undertaking
which fatally misperceived the consequences of its own intervention . . .

Te validity of ieks views on the matter of Stalinism has been a topic of
some debate. Yet what is certain is the force within his position that urges
the need to look to historical hinges where future outcomes take severe
turns, but inside of which, paradoxically, redemptive potential lies. Tis same
forceful argument underpins the TAZ and demands that it be assessed and
debated on similar terms.
Additionally, what if it is indeed the case that, as Shantz writes, Despite
the novel twists Bey applies, and the controversy his ideas engendered in
some anarchist circles, TAZ, or something very much like them, have long
been a part of anarchist culture and politics (emphasis added). Shantz cites
Hakim Bey 95
the examples of the Wobbly union halls in the ::os and ::os, Spains
revolutionary community centres in the :,os, and the numerous squatted
cultural centres of Europe from the :oos to the present. He concludes:
Wilson/Beys inspiration is drawn from the many heterotopias and intentional
communities of historypirate utopias, the Munich Soviet of ::, Paris
:o8, autonomist uprisings in Italy during the :,os.
,
Tus, Armitage and
Barbrook, by choosing to highlight DAnnunzios later fate, and by ignoring
the many examples of temporary autonomous zones that do not compromise
their beliefs (as opposed to being crushed by the ruling powers), are as guilty
of selective reporting as Wilson is in their accusation. Finally, Armitages
critique is based mainly around the idea that Bey has in some fundamental
way failed to address the dynamics of Internet activism as it was evolving
at the time: How useful are ontological anarchy and the TAZ as political
tools of cybercultural analysis and tactics?
o
But as mentioned, the TAZ
was only ever associated with cyberculture by default, something Bey railed
against in the :oo, preface: What a joke. Time magazine identifed me as a
cyber-guru and explained that the TAZ exists in cyberspace.
,
If the TAZ
became a hip-sounding, three-letter solution as a result of this mass-cult
indoctrination, then that is less to do with the author and more to do with
a process, by which, as Geert Lovink argues:
Certain aspects of the late eighties Californian mindset had to be cultivated
and taken out of their political and cultural context. And this is what happened
to Hakim Beys notion of TAZ . . . We could therefore easily state that TAZ was
been boiled down to a late eighties concept for Internet plus rave parties. Te
restless souls however can easily jump over this tragic reading of the history
of ideas, and open other chapters full of yet unknown, unlikely futures.
8
Tis process of boiling down is one crucial reason why the TAZ attracted
such heat. But it is not the only reason. At this juncture, it is worth returning
to Wilson/Beys statement: I am not trying to construct political dogma.
Yet despite that pronouncement, Bey was highly visible in the real world,
debating anarchist principles on radio, in person, and on the Internet, chal-
lenging and provoking long-standing views. In this light, negative reactions
to the TAZ seem plausible: the author seems to step outside of the text with
a fesh-and-blood presence advocating the concept as a serious political
96 Simon Sellars
doctrine, and therefore a doctrine that can be opposed. But how seriously
are we supposed to take a writer ofering up this particular biography:
Hakim Bey lives in a seedy Chinese hotel where the proprietor nods out over
newspaper & scratchy broadcasts of Peking Opera. Te ceiling fan turns like a
sluggish dervishsweat falls on the pagethe poets kafan is rusty, his ovals
spill ash on the rughis monologues seem disjointed & slightly sinisteroutside
shuttered windows the barrio fades into palmtrees, the naive blue ocean, the
philosophy of tropicalismo.

Asking that question is not to imply that the ideas within the TAZ are
not serious or political; rather it is to assert that Beys satirical biography
is more Burroughs than Bakunin. Burroughss work undoubtedly contains
deep insight into the nature and function of capitalist society, and could
even serve to inspire activism under some circumstances,
,o
but to attack
Hakim Bey for failing to provide a watertight treatise on class struggle free
of political obscurantism, as Armitage does, seems as absurd as criticizing
Burroughss most infamous character, Dr. Benway, for neglecting to follow
ethical medical procedure. Moreover, the high style of Beys writing seems
to confrm that Hakim Bey is not merely a pseudonym, but as much a
character as the creation of any novelist. (Te oratory seems to say, Follow
me; do as I do, at least if the ambiguities in the text are glossed.)
But if the character of Bey was satire, it was also a highly successful
provocation. Although there is no denying the complexities of, and dif-
ferences between, contemporary anarchists, what is certain is that when
dogma-anarchists attacked Bey, they held up a mirror to themselves, refecting
brightly the infexibility of their own position. Tis is illustrated by Zerzan,
who was moved to write, Ive become increasingly annoyed by [Beys]
word-salad posturings.
,:
For Zerzan, Beys Primitives & Extropians essay is
a pathetic exercise that blatantly retreads the patented TAZ formulathat
is, a stylistic mantra about the glories of inconsistency and hip-sounding,
three-word solutions in capital letters.
,:
He rages against Beys inconsistent,
messy, open, impure, non-exclusive text, without considering the fact that
Bey might be a fctional narrative voice who, namedropping Sterling, Gibson,
and Philip K. Dick, even admits that he begin[s] to tilt a little toward my
old SciFi enthusiasms.
,,
From where does Zerzans anger spring? In an essay
Hakim Bey 97
entitled Te Case Against Art, he writes: Art is always about something
hidden. But does it help us connect with that hidden something? I think it
moves us away from it.
,
For Zerzan, art is a profound corruption of the
natural world of the senses, a symbolic activity akin to shamanism that
results in alienation and stratifcation, outsourcing memory and perception,
and mediating all mental functions so that we are confronted with nothing
less than the Fall of man:
Te world must be mediated by art (and human communication by language,
and being by time) due to division of labor, as seen in the nature of ritual. Te
real object, its particularity, does not appear in ritual; instead, an abstract one
is used, so that the terms of ceremonial expression are open to substitution.
Te conventions needed in division of labor, with its standardization and loss
of the unique, are those of ritual, of symbolization . . .
Te agent, again, is the shaman-artist, enroute to priesthood, leader by
reason of mastering his own immediate desires via the symbol. All that is
spontaneous, organic and instinctive is to be neutered by art and myth.
,,
It is no surprise that Zerzan would take umbrage with a shamanic
character who masters his desires via the symbolnamely, Beys program
of poetic terrorism. What is surprising is that many aims within Zerzans
own philosophy are actually mirrored within the TAZ. Most obviously,
Zerzan also masters the symbolhe cannot fail to do so, enabling human
communication by language from within the technology of writing. Tis
is an obvious contradiction that his philosophy can never resolve,
,o
thus
it has no recourse but to appeal to the mysticism of primitive telepathy as
an ideal that can sidestep this impasse, seemingly the type of mysticism
he would decry in Bey.
,,
Zerzan also recognizes that the spectacle is an
efective framework for understanding the nature of a society in which the
representation of representation means that daily life is nothing less than
an aestheticized experience:
Daily life has become aestheticized by a saturation of images and music, largely
through the electronic media, the representation of representation . . . [T]he
distance between artist and spectator has diminished, a narrowing that only
highlights the absolute distance between aesthetic experience and what is real.
98 Simon Sellars
Tis perfectly duplicates the spectacle at large: separate and manipulating,
perpetual aesthetic experience and a demonstration of political power.
,8
Terefore, he requires a sensual life in nature unmediated and unbounded
by representation. Tis is a striking corollary to Beys assertion that the
TAZ desires above all to avoid mediation, to experience its existence as
immediate.
,
Tese supposed polar positions become blurred further
when Zerzan suggests that the things that sustain a city are still part of
the problem. Maybe in its place well see fuid sites of festival, reunion,
play
oo
(emphasis added). Tis, too, seems indistinguishable from Beys
identifcation of Te TAZ as festival . . . Because the State is concerned
primarily with Simulation rather than substance, the TAZ can occupy these
areas clandestinely and carry on its festal purposes for quite a while in relative
peace.
o:
Te question therefore remains: is Zerzan responding to Bey, or is
Bey anticipating Zerzan? With his princely Turkish title, Hakim Bey can
now be confrmed as a deliberate intervention designed to mock, fush out,
and highlight the obstinacy of much revolutionary debate, underlining the
disunity that causes various factions to retreat into fefdom, never uniting
toward a common goal but forever condemned to infghting. Tis outcome is
further proven by social ecologist Murray Bookchin, who, in his book Social
Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm, tilts at various
versions of anarchism that do not tally with his ideal conception of a social
anarchism that seeks freedom through structure and mutual responsibility,
not through a vaporous, nomadic ego that eschews the preconditions for a
social life.
o:
Here, Bey endures the most sustained and scathing attack to
date on the TAZ (derided as lifestyle anarchism), while the hapless Zerzan,
despite his disavowal of Beys work, himself falls squarely within Bookchins
sights, dismissed as sanctimonious, selfshly using anarchism as his own
primitivistic demimonde.
o,
It is not Beys message, then, but Bookchins
that loudly proclaims: Follow me; do as I do.
Bookchin repeatedly uses Wilsons pseudonym as a title, as in Te Bey
. . . minces no words about his disdain for social revolution . . . Having
eliminated the classical revolutionary aim of transforming society, the Bey
patronizingly mocks those who once risked all for it.
o
Taking umbrage at
a self-satirizing pseudonym indicates the direction his attack would take.
As in Zerzan, there would be no time for, indeed no room for, literature,
Hakim Bey 99
artistic creativity, or abstract thought in this version of the anarchist utopia.
Te arts in Bookchins reading, as in Zerzans (although the twain never did
meet), are something to be despised, mistrusted, a gross distortion of the real
world of politics and direct action. Tis is also indicated by the straight literal
interpretation Bookchin applies to the text. When Bey asks, Why bother to
confront a power which has lost all meaning and become sheer Simulation,
o,

Bookchin retorts: Power in quotation marks? A mere Simulation? If what
is happening in Bosnia with frepower is a mere simulation, we are living
in a very safe and comfortable world indeed!
oo
Te argument is akin to the uproar that followed Jean Baudrillards
announcement that the Gulf War did not take place, with certain com-
mentators accusing Baudrillard of disregarding the lives of those killed in
the war, while themselves steadfastly ignoring (or simply failing to identify)
Baudrillards main thesis.
o,
Te self-defeating nature of such an attack is
usefully summarized by Ward, who, in his short piece on the TAZ, states:
Bookchin and I have opposite ways of coping with people whose ideas have
some kind of connection with our own but with whom we disagree. His is
to pulverise them with criticism so that they wont emerge again . . . As a
propagandist I usually fnd it more useful to claim as comrades the people
whose ideas are something like mine, and to stress the common ground,
rather than to wither them up in a deluge of scorn.
o8
Of course, Bookchin
in his later life broke with anarchism, no longer considering himself part
of the movement, but no matter. Te fght did have some value, as even
Bey acknowledges: I should mention that the book has been attacked as
dangerous and unsavorye.g., by Murray Bookchinand this probably
helped to boost sales somewhat.
o
Second backlash: Opportunism, not good will
Hakim Bey remains a deeply divisive fgure, no less controversial now than
he was then. Much of this recent resentment, highly visible online, arises
from accusations leveled against Wilsons private life, especially in Robert P.
Helmss widely circulated series of articles. Helms asserts that Wilsons earliest
writings appeared in publications released by .mvi. and other man-boy
love organizations (including, he claims, an early version of the TAZ). For
100 Simon Sellars
Helms, the pedophile writings of Hakim Bey indicate a general deceit in his
philosophy, and are evidence that his concept of the Temporary Autonomous
Zone is inspired by opportunism, not by good will. He presents arguments
for human freedom while actually wishing to create situations where he is
free to put his deranged sexuality into practice.
,o
Tis, in turn, has inspired
a new backlash against the TAZ, in which it is claimed that Wilsons version
of anarchism serves to justify pedophilia. Much of the opprobrium directed
toward him stems from a perception of pedophilia as solely concerned with
the grooming of prepubescent children for sexual purposes, and even rape
(also from a muddling of the distinction between pederasty and pedophilia).
,:

In this respect, it is apposite to draw upon the research of Steven Angelides,
who has written at length about the moral panics surrounding contemporary
representations of pedophilia:
It scarcely mattered that that many gay and paedophile support groups . . . had
been articulating clear distinctions between paedophilia, incest, homosexuality
and child sex abuse [and] that research revealed a much smaller proportion
of homosexual men engaged in sex with prepubescent children than did
heterosexual men . . . [A]ny space for subtle distinctions between children and
adolescents and between the concepts of paedophilia and child sexual abuse
was almost completely eroded.
,:
It is clearly farfetched to suggest that Wilson/Bey is advocating sex with
prepubescent children, as there is nothing in the texts to suggest this. Regard-
ing pederasty, and regardless of ones own views on the moral legitimacy
of such sexual desire, it should also be recognized that Bey is not the frst
high-profle writer to admit to a sexual attraction toward adolescent boys.
Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg made no secret of it, yet by and large their
readers do not seem to have trouble separating this from their consumption
of the work. Instead, the question of sexuality within Beys work should be
analyzed within the framework of the academic writing Wilson has published
under his real name, such as his non-TAZ overview of early pirate utopias:
A Foucaldian history of sexualities would indicate that such phenomena as
pederasty or androphile homosexuality are behaviours rather than categories.
Hakim Bey 101
Seen as categories, such phenomena can only be called social constructs rather
than natural states of being. Te imputation of normalcy or the privileging
of one sexual behaviour over another is truly a double-edged sword for any
homosexual theory, since these are precisely the terms used by heterosexual
theory to discredit and condemn all same-sex love. In any case, the word
homosexual belongs to the late :th century, and the concepts of androphilia
and pedophilia are even later refnements. Te :,th century knew no such
words, nor did it recognize any categories which might have been expressed
in such words.
,,
As with Angelides, who applies a similarly Foucaldian perspective to
the history of sexual categorization,
,
the outcome seems clear enough: to
stimulate discussion surrounding the terms and defnitions in place around
pedophilia, and the sexual agency of adolescents, even if in Wilsons case
this means deploying a fctitious alter ego able to express and reinternalize
a controversial viewpoint that his own objective academic discourse could
never do. Recall the notion of the Bey character as provocation. In T.A.Z.,
he lists the slogans of the fctitious Association for Ontological Anarchy,
some of which gesture toward the illicit sexual desire under question, such
as Young Children Have Beautiful Feet.
,,
Others, he writes, are sincere
slogans of the A.O.A.[and] others are meant to rouse public apprehension
& misgivingsbut were not sure which is which.
,o
It is that last assertion
that really summarizes the objections to the TAZ, and indeed its value. Quite
simply, detractors of Bey and Wilson were not sure which is which. Tus,
the reactions to Wilsons supposed sexual attitudes seem more to do with
institutionalized homophobia brought to a head by Beys satirical intervention
than they are to do with reasoned objections to a taboo subject that, histori-
cally, by many accounts, has not always been so. Tis intervention raises an
important implication, one that a purely academic discourse could not to
the same degree: if the TAZ, and any kind of alternative politics, can serve
to reassess questions of race, disability, nationhood, and gender, why can it
not be used to reassess sexuality? Inevitably, the reactions of Helms and his
supporters do not bode well for a movement seeking to overturn government
and society on the grounds of historical irrelevance.
102 Simon Sellars
Repopulating the TAZ: Without passing around a poisoned chalice
Today, Wilson/Bey looks back on the TAZ with a mix of fondness and distance.
In the :oo, preface, he writes, T.A.Z. feels to me very much a book of the
8os, a strangely romantic and more erotic era than the os or the nameless
decade we now inhabit.
,,
Yet he qualifes this with an acknowledgment that
today more than ever, when national boundaries appear more porous than
ever, when late capitalism has triumphed and society is the spectacle,
,8
the
TAZ seems more relevant than ever . . . it sometimes appears that the TAZ
is the last and only means of creating an Outside or true space of resistance
to the totality.
,
Indeed, a case could be made that the TAZ, by virtue of
the number of discourses that make use of it (as cited earlier, queer theory,
theories of race, notions of deamood, among others), has succeeded in reaching
more people than social anarchism, anarcho-primitivism, or plain vanilla
anarchism. In so doing, it has become a lightning conductor for an ongoing
debate regarding the meeting point of philosophy and politics that shows no
sign of slowing or resolving. Why is it such a conductive work?
Te answers do not lie within dated cybercultural tropes, self-defeatist
anarchist infghting, or emotive sexual politics, but within a rethinking of
the TAZ as an ongoing and infuential node in the ever-evolving strand of
alternative politics. With a similar approach, Patricia Pisters reconsiders
arguments against political readings of Deleuze and Guattaris work, and her
views are worth repeating, as the arguments she challengestowards the
relationship between politics, cultural theory and philosophyare applicable
to Wilsons own writing, which is, of course, inherently Deleuzoguattarian
in its operating principles. As Pisters notes: According to Richard Rorty, the
academic lef in general has become powerless because it does not engage
in real politics . . . [A] major objection . . . against the academic lef is the
level of abstraction of many academic discourses . . . afer reading . . . you
know everything except what to do.
8o
However, she insists that the real
political value of Deleuzoguattarian philosophy is the attention it pays to the
interplay between conscious and unconscious political activities, of which
art and artistic expression form a part, all the more powerful in its ability to
shape reality, or at least an understanding of reality, in ways that are outside
of societal norms:
Hakim Bey 103
With the many concepts that Deleuze and Guattari have invented, it has become
clear that politics in contemporary society really takes place at the microlevel
of beliefs and desires. It is this invisible level that is most important in a culture
that increasingly depends on the visible, to the point where capital becomes
cinema . . . All theory and philosophy can do is to give tools to sharpen our
perceptions and sensibilities for grasping the complexities of the various
political lines that constitute the individual and the social. With this modest
mission it might be possible to see where philosophy and politics can meet
again, without the risk of passing round a poisoned chalice.
8:
Indeed, with this modest mission in mind, it is time to return to the TAZ,
to the text itself, regardless of the authors personal history, and once again to
unpack the insights it holds. Wilson/Beys concept is not an aberration but a
crucial element enmeshed within a continuum of deeply held philosophical,
political, biopolitical, physiological, sexual, and even metaphysical debates.
It is no less relevant today, as Benjamin Noys highlights:
If, according to Sun Ra, space is the place, then what type of space is the
place we want to be? From Hakim Beys mystical-Stirnerite Temporary
Autonomous Zone, to Alain Badious post-Maoist invocation of independent
spaces subtracted from the State, from the ofensive opacity zones of the
neo-Agambenian anarchist group Tiqqun, to Masteneh Shah-Shujas libertarian
communist zones of proletarian development, the answer appears to be the
zone, or its equivalent, as the space of liberation.
8:
Without further mentioning Bey, Noys seems to confrm the inherent
characteristics of the TAZ when he suggests that we need to rethink the
zone of liberation in a way that refuses to leave radical politics with only
consolatory and symmetrical fantasies of inexplicable and yet somehow total
revolution.
8,
Tat revolutionary fantasy is also something that Bey, as we
have seen, took great pains to repudiate.
Taking this cue as a sign of ongoing relevance, then, let us now repopulate
the TAZ, reexamining it in the spirit with which it was created: as a satiric
mirror to our own foibles. Te trick in so doing, as Bey knows all too well,
is never to finch.
104 Simon Sellars
NOTES
:. Franois Cusset, French Teory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the
Intellectual Life of the United States, trans. Jef Fort (:oo,; trans., Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, :oo8), :,o.
:. As Darren Tofs writes about a collection of cyberculture essays edited by Mark Dery:
Mondo :ooo did a lot to generate the cyberphilia (take anything and bung cyber in front
of it) gripping anyone who has anything to do with computers, modems and William
Gibson novels . . . [In response] Dery has assembled writers with considerable experience
of cyberculture as lived experience beyond, in [Vivian] Sobchacks terms, bumper-sticker
libertarianism. Darren Tofs, Flame Jamming, ::C (:,): :.
,. John Perry Barlow, A Declaration for the Independence of Cyberspace, :o, http://
homes.e.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html (accessed May :o:o).
. Douglas Rushkof, Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace (:; repr., Manchester,
UK: Clinamen Press, :oo:), xxii.
,. For Semiotext(e) SF, Wilson had written a poem, Te Antarctic Autonomous Zone, that
covered some of the themes of the TAZ within a slightly fantastical setting.
o. Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle (:o,; repr., Detroit: Black & Red, :8,), paragraph
:.
,. Hakim Bey, T.A.Z.: Te Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism
(::; repr., Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, :oo,), .
8. Jack Boulware, Mondo :,, San Francisco News, :: October :,, http://www.sfweekly.
com/:,-:o-::/news/mondo-:, (accessed May :o:o).
. Bey, T.A.Z., ,.
:o. Bey, T.A.Z., o,.
::. Bey, T.A.Z., :oo.
::. Bey, T.A.Z., ::o.
:,. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude (London: Penguin, :ooo), 8o8:.
:. Bey, T.A.Z., :oo.
:,. Bey, T.A.Z., :o8, :,:.
:o. Bey, T.A.Z., xi. Wilson also made his sympathies clear at the time of Robert Anton Wilsons
death: Bob was a Futurist and I am a Luddite, but afer a long series of letters back and
forth we agreed to disagree on the subject of technology, since neither of us wanted to
put ideology in the place of camaraderie . . . In later years . . . we lost touch because Bob
decided to colonize the Internet and I decided not to. Peter Lamborn Wilson, Liquor
and weed for him were bardic fuelPeter Lamborn Wilsons obituary for Robert Anton
Hakim Bey 105
Wilson, Arthur, , December :oo,, http://www.arthurmag.com/:oo,/::/o,/peter-lamborn-
wilsons-obituary-for-robert-anton-wilson (accessed May :o:o).
:,. Bey, T.A.Z., xi.
:8. Bey, T.A.Z., ::o.
:. Bey, T.A.Z., :o.
:o. Bey, T.A.Z., :o,.
::. Bey, T.A.Z., :o.
::. M. T. Kato, From Kung Fu to Hip Hop: Globalization, Revolution, and Popular Culture
(Albany: SUNY Press, :oo,), :,,.
:,. Chris Carlsson, Critical Mass: Bicyclings Defant Celebration (Edinburgh, Oakland: AK
Press, :oo:), :o.
:. Paddy Ladd, Colonialism and Resistance: A Brief History of Deamood, in Open Your Eyes:
Deaf Studies Talking, ed. H-Dirksen L. Bauman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, :oo8), ,:.
:,. Charlie Hailey, Campsite: Architectures of Duration and Place (Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, :oo8), :o.
:o. Barbara Bender, Stonehenge: Making Space (Oxford, New York: Berg, :8), :oo.
:,. Charles H. Lippy, Faith in America: Changes, Challenges, New Directions (Westport, CT:
Praeger Publishers, :ooo), :o.
:8. John L. Jackson Jr., Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity (Chicago, London: University
of Chicago Press, :oo,), :,8.
:. Anthony Paul Farley, Sadomasochism and the Colorline: Refections on the Million
Man March, in Black Men on Race, Gender, and Sexuality: A Critical Reader, ed. Devon
W. Carbado (New York, London: New York University Press, :), ,.
,o. Ward Churchill, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Refections on the Consequences of
U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality (Oakland, Edinburgh: AP Press, :oo,), :o.
,:. Bey, T.A.Z., ,8.
,:. John Zerzan, Hakim Bey, Postmodern Anarchist (:o) in Running on Empty: Te
Pathology of Civilization (Los Angeles: Feral House, :oo:), :o.
,,. Colin Ward, Temporary Autonomous Zones, Freedom, Spring :,, http://raforum.info/
spip.php?article:o,&lang=fr (accessed May :o:o).
,. James Ingham, Listening Back from Blackburn: Virtual Sound Worlds and the Creation
of Temporary Autonomy, in Living Trough Pop, ed. Andrew Blake (London: Routledge,
:), :::.
,,. Ingham, Listening Back from Blackburn, ::,.
,o. Ingham, Listening Back from Blackburn, ::o.
106 Simon Sellars
,,. Simon Reynolds, Generation Ecstasy (New York: Routledge, :), :o,o.
,8. Jef Shantz, Constructive Anarchy: Contemporary Anarchism in Action (Free Press, :ooo),
:o,:oo, http://www.freewords.org/freepress/book/: (accessed May :o:o).
,. Shantz, Constructive Anarchy, :,,:.
o. Shantz, Constructive Anarchy, :oo.
:. John Armitage, Ontological Anarchy, the Temporary Autonomous Zone, and the Politics
of Cyberculture: A Critique of Hakim Bey, Angelaki: Journal of the Teoretical Humanities
, : (:): ::,.
:. Richard Barbrook, quoted in Armitage, Ontological Anarchy, :::o.
,. Bey, T.A.Z., ::,.
. Slavoj Zizek, No sex, please, were digital! in On Belief (London, New York: Routledge,
:oo:), ,.
,. Jef Shantz, Living Anarchy: Teory and Practice in Anarchist Movements (Bethesda, MD:
Academica Press, :oo8), ::,o.
o. Armitage, Ontological Anarchy, ::.
,. Bey, T.A.Z., xi.
8. Geert Lovink, Dark Fiber: Tracking Critical Internet Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
:oo,), :,8.
. Bey, T.A.Z., :,:.
,o. In :oo,, for example, online feedback was sought for a working list of authors, writers,
and artists whose work is being considered for inclusion in a proposed book entitled
North American Anarchist Tought Since :oo. Burroughs appeared on this list, as did Bey,
Zerzan, and Murray Bookchin; http://libcom.org/forums/north-america/north-american-
anarchist-thought-since-:oo (accessed May :o:o).
,:. Zerzan, Hakim Bey, Postmodern Anarchist, :.
,:. Zerzan, Hakim Bey, Postmodern Anarchist, :o.
,,. Hakim Bey, Primitives & Extropians, Anarchy : (:,), http://www.to.or.at/hakimbey/
primitiv.htm (accessed :, October :oo).
,. John Zerzan, Te Case Against Art. http://www.primitivism.com/case-art.htm (accessed
May :o:o).
,,. Zerzan, Te Case Against Art.
,o. As Zerzan admits, Of course . . . one is subjected to that very criticism . . . We are all part
of this: these contradictions are here, like it or not. I could go live in a cave, as some people
have suggested, but I am trying to be a part of the dialogue, trying to make some kind of
contribution here. So that is just the nature of the reality that we are in. Zerzan quoted
in Arthur Versluis, Interview with John Zerzan, Journal for the Study of Radicalism :, :
Hakim Bey 107
(:oo8): :,o.
,,. According to Zerzan: Tinking of a world without language entails an enormous specula-
tive leap. From where we are now it is extremely diffcult to posit or fathom a life-world
based on non-symbolic communication, though of course some of that exists even now.
Freud guessed that a sort of telepathy held sway before language; lovers need no words,
as the saying goes. Tese are hints in the direction of unmediated communication. Im
sure you can think of others! Zerzan quoted in Anonymous, InterviewJohn Zerzan,
http://www.primitivism.com/zerzan.htm (accessed May :o:o).
,8. Zerzan, Te Case Against Art.
,. Bey, T.A.Z., :o.
oo. Zerzan quoted in Lawrence Jarach, A Dialog on Primitivism: Lawrence Jarach interviews
John Zerzan, Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed : (:oo:), http://www.insurgentdesire.
org.uk/dialog.htm (accessed May :o:o).
o:. Bey, T.A.Z.
o:. Murray Bookchin, Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm
(Edinburgh, San Francisco: AK Press, :,), ,.
o,. Bookchin, Social Anarchism, o, oo.
o. Bookchin, Social Anarchism, :o.
o,. Bey, T.A.Z., ::,.
oo. Bookchin, Social Anarchism, :o.
o,. Namely, that the confict was more an event mediated by spectacle and technology, so
that nothing is as it seems, rather than a war in the traditional sense with clearly defned
winners, losers, and outcomes.
o8. Ward, Temporary Autonomous Zones.
o. Bey, T.A.Z., ix.
,o. Robert P. Helms, Paedophilia and American AnarchismTe Other Side of Hakim Bey,
http://libcom.org/library/paedophilia-and-american-anarchism-the-other-side-of-hakim-bey
(accessed May :o:o).
,:. On Zine Wiki: Te Independent Media Wikipedia, for example, a disclaimer begins the
entry for Hakim Bey: Tis article is included for purposes of encyclopedic completeness
only. Zine Wiki does not endorse or condone the views of Hakim Bey. Te entry later
declares: He remains a controversial fgure within the anarchist mileau [sic], due to his
advocacy of paedophilia, and his position as propagandist for child rape, sexual abuse
and exploitation. http://zinewiki.com/Hakim_Bey (accessed May :o:o). Although such
sites are not renowned for independently verifed data, or indeed objectivity, it should
be noted that the Internets echo chamber efect means that such allegations have been
108 Simon Sellars
repeated ofen enough online for this to become an issue surrounding the work.
,:. Steven Angelides, Te Emergence of the Paedophile in the Late Twentieth Century,
Australian Historical Studies ::o (:oo,): ,.
,,. Peter Lamborn Wilson, Pirate Utopias: Moorish Corsairs & European Renegadoes (:,;
repr., Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, :oo,), :8,8o.
,. For example, Angelides writes: As a discourse, paedophilia, like that of modern
homosexuality, is a decidedly Western invention of the late nineteenth century. Yet
unlike homosexuality, paedophilia was not at this time the object of particular concern
. . . In stark contrast to the discourse of homosexuality . . . an individual practicing
intergenerational sex in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was infrequently
labeled a paedophile. Angelides, Te Emergence of the Paedophile, :,:.
,,. Bey, T.A.Z., :,.
,o. Bey, T.A.Z., :8.
,,. Bey, T.A.Z.
,8. As iek writes: One of the clearest lessons of the last few decades is that capitalism is
indestructible. Marx compared it to a vampire, and one of the salient points of comparison
now appears to be that vampires always rise up again afer being stabbed to death. Even
Maos attempt, in the Cultural Revolution, to wipe out the traces of capitalism, ended
up in its triumphant return. Slavoj iek, Resistance Is Surrender, London Review of
Books :, :: (:oo,): .
,. Bey, T.A.Z., xxi.
8o. Patricia Pisters, Introduction, in Micropolitics of Media Culture: Reading the Rhizomes
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