The temporary autonomous zone

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Hakim Bey  

THE TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE

 

 

"...this time however I come as the victorious Dionysus, who will turn the world into a 

holiday...Not that I have much time..."

 

 

--Nietzsche (from his last "insane" letter to Cosima Wagner) 

 

Pirate Utopias 

THE SEA-ROVERS AND CORSAIRS of the 18th century created an "information 

network" that spanned the globe: primitive and devoted primarily to grim business, the 

net nevertheless functioned admirably. Scattered throughout the net were islands, 

remote hideouts where ships could be watered and provisioned, booty traded for luxuries 

and necessities. Some of these islands supported "intentional communities," whole mini-

societies living consciously outside the law and determined to keep it up, even if only for 

a short but merry life. 

 

Some years ago I looked through a lot of secondary material on piracy hoping to find a 

study of these enclaves--but it appeared as if no historian has yet found them worthy of 

analysis. (William Burroughs has mentioned the subject, as did the late British anarchist 

Larry Law--but no systematic research has been carried out.) I retreated to primary 

sources and constructed my own theory, some aspects of which will be discussed in this 

essay. I called the settlements "Pirate Utopias." 

 

Recently Bruce Sterling, one of the leading exponents of Cyberpunk science fiction, 

published 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. The information 

economy which supports this diversity is called the Net; the enclaves (and the book's 

title) are Islands in the Net. 

 

The medieval Assassins founded a "State" which consisted of a network of remote 

mountain valleys and castles, separated by thousands of miles, strategically invulnerable 

to invasion, connected by the information flow of secret agents, at war with all 

governments, and devoted only to knowledge. Modern technology, culminating in the spy 

satellite, makes this kind of autonomy a romantic dream. No more pirate islands! In the 

future the same technology-- freed from all political control--could make possible an 

entire world of autonomous zones. But for now the concept remains precisely science 

fiction--pure speculation. 

 

Are we who live in the present doomed never to experience autonomy, never to stand for 

one moment on a bit of land ruled only by freedom? Are we reduced either to nostalgia 

for the past or nostalgia for the future? Must we wait until the entire world is freed of 

political control before even one of us can claim to know freedom? Logic and emotion 

unite to condemn such a supposition. Reason demands that one cannot struggle for what 

one does not know; and the heart revolts at a universe so cruel as to visit such injustices 

on our generation alone of humankind. 

 

 

2 

To say that "I will not be free till all humans (or all sentient creatures) are free" is simply 

to cave in to a kind of nirvana-stupor, to abdicate our humanity, to define ourselves as 

losers. 

 

I believe that by extrapolating from past and future stories about "islands in the net" we 

may collect evidence to suggest that a certain kind of "free enclave" is not only possible 

in our time but also existent. All my research and speculation has crystallized around the 

concept of the TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE (hereafter abbreviated TAZ). 

Despite its synthesizing force for my own thinking, however, I don't 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 defining the TAZ--I circle around the 

subject, firing off exploratory beams. In the end the TAZ is almost self-explanatory. If the 

phrase became current it would be understood without difficulty...understood in action.  

Waiting for the Revolution 

HOW IS IT THAT "the world turned upside-down" always manages to Right itself? Why 

does reaction always follow revolution, like seasons in Hell? 

 

Uprising, or the Latin form insurrection, are words used by historians to label failed 

revolutions--movements which do not match the expected curve, the consensus-

approved trajectory: revolution, reaction, betrayal, the founding of a stronger and even 

more oppressive State--the turning of the wheel, the return of history again and again to 

its highest form: jackboot on the face of humanity forever. 

 

By failing to follow this curve, the up-rising suggests the possibility of a movement 

outside and beyond the Hegelian spiral of that "progress" which is secretly nothing more 

than a vicious circle. Surgo--rise up, surge. Insurgo--rise up, raise oneself up. A 

bootstrap operation. A goodbye to that wretched parody of the karmic round, historical 

revolutionary futility. The slogan "Revolution!" has mutated from tocsin to toxin, a malign 

pseudo-Gnostic fate-trap, a nightmare where no matter how we struggle we never 

escape that evil Aeon, that incubus the State, one State after another, every "heaven" 

ruled by yet one more evil angel. 

 

If History IS "Time," as it claims to be, then the uprising is a moment that springs up and 

out of Time, violates the "law" of History. If the State IS History, as it claims to be, then 

the insurrection is the forbidden moment, an unforgivable denial of the dialectic--

shimmying up the pole and out of the smokehole, a shaman's maneuver carried out at an 

"impossible angle" to the universe. History says the Revolution attains "permanence," or 

at least duration, while the uprising is "temporary." In this sense an uprising is like a 

"peak experience" as opposed to the standard of "ordinary" consciousness and 

experience. Like festivals, uprisings cannot happen every day--otherwise they would not 

be "nonordinary." But such moments of intensity give shape and meaning to the entirety 

of a life. The shaman returns--you can't stay up on the roof forever-- but things have 

changed, shifts and integrations have occurred--a difference is made. 

 

You will argue that this is a counsel of despair. What of the anarchist dream, the 

Stateless state, the Commune, the autonomous zone with duration, a free society, a free 

culture? Are we to abandon that hope in return for some existentialist acte gratuit? The 

point is not to change consciousness but to change the world. 

 

I accept this as a fair criticism. I'd make two rejoinders nevertheless; first, revolution has 

never yet resulted in achieving this dream. The vision comes to life in the moment of 

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