The temporary autonomous zone

 

17

D'Annunzio, like many Italian anarchists, later veered toward fascism--in fact, Mussolini 

(the ex-Syndicalist) himself seduced the poet along that route. By the time D'Annunzio 

realized his error it was too late: he was too old and sick. But Il Duce had him killed 

anyway--pushed off a balcony--and turned him into a "martyr." As for Fiume, though it 

lacked the seriousness of the free Ukraine or Barcelona, it can probably teach us more 

about certain aspects of our quest. It was in some ways the last of the pirate utopias (or 

the only modern example)--in other ways, perhaps, it was very nearly the first modern 

TAZ. 

 

I believe that if we compare Fiume with the Paris uprising of 1968 (also the Italian urban 

insurrections of the early seventies), as well as with the American countercultural 

communes and their anarcho-New Left influences, we should notice certain similarities, 

such as:--the importance of aesthetic theory (cf. the Situationists)--also, what might be 

called "pirate economics," living high off the surplus of social overproduction--even the 

popularity of colorful military uniforms--and the concept of music as revolutionary social 

change--and finally their shared air of impermanence, of being ready to move on, shape-

shift, re- locate to other universities, mountaintops, ghettos, factories, safe houses, 

abandoned farms--or even other planes of reality. No one was trying to impose yet 

another Revolutionary Dictatorship, either at Fiume, Paris, or Millbrook. Either the world 

would change, or it wouldn't. Meanwhile keep on the move and live intensely. 

 

The Munich Soviet (or "Council Republic") of 1919 exhibited certain features of the TAZ, 

even though--like most revolutions--its stated goals were not exactly "temporary." Gustav 

Landauer's participation as Minister of Culture along with Silvio Gesell as Minister of 

Economics and other anti- authoritarian and extreme libertarian socialists such as the 

poet/playwrights Erich Mªhsam and Ernst Toller, and Ret Marut (the novelist B. Traven), 

gave the Soviet a distinct anarchist flavor. Landauer, who had spent years of isolation 

working on his grand synthesis of Nietzsche, Proudhon, Kropotkin, Stirner, Meister 

Eckhardt, the radical mystics, and the Romantic volk-philosophers, knew from the start 

that the Soviet was doomed; he hoped only that it would last long enough to be 

understood. Kurt Eisner, the martyred founder of the Soviet, believed quite literally that 

poets and poetry should form the basis of the revolution. Plans were launched to devote 

a large piece of Bavaria to an experiment in anarcho-socialist economy and community. 

Landauer drew up proposals for a Free School system and a People's Theater. Support 

for the Soviet was more or less confined to the poorest working-class and bohemian 

neighborhoods of Munich, and to groups like the Wandervogel (the neo-Romantic youth 

movement), Jewish radicals (like Buber), the Expressionists, and other marginals. Thus 

historians dismiss it as the "Coffeehouse Republic" and belittle its significance in 

comparison with Marxist and Spartacist participation in Germany's post-War 

revolution(s). Outmaneuvered by the Communists and eventually murdered by soldiers 

under the influence of the occult/fascist Thule Society, Landauer deserves to be 

remembered as a saint. Yet even anarchists nowadays tend to misunderstand and 

condemn him for "selling out" to a "socialist government." If the Soviet had lasted even a 

year, we would weep at the mention of its beauty--but before even the first flowers of that 

Spring had wilted, the geist and the spirit of poetry were crushed, and we have forgotten. 

Imagine what it must have been to breathe the air of a city in which the Minister of 

Culture has just predicted that schoolchildren will soon be memorizing the works of Walt 

Whitman. Ah for a time machine...  

The Will to Power as Disappearance 

FOUCAULT, BAUDRILLARD, ET AL. have discussed various modes of "disappearance" 

at great length. Here I wish to suggest that the TAZ is in some sense a tactic of 

disappearance. When the Theorists speak of the disappearance of the Social they mean 

 

18 

in part the impossibility of the "Social Revolution," and in part the impossibility of "the 

State"-- the abyss of power, the end of the discourse of power. The anarchist question in 

this case should then be: Why bother to confront a "power" which has lost all meaning 

and become sheer Simulation? Such confrontations will only result in dangerous and 

ugly spasms of violence by the emptyheaded shit-for-brains who've inherited the keys to 

all the armories and prisons. (Perhaps this is a crude american misunderstanding of 

sublime and subtle Franco-Germanic Theory. If so, fine; whoever said understanding 

was needed to make use of an idea?) 

 

As I read it, disappearance seems to be a very logical radical option for our time, not at 

all a disaster or death for the radical project. Unlike the morbid deathfreak nihilistic 

interpretation of Theory, mine intends to mine it for useful strategies in the always-

ongoing "revolution of everyday life": the struggle that cannot cease even with the last 

failure of political or social revolution because nothing except the end of the world can 

bring an end to everyday life, nor to our aspirations for the good things, for the 

Marvelous. And as Nietzsche said, if the world could come to an end, logically it would 

have done so; it has not, so it does not. And so, as one of the sufis said, no matter how 

many draughts of forbidden wine we drink, we will carry this raging thirst into eternity. 

 

Zerzan and Black have independently noted certain "elements of Refusal" (Zerzan's 

term) which perhaps can be seen as somehow symptomatic of a radical culture of 

disappearance, partly unconscious but partly conscious, which influences far more 

people than any leftist or anarchist idea. These gestures are made against institutions, 

and in that sense are "negative"--but each negative gesture also suggests a "positive" 

tactic to replace rather than merely refuse the despised institution. 

 

For example, the negative gesture against schooling is "voluntary illiteracy." Since I do 

not share the liberal worship of literacy for the sake of social ameliorization, I cannot 

quite share the gasps of dismay heard everywhere at this phenomenon: I sympathize 

with children who refuse books along with the garbage in the books. There are however 

positive alternatives which make use of the same energy of disappearance. Home-

schooling and craft-apprenticeship, like truancy, result in an absence from the prison of 

school. Hacking is another form of "education" with certain features of "invisibility." 

 

A mass-scale negative gesture against politics consists simply of not voting. "Apathy" 

(i.e. a healthy boredom with the weary Spectacle) keeps over half the nation from the 

polls; anarchism never accomplished as much! (Nor did anarchism have anything to do 

with the failure of the recent Census.) Again, there are positive parallels: "networking" as 

an alternative to politics is practiced at many levels of society, and non-hierarchic 

organization has attained popularity even outside the anarchist movement, simply 

because it works. (ACT UP and Earth First! are two examples. Alcoholics Anonymous, 

oddly enough, is another.) 

 

Refusal of Work can take the forms of absenteeism, on-job drunkenness, sabotage, and 

sheer inattention--but it can also give rise to new modes of rebellion: more self- 

employment, participation in the "black" economy and "lavoro nero," welfare scams and 

other criminal options, pot farming, etc.--all more or less "invisible" activities compared to 

traditional leftist confrontational tactics such as the general strike. 

 

Refusal of the Church? Well, the "negative gesture" here probably consists of...watching 

television. But the positive alternatives include all sorts of non-authoritarian forms of 

spirituality, from "unchurched" Christianity to neo- paganism. The "Free Religions" as I 

like to call them-- small, self-created, half-serious/half-fun cults influenced by such 

currents as Discordianism and anarcho-Taoism--are to be found all over marginal 

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