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Description: Inspiration for a generation of troublemakers and idealists. Both celebrated in the punk underground (where the original book has become a seminal text) and denounced in academic anarchist circles, the book has proved itself as both influential and relevant to multiple generations of dreamers, agitators, and activists. Hakim Bey's first book, originally published in 1985, refers in its title to "a mobile or transcient location free of economic and social interference by the State," and through a series of incendiary communiques, short essays, and poetic historical analysis insists on the production of greater autonomy in the present moment, rather than the acceptance of domination in exchange for the promise of some future utopia.
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Review Summary: a derivative, escapist 'anarchy of the ego' |
Date: 2005-04-06 |
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Details: This puerile, bombastic, and muddled pamphlet will be of little use to anyone seriously concerned with remaking society along egalitarian, anti-hierarchical lines.
In a series of feverish and haphazard essays, 'Bey' (Peter Lamborn Wilson) lays out a defeatist, hedonistic, amoral, mystical argument for anarchists to abandon the real work of organizing in favor of creating "Temporary Autonomous Zones". Bey studiously avoids defining the 'TAZ', but the concept boils down to discrete and ephemeral blossomings of freedom and play-- parties, pirate ships, frontier communities, insurrections, etc.
Murray Bookchin, in his essay "Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm" (available on the web) delivers the definitive downdressing of Bey for this facile and retrograde individualist doctrine, to which I have little to add.
I will say that the kernels of truth that the book contains, such as the observation that revolution must be rooted in joys and dreams as much as outrage and suffering, and that 'one cannot struggle for what one does not know', have been presented with superior flair and sophistication both before and after Bey (See e.g. the French Situationists, or more recently, Ken Knabb and the Crimethinc collective). |
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Review Summary: best of the bunch... but that ain't saying much |
Date: 2004-12-17 |
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Details: Hakim Bey is the best of the lifestyle oriented anarchist writers. His ideas are clear (or at least clearer than many others) and his writing style is attractive. Too bad his ideas are so silly.
I'm all for parties, and the creation of temporary zones of fulfilment (which is what this book is calling for) but they aren't going to feed the starving or clothe the poor. Anarchist need to be thinking deeper and more concretely than this if they're going to make any real change. |
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Review Summary: Read This! |
Date: 2004-10-27 |
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Details: If you think you want to live freely, read this. Take what you need from it and leave the rest (you might come back for that later). |
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Review Summary: Entertaining |
Date: 2004-07-16 |
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Details: It's been a while since I read this, but I've always remembered it with some fondness. The book is a collection of essays on different aspects living life outside of society's rules. I thought the book was so interesting since it was such a modern description of anarchy. Bey's description of autonomous zones throughout history also gives pause and can make one wonder why we do accept the "Rules" as they are dictated to us. There are many historical examples of those that don't, and they go on to great creativity or interesting lives. |
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out of 9 Reviews
