Temporary Autonomous Zone

From doktorsleepless

"Getting the TAZ started may involve tactics of violence and defense, but its greatest strength lies in its invisibility--the State cannot recognize it because History has no definition of it. As soon as the TAZ is named (represented, mediated), it must vanish, it will vanish, leaving behind it an empty husk, only to spring up again somewhere else, once again invisible because undefinable in terms of the Spectacle. The TAZ is thus a perfect tactic for an era in which the State is omnipresent and all-powerful and yet simultaneously riddled with cracks and vacancies."

-- Hakim Bey

The TAZ is a conceptual anarchic phenomenon that exists but momentarily and then dissolves before existing power structures can react to it. It is a place that temporarily throws off the yolk of the State and the Markets and allows its residents to exercise their own autonomy to the fullest. It is part revolution, part uprising, part experiment, part art, but not completely any of them.

T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism

This is the title of Hakim Bey's most famous work, in which he defines (or rather, describes, but avoids the actual defining) the TAZ in the final essay of the book. Bey bases the concept on his research into the pirate utopia, medieval Assassin culture, and Bruce Sterling's Islands in the Net, among other sources historical, philosophical, and fictional.

The text is available online.

Examples

An ideal TAZ may be impossible to achieve, but TAZ-like qualities can be found in many temporary gatherings, riots, and parties.

• Black Rock City, Nevada, a temporary city built and dismantled yearly in the Black Rock desert for the Burning Man festival. It has postal service, volunteer-run services like telecommunications, police, and emergency medical personnel, encourages a barter economy among residents, and hosts a wide range of artistic endeavors. Grinders would fit in there.

• Huge days-long concert festivals and teknivals like Bonnaroo and Coachella and Lollapalooza. Even though they're organized by the suits and policed by the Man, once you stuff 100,000 stoned and horny kids into a square mile for the weekend, you're gonna have a few outbreaks of Autonomy.

• Flash mobs and related phenomena.

• Cities immediately after a major natural disaster, before the populace and authorities recover from their shock.

• Magickal rituals, or a magickian's circle, where the rules we ascribe to reality are temporarily suspended.