As a writer, I am distressed and depressed by the suspicion that “dissident media” has become a contradiction in terms — an impossibility. Not because of any triumph of censorship however, but the reverse. There is no real censorship in our society, as Chomsky points out. Suppression of dissent is instead paradoxically achieved by allowing media to absorb (or “co-opt”) all dissent as image.
Once processed as commodity, all rebellion is reduced to the image of rebellion, first as spectacle, and last as simulation. (See Debord, Baudrillard, etc.) The more powerful the dissent as art (or “discourse”) the more powerless it becomes as commodity. In a world of Global Capital, where all media functi... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) A few days after the event, the New York Times ran an interesting article on the advertising “industry” and its crisis. Not only zillions of dollars a day etc. etc., but a weird effect: suddenly it seems impossible to have advertising at all. It seems massively “inappropriate” to move product as per usual with shrieking & insinuating, mocking & sneering, prurience & peeping; with hate & envy masked as fashion, with greed thinly disguised as freedom of choice.
Death and tragedy occur every day, every minute, not only in the former Third World, even in New York, even in America. Why hasn’t advertising ever seemed shameful to anyone ever before? The media — which cannot utter a sound w... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) At least half the year belongs to Endarkenment. Enlightenment is only a special case of Endarkenment—and it has nights of its own.
During the day democracy waxes, indiscriminately illuminating all and sundry. But shadowless noon belongs to Pan. And night imposes a “radical aristocracy” in which things shine solely by their own luminescence, or not at all.
Obfuscatory, reactionary and superstitious, Endarkenment offers jobs for trolls and sylphs, witches and warlocks. Perhaps only superstition can re-enchant Nature. People who fear and desire nymphs and fauns will think twice before polluting streams or clear-cutting forests.
Electricity banished shadows—but shadows are “shades,” souls... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Hakim Bey, the Association for Ontological Anarchy
People who think that they know our politics, who know that we are individualists (or even worse, “neo-individualists”), will no doubt be shocked to discover us taking an interest in the IWW. They’ll be even more flabbergasted to hear that Mark Sullivan & I joined the NY Artists & Writers Job Branch of the IWW this January at the urging of Mel Most (who subsequently went & died on us!). Actually, we’re a bit shocked ourselves. “Never complain, never explain” ......; but perhaps this time we’ll relax the rule a bit — hence the apologia.
The Mackay Society, of which Mark & I are active members, is devoted t... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Ontological Anarchy In a Nutshell
Since absolutely nothing can be predicated with any real certainty as to the “true nature of things”, all projects (as Nietzsche says) can only be “founded on nothing.”
And yet there must be a project—if only because we ourselves resist being categorized as “nothing.”
Out of nothing we will make something: the Uprising, the revolt against everything which proclaims: “The Nature of Things is such-&-such.”
We disagree, we are unnatural, we are less than nothing in the eyes of the Law—Divine Law, Natural Law, or Social Law—take your pick.
Out of nothing we will imagine our values, and by this act of invention we shall live.
... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) In the mid-’90s I was invited to a big philosophy conference in Libya. I wrote a little paper on the influence of “Neo-Sufism” on Col. Qaddafi and his Green Book. I wondered if the Libyans would even allow me to read it. After all, Q came to power in 1969 by overthrowing a king who was also a Sufi master. Perhaps he had repudiated the influence of Sufism on his own life and thought?
Turned out the Libyans loved the paper and told me I was correct: in a sense the Libyan Revolution had been directed against corrupt Sufism on behalf of reformed Sufism. Unfortunately, Q himself never showed up at the conference to confirm or deny this, but I’m sure they were right.
Neo-Sufism arose in the 19th century in re... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) 1. One More River to Cross
In our experience (that is, not merely in intellectual speculation but in everyday-life) we have found that “the Ego” can be as much of a spook as “the Group” — or indeed, spooky as any abstraction which is allowed to control behavior, emotion, thought, or fate. Deeply as we’ve been influenced by Stirner / Nietzsche Tucker/ Mackay, we have never held to any rigid ideological or psychological form of Individualism / Egoism. Individualist anarchism is lovely dynamite, but not the only ingredient in our cocktail.
Our position, put quite simply (in the form of a truism): The autonomy of the individual appears to be complemented & enhanced by the movement of the gro... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Part 1: Interview with Hakim Bey
[A longer version appears as a preface to the German translation of Immediatism]
10 July 1996,
New York — Vienna
(by phone)
Q: [The first questions concern the book Immediatism (a.k.a. Radio Sermonettes) and readers’ response to it]:
A: Of course it’s meant as a discussion of what people do rather than what people should do. I’m not interested in preaching, and I don’t think myself a guru in any sense. More than that, in this particular book I really meant to describe what I considered to be the revolutionary potential of everyday life, to put it in Situationist terms. The response has been pretty good — I mean I don’... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Is theory a crystal ball? Is there any magic in theory? (Originally, the word meant “vision”, which certainly suggests the mysterious.) Can Ontological/Anarchic Theory be used to predict the future like a Ouija board in some degree of that clarity with which it describes the present or “predicts” the past? Is specto-simulo-commodity-ism on its last legs, like “Marxism” in the 80’s? What would cause it to collapse? What about “resurgent” Islam — unifying ideology of the “South”, or cultural death rattle? Religion in general? Various sci-fi scenarios? The police as the final simulacrum of power, final organ of disappearance? Balkanization and ethnic cleansing? Is theory a... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) (for Kevin Coogan)
Is conspiracy theory a delusion of the Right which has infected the Left as well? Leftist Conspiracy Theorists sometimes make uncritical use of the texts of Rightest Conspiracy Theorists — delving into the work of the Liberty Lobby for JFK Assassination tidbits, picking up Birchist notions about the CFR/Bilderberg/Rockefeller “liberal” internationalists, etc., etc. Since anti-semitism can be found on the Left as well as the Right, echoes of the Protocols may be heard from both directions. Even some anarchists are attracted to “Historical Revisionism”. Anticapitalism or economic populism on the Right has its counterpoint on the Left in “Red Fascism”, which broke the surface ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) I would guess that the old life way of transhumancy always proved both enjoyable and practical, at least in small scale economies. Twice a year you get up and move, travel, change your life and even your diet — a taste of nomadic freedom. But always the same two places. One place is typically more heimlich than the other — the village, the hearth; while the other place is typically wilder than the first, and this one might be called the place of Desire, of Summer. In the tales of Finn Mac Cumal and his Fenian band we nearly always meet them at this wilder end of the spectrum, the greenwood, the landscape of the hunt which reaches “back” in time to a more golden pre-agricultural age, and also “aslant” in t... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) TAZ-theory tries to concern itself with existing or emerging situations rather than with pure utopianism. All over the world people are leaving or “disappearing” themselves from the Grid of Alienation and seeking ways to restore human contact. An interesting example of this — on the level of “urban folk culture” — can be found in the proliferation of hobby networks and conferences. Recently I discovered the zines of two such groups, Crown Jewels of the High Wire (devoted to the collection of glass electrical insulators) and a journal on cucurbitology (The Gourd). A vast amount of creativity goes into these obsessions. The various periodic gatherings of fellow-maniacs amount to genuine face-to-face (unmedi... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The Association for Ontological Anarchy gathers in conclave, black turbans & shimmering robes, sprawled on shirazi carpets sipping bitter coffee, smoking long chibouk & sibsi. Question: What’s our position on all these recent defections & desertions from anarchism (esp. in California-Land): condemn or condone? Purge them or hail them as advance-guard? Gnostic elite... or traitors?
Actually, we have a lot of sympathy for the deserters & their various critiques of anarchism. Like Sinbad & the Horrible Old Man, anarchism staggers around with the corpse of a Martyr magically stuck to its shoulders — haunted by the legacy of failure & revolutionary masochism — stagnant backwater of lost history.
... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The anarcho-primitivists have backed themselves into a situation where they can never be satisfied without the total dissolution of the totality. Luddism as a tactic has much to recommend it: — on the local level, machine-smashing can actually accomplish something. Even one or two nuclear reactors have been shut down by “sabotage” (legal, political, or actual) — and one can always gain at least a moment of satisfaction with a wooden shoe or a monkey wrench. On a “global” level however — the “strategic” level — the totality of the neo-primitive critique of the totality itself begins to take on a disturbing air of — totalitarianism. This can bee seen most clearly in certain str... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Scientific worldviews or “paradigms” can influence — or be influenced by — social reality. Clearly the Ptolemaic universe mirrors theocentric & monarchic structures. The Newtonian/Cartesian/mechanical universe mirrors rationalistic social assumptions, which in turn underlie nationalism, capitalism, communism, etc. As for Relativity Theory, it has only recently begun to reflect — or be reflected by — certain social realities. But these relations are still obscure, embedded in multinational conspiracies, the metaphysics of modern banking, international terrorism, & various newly emergent telecommunications-based technologies.
Which comes first, scientific paradigm or social structure? For... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Acknowledgments
Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism was first published in 1985 by Grim Reaper Press of Weehawken, New Jersey; a later re-issue was published in Providence, Rhode Island, and this edition was pirated in Boulder, Colorado. Another edition was released by Verlag Golem of Providence in 1990, and pirated in Santa Cruz, California, by We Press. “The Temporary Autonomous Zone” was performed at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, and on WBAI-FM in New York City, in 1990.
Thanx to the following publications, current and defunct, in which some of these pieces appeared (no doubt I’ve lost or forgotten many — sorry!): KAOS (London); Ganymede (London); Pan (Amsterd... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)