Hakim Bey

[KXX4493553 at aol.com]

I want to mention here two quotations from Hakim Bey's "Temporary Autonomous 
Zone" (TAZ) which I find quite astonishing. One about "psychic nomadism" 
which can be taken as a description of the new forms of terrorism (or other 
shapes and mixtures of reality and "cyberspace"), the other is more P-related.

Hakim Bey, The Temporary Autonomous Zone (1985), in: Peter Ludlow (Ed.), 
Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias, Cambridge/London 2001, pp. 
401-434 (MIT-Press).

"Vital in shaping TAZ reality is the concept of psychic nomadism (or as we 
jokingly call it, "rootless cosmopolitanism"). Aspects of this phenomenon 
have been discussed by Deleuze and Guattari in >Nomadology: The War Machine<, 
by Lyotard... in >Driftworks<, and by various authors in the >Oasis< issue of 
>Semiotext(e)<. We use the term >psychic nomadism< here rather than >urban 
nomadism<, >nomadology<, >driftwork<, etc. simply in order to garner all 
these concepts into a single loose complex, to be studied in light of the 
coming-into-being of the TAZ. >The Death of God<, in some ways a decentering 
of the entire >European< project, opened a multi-perspectived 
post-ideological worldview able to move >rootless< from philosophy to tribal 
myth, from natural science to Taoism - able to see for the first time through 
eyes like some golden insect's, each facet giving a view of an entirely other 
world.
But this vision was attained at the expense of inhabiting an epoch where 
speed and >commodity fetishism< have created a tyrannical false unity which 
tends to blut all cultural diversity and individuality, so that >one place is 
as good as another<. This paradox creates >gypsies<, psychic travelers driven 
by desire or curiosity, wanderers with shallow loyalties (in fact disloyal to 
the >European Project<, which has lost all its charm and vitality), not tied 
down to any particular time and place, in search of diversity and 
adventure...This description covers not only the X-class artists and 
intellectuals but also migrant laborers, refugees, the >homeless<, tourists, 
the RV and mobile-home culture - also people who >travel< via the Net but may 
never leave their own rooms (or those like Thoreau, who >travelled much - in 
Concord<); and finally it includes >everybody<, all of us, living through our 
automobiles, our vacations, our TV's,  books, movies, telephones, changing 
jobs, changing >lifestyles<, religions, diets, etc. etc.
Psychic nomadism as a tactic, what Deleuze and Guattari metaphorically call 
>the war machine<, shifts the paradox from a passive to an active and perhaps 
even >violent< mode. >God<'s last throes and deathbed rattles have been going 
on for such a long time - that there's still a lot of >creative destruction< 
to be carried out by post-Bakuninist post-Nietzschean commandos or apaches 
(literally >enemies<) of the old Consensus. These nomads practice the razzia, 
they are corsairs,they are viruses; they both need and desire for TAZ's, 
camps of black tents under the desert stars, interzones, hidden fortified 
oases along secret caravan routes, >liberated< bits of jungle and bad-land, 
no-go areas, black markets, and underground bazaars.
These nomads chart their course by strange stars, which might be luminous 
clusters of data in cyberspace or perhaps hallucinations. Lay down a map of 
the land; over that, set a map of political change; over that, a map of the 
Net, especially the counter-Net with its emphasis on clandestine information 
flow and logistics - and finally, over all, the 1:1 map of he creative 
imagination, aesthetics, values. The resultant grid comes to life, animated 
by unexpected eddies and surges of energy,coagulations of light, secret 
tunnels, surprises." (p. 409 f.)

"Throughout the 18th century, North America also produced a number of 
drop-out >tri-racial isolate communities<. (This clinical-souding term was 
invented by the Eugenics Movement, which produced the first scientific 
studies of these communities. Unfortunaetely the >science< merely served as 
an excuse for hatred of racial >mongrels< and the poor, and the >solution to 
the problem< was usually forced sterilization.) The nuclei invariably 
consisted runaway slaves and serfs, >criminals< (i. e. the very poor), 
>prostitutes< (i. e., white women who married non-whites), and members of 
various native tribes. In some cases, such as the Seminole and Cherokee, the 
traditional tribe structure  absorbed the newcomers; in other cases, new 
tribes were formed. Thus we have the Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp, who 
persisted through the 18th and 19th centuries, adopting runaway slaves, 
functioning as a way station on the Underground railway, and serving as a 
religious and ideological centre for slave rebellions. The religion was 
HooDoo, a mixture of African, native, and Christian elements, and according 
to the historian H. Leaming-Bey the elders of the faith and the leaders of 
the Great Dismal Maroons were known as >the Seven Finger High Glister<.
The Ramapaughs of northern New Jersey (incorrectly known as the >Jackson 
Whites<) present another romantic and archetypical genealogy: freed slaves of 
the Dutch poltroons, various Delaware and Algonquin clans, the usual 
>prostitutes<, the >Hessians< (a catch-phrase for lost British mercenaries, 
drop-out Loyalists, etc.), and local bands of social bandits such as Claudius 
Smith's.
An African-Islamic origin is claimed by some of the groups, such as the Moors 
of Delaware and the Ben Ishmaels, who migrated from Kentucky to Ohio in the 
mid-18th century. The Ishmaels practiced polygamy, never drank alcohol, made 
their living as minstrels, intermarried with Indians and adopted their 
customs, and were so devoted to nomadism that they built their houses on 
wheels. Their annual migration triangulated on frontier towns with names like 
Mecca and Medina. In the 19th century some of them espoused anarchist ideals, 
and they were targeted by the Eugenicists for a particularly vicious pogrom 
of salvation-by-extermination. Some of the earliest Eugenics laws were passed 
in their honor. As a tribe they >disappeared< in the 1920s but probably 
swelled the ranks of early >Black Islamic< sects such as the Moorish Science 
Temple. I mayself grew up on legends of the >Kallikaks< of the nearby New 
Jersey Pine Barrens (and of course on Lovecraft, a rabid racist who was 
fascinated by the isolate communities). The legend turned out to be 
folk-memories of the slanders of the Eugenicists, whose U. S. headquarters 
were in Vineland, New Jersey, and who undertook the usual >reforms< against 
>miscegenation< and >feeblemindedness< in the Barrens (including the 
publication of photographs of the Kallikaks, crudely and obviously retouched 
to make them look like monsters of misbreeding)." (pp. 421-423)


Kurt-Werner Pörtner