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98th out of 225 books
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150 voters
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TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone (New Autonomy)
Cultural Writing. In its third publication since 1985, this book contains essays and flyers on anarchy as well as a new preface by the author. Pieces from this collection have appeared in various publications around the world, including Ganymede (London) and Pan (Amsterdam). This work is a "literary masterpiece" - Freedom (London) and "Dear to our hearts"...more
Paperback, 147 pages
Published
September 1st 2003
by Autonomedia
(first published 1991)
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First off, it would be criminal of me not to mention that you don't need to buy this book unless you're really into having books around as physical objects (and Autonomedia, the publisher, is a very worthy recipient of your 10 bucks).
But this text is freely available, at the author's request, online (just google it), and in the spirit of the book itself, you can "pirate" the text (not to mention the rest of Peter Lamborn Wilson aka Hakim Bey's insane works) from a world th...more
But this text is freely available, at the author's request, online (just google it), and in the spirit of the book itself, you can "pirate" the text (not to mention the rest of Peter Lamborn Wilson aka Hakim Bey's insane works) from a world th...more
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As all the reviews show, pretty polarizing - I'm happy I can walk the middle line on this and got what I could out of the book. Some good stuff here, and the dubious stuff can be covered mostly under the "romantic" approach of the philosophy and writing (really, it makes all the complaints about Bey not being part of some accepted philosophical system or history of Anarchism pretty redundant, and those that claim such things seem to have missed the point entirely - people don't storm ...more
Jacob
added it
Laura, when I lent you this book I hoped that you would read it. When you returned it the other day with the Kafka book I lent you at the same time, I wondered if you had ever cracked this book open and seen the passages that I underlined in red pen.
"If rulers refuse to consider poems as crimes, then someone must commit crimes that serve the function of poetry, or texts that possess the resonance of terrorism. At any cost re-connect poetry to the body. Not crimes against bodies...more
"If rulers refuse to consider poems as crimes, then someone must commit crimes that serve the function of poetry, or texts that possess the resonance of terrorism. At any cost re-connect poetry to the body. Not crimes against bodies...more
http://libcom.org/library/leaving-out-ug...
When I first read this, I would have rated it higher. Since then, I've learned a lot more about anarchism and how out of touch Hakim Bey is with social movements. Still, it has some romantic prose that can be very appealing. If I had to describe Bey's writing methodology; it's sort of like someone who name drops at a party--instead Bey drops esoteric concepts to make himself seem both well read (which he seems to be) and wise (which is ve...more
When I first read this, I would have rated it higher. Since then, I've learned a lot more about anarchism and how out of touch Hakim Bey is with social movements. Still, it has some romantic prose that can be very appealing. If I had to describe Bey's writing methodology; it's sort of like someone who name drops at a party--instead Bey drops esoteric concepts to make himself seem both well read (which he seems to be) and wise (which is ve...more
Michael
rated it
·
review of another edition
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Anarchists, Discordians, Poets
Recommended to Michael by:
Peter Lamborn Wilson
I approach this book differently from most readers, because I've known the author since my youthful days as an anarchist punk rocker, because I read parts of it before it was published in this form, and because my own Path (or "Trip") has both paralleled and diverged from his in so many interesting ways. I still see this book as a vital introduction to antinomian thought that also transcends most of the shortcomings of other similar projects. I fall in love with the prose every time. I...more
Awful. I put this book here cause it is the kind of individualistic anarchist crap that has the potential to suck in otherwise bright young kids. Punks out there that are supporting Ron Paul have probably read this garbage. The worst part: hipsters read this and actually believe it has some merit. But I guess that goes without saying.
There is no love of humanity in this book, just a love of self-centered 'hipness'. Yuck!
There is no love of humanity in this book, just a love of self-centered 'hipness'. Yuck!
Quite possibly my most favorite book, and one everyone should read! I re-read it periodically. It's insanity, but mainly about thinking outside the box, about intellectual freedom, about living creatively. I read it during my "travel the country by train and/or bike, live in caves, camp out with rock-climbing hippies, make chain mail and sell it" phase. But I still find it applicable.
This is an entertaining book to read, especially in terms of absurdist parody and subcultural/philosophical/ism deconstruction, but its idealistic messagess of neo-collectivism are quite outdated. The revolution does not involve moving away to an (ever moving) island with a bunch of crust punks who refuse to shower. Its ideas for creating mayhem are quite hilarious and inspiring though.
One of my favorite books--highly funny and entertaining. His examples of how a Temporary Autonomous Zone might be created are prima materia for any culture jammer, Discordian, graffiti-ist, artist or poet. Ontological anarchy is a bit convoluted, but I see what he's trying to do.... This isn't boring old useless anarchist syndicalism, but an anarchism that includes humor, the transcendent (ohhh no!) and reclamation of what is sacred.
Funny that Bey gets accused of being a lifestyle an...more
Funny that Bey gets accused of being a lifestyle an...more
This is pretty relevant to understanding the Occupy Wall Street movement and to seeing how it could be furthered in the future. This book is also pretty primary for understanding and facilitating future "uprisings." I really enjoyed reading this. Kudos to Hakim Bey for writing something years ago that is now extremely relevant.
HOWEVER, the writer is apparently into "love" with young boys. He does have some poetry that combines his anarchism with pedophilia. I don't...more
HOWEVER, the writer is apparently into "love" with young boys. He does have some poetry that combines his anarchism with pedophilia. I don't...more
The Good: Despite the surrealist style of his prose, Bey has constructed his arguments carefully and presents them in a clear, powerful way. The encouragement of self expression as a means of political protest is a fantastic.
The Bad: There are definitely lines of argument that run into the pie-in-the-sky, wish fulfillment brand of political protest. Many (though not all) of Bey's suggested forms of radical self expression are criminal.
The Ugly: Homosexuality is fine, but refe...more
The Bad: There are definitely lines of argument that run into the pie-in-the-sky, wish fulfillment brand of political protest. Many (though not all) of Bey's suggested forms of radical self expression are criminal.
The Ugly: Homosexuality is fine, but refe...more
This book is fantastic. Bey opens a new path for me, opening up possibilities of awareness by making it clear how the left and the right are the conjoined twins of the current ideological reality. Ontological Anarchism is such a fabulous concept vehicle. Bey is a weird contradiction. I prejudice him to be in black smoking clove cigarettes, as one of those artsy lit-crit type philosophers by his use of language, but it must not be, because the wearing of that kind of masks he blows apart.
...more
...more
I don't really know how to review this one, and I really wish I didn't have to give it a star rating so I'm just gonna give it a three because there are some five-star moments to this and some one-star (if you're gonna think about it like that).
On the most literal level, this work is a compilation of tracts on ontological anarchism that were originally published in the mid-1980s. There's a strong debt to Dadaism and the Beats (especially the latter, though that could just as easily ...more
On the most literal level, this work is a compilation of tracts on ontological anarchism that were originally published in the mid-1980s. There's a strong debt to Dadaism and the Beats (especially the latter, though that could just as easily ...more
Temporary Autonomous Zones—
—or TAZ as they are affectionately called—are forged rather than entered. The surveillance ruins, serving as a reminder of the war, crumble under the center of TAZ. Some ruins are composed out of metabolized programs. The other problem with rules is the instantaneous feature of a strict hierarchy, as anyone familiar with the latest studies has been informed.
In TAZ there are sometimes options to get to a point. Activity scallops, repeating impor...more
—or TAZ as they are affectionately called—are forged rather than entered. The surveillance ruins, serving as a reminder of the war, crumble under the center of TAZ. Some ruins are composed out of metabolized programs. The other problem with rules is the instantaneous feature of a strict hierarchy, as anyone familiar with the latest studies has been informed.
In TAZ there are sometimes options to get to a point. Activity scallops, repeating impor...more
Justin Martin
rated it
Recommends it for:
non-anarchist, policemen, scientists, brave men, moors
Recommended to Justin by:
Charlie Bergengren
This book exists largely in a field where fiction is irrelevant, where myths are as important as history, and where transgression is encouraged as a mystical practice. The first chapters are a stunning sweep of proposals for individual mystical transgression; amor-fou, poetic terrorism, and boys masturbating unlock chaos and set everyone free. They're hardly succinct, never appropriate, and breathtaking syncretisms of mystical practices. They're poetic.
The later chapters (the book co...more
The later chapters (the book co...more
"kidnap someone, and make them happy" embodies the general stance taken by this cultural anthropologist luddite. refreshing ideas of play as alternative modes of existence to our hyper-capitalist climate. i thoroughly enjoyed the post-revolutionary approach which reminds me of a time where i had lost my copy of t.a.z. and attempted to locate it at liberation books, downtown los angeles. after looking between the marx and mao to no avail, i asked the clerk if they had any hakim bey. the...more
Part of the thought cloud that contains the Church of the Subgenius, the Discordians, Fight Club, Flash mobs, Burning Man (prior to the corporate take-over), and Illuminati. This is the seamy underbelly of Western culture and what happened to the hippies that didn't sell out. In many ways the whole thing is a bizarre parody of/homage to the catch-phrase spouting dialectic of the Cold War idealists, in that jargon and obscure claims of repression replace any sort of intelligent discourse; excep...more
I would still think T.A.Z. is puerile and generally appalling even if I could get past Peter Lamborn Wilson's ludicrous Orientalist appropriation of a "Sufi" identity (one that means "wise ruler/guide" in Arabic, no less). But I can't get past it. Add the Orientalist fantasies of a white-boy hipster with even less talent than Burroughs to fourth-rate existential philosophizing and you end up with a complete abomination. (With my respects, of course, to the productive abomi...more
"No, listen, what happened was this: they lied to you, sold you ideas of good & evil, gave you distrust of your body & shame for your prophethood of chaos, invented words of disgust for your molecular love, mesmerized you with inattention, bored you with civilization & all its usurious emotions.
There is no becoming, no revolution, no struggle, no path; already you're the monarch of your own skin--your inviolable freedom waits to be completed only by the love of other monarchs: a polit...more
There is no becoming, no revolution, no struggle, no path; already you're the monarch of your own skin--your inviolable freedom waits to be completed only by the love of other monarchs: a polit...more
As a teenager this was a life-changing book. Bey presents the quantum-mechanics response to anarchy's traditional physics. T.A.Zones, like wormholes, opening and closing all the time (even on your quiet suburban street). Anti-statist dark matter hidden everywhere within the state. A horizon of possibilities cut off in some unreachable future replaced by one that wraps around you & fluctuates moment by moment.
I read this book whenever I feel my life is getting stuck. Stuck is not necessarily a bad thing, some people would say: means you're growing up your roots.
Roots-my-ass.
This book is about going on, about renewing, rethinking, doing differently, thinking differently, and, more than anything else, thinking freely. Hakim Bey gave me wings when he first wrote this, and I'll be forever in his debt.
Roots-my-ass.
This book is about going on, about renewing, rethinking, doing differently, thinking differently, and, more than anything else, thinking freely. Hakim Bey gave me wings when he first wrote this, and I'll be forever in his debt.
Amazing, BUT (isn't there always the but? But but but). There's a great load of pedophiliac/anti-choice/anti-feminist/cultural appropriating content in here that's disgusting. Despite the lyricism of this work, I refuse to believe that an author can get away with touting this as anarchism. If it is taken as a work-within-itself, a poem or a fictional piece of art, it is magical.
Hakim Bey is a pedophile, monarchist, anti-abortionist, pro-porn, anti-feminist, orientalist who prefers Fiume to anarchist Ukraine and Catalonia. Thinks anarchists should just become bohemian decadents who don't care about fighting the state. Claims to be an expert on Sufism despite his abject lack of scholastic credentials. Totally worthless. Recommended for New Age fruitcakes.
A mystical examination of the idea of place and freedom for the individual and people-group in modern, hyperconnected society.
Short to the point of being a manifesto. Expansive enough to be a creed.
"Don't just survive while waiting for someone's revolution to clear your head...act as if you were already free."
Short to the point of being a manifesto. Expansive enough to be a creed.
"Don't just survive while waiting for someone's revolution to clear your head...act as if you were already free."
this book turned me onto tongs, secret societies, anarchic art, what is important to the individual who thinks, acts, speaks for themselves... What is a T.A.Z....well here are some examples...burning man, rainbow gatherings, hemp fests, any activity that is a collective of people who are unlawful or marginalized by society that lasts for a temporary amount of time and then dissolves as an apparition back into the social fabric...all of hakim bey's books are anti-copyright..so anyone can use any ...more
Jarrodtrainque
added it
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...more
Jo
rated it
·
review of another edition
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
those who think out of the box, and aren't comfortable with contentment
Shelves:
non-fictionread
A snippet:
"WEIRD DANCING IN ALL-NIGHT computer-banking lobbies. Unauthorized pyrotechnic displays. Land-art, earth-works as bizarre alien artifacts strewn in State Parks. Burglarize houses but instead of stealing, leave Poetic-Terrorist objects. Kidnap someone & make them happy. Pick someone at random & convince them they're the heir to an enormous, useless & amazing fortune--say 5000 square miles of Antarctica, or an aging circus elephant, or an orphanage in Bombay, or a collec...more
"WEIRD DANCING IN ALL-NIGHT computer-banking lobbies. Unauthorized pyrotechnic displays. Land-art, earth-works as bizarre alien artifacts strewn in State Parks. Burglarize houses but instead of stealing, leave Poetic-Terrorist objects. Kidnap someone & make them happy. Pick someone at random & convince them they're the heir to an enormous, useless & amazing fortune--say 5000 square miles of Antarctica, or an aging circus elephant, or an orphanage in Bombay, or a collec...more
This is by my bed and I read one random paragraph before I go to sleep. Unbelievable in all ways. there is no way to describe.
Also of course available free all over the internet.
Also of course available free all over the internet.
Kelvin Pittman
rated it
Recommends it for:
beginning architechture students, modern dancers
Recommended to Kelvin by:
no-one
Shelves:
liked
It seems interesting that you could blame Burning Man on this book; it seems a little more interesting that Delaney's TRITON pre-dates it.
Very bizarre not all of it is for everyone. Parts of it are genius and parts of it are fringe hippie rants.
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“Provided we can escape from the museums we carry around inside us, provided we can stop selling ourselves tickets to the galleries in our own skulls, we can begin to contemplate an art which re-creates the goal of the sorcerer: changing the structure of reality by the manipulation of living symbols ... Art tells gorgeous lies that come true.”
—
22 people liked it
“Poetic Terrorism
WEIRD DANCING IN ALL-NIGHT computer-banking lobbies. Unauthorized pyrotechnic displays. Land-art, earth-works as bizarre alien artifacts strewn in State Parks. Burglarize houses but instead of stealing, leave Poetic-Terrorist objects. Kidnap someone & make them happy. Pick someone at random & convince them they're the heir to an enormous, useless & amazing fortune--say 5000 square miles of Antarctica, or an aging circus elephant, or an orphanage in Bombay, or a collection of alchemical mss. ...
Bolt up brass commemorative plaques in places (public or private) where you have experienced a revelation or had a particularly fulfilling sexual experience, etc.
Go naked for a sign.
Organize a strike in your school or workplace on the grounds that it does not satisfy your need for indolence & spiritual beauty.
Graffiti-art loaned some grace to ugly subways & rigid public monuments--PT-art can also be created for public places: poems scrawled in courthouse lavatories, small fetishes abandoned in parks & restaurants, Xerox-art under windshield-wipers of parked cars, Big Character Slogans pasted on playground walls, anonymous letters mailed to random or chosen recipients (mail fraud), pirate radio transmissions, wet cement...
The audience reaction or aesthetic-shock produced by PT ought to be at least as strong as the emotion of terror-- powerful disgust, sexual arousal, superstitious awe, sudden intuitive breakthrough, dada-esque angst--no matter whether the PT is aimed at one person or many, no matter whether it is "signed" or anonymous, if it does not change someone's life (aside from the artist) it fails.
PT is an act in a Theater of Cruelty which has no stage, no rows of seats, no tickets & no walls. In order to work at all, PT must categorically be divorced from all conventional structures for art consumption (galleries, publications, media). Even the guerilla Situationist tactics of street theater are perhaps too well known & expected now.
An exquisite seduction carried out not only in the cause of mutual satisfaction but also as a conscious act in a deliberately beautiful life--may be the ultimate PT. The PTerrorist behaves like a confidence-trickster whose aim is not money but CHANGE.
Don't do PT for other artists, do it for people who will not realize (at least for a few moments) that what you have done is art. Avoid recognizable art-categories, avoid politics, don't stick around to argue, don't be sentimental; be ruthless, take risks, vandalize only what must be defaced, do something children will remember all their lives--but don't be spontaneous unless the PT Muse has possessed you.
Dress up. Leave a false name. Be legendary. The best PT is against the law, but don't get caught. Art as crime; crime as art.”
—
10 people liked it
More quotes…
WEIRD DANCING IN ALL-NIGHT computer-banking lobbies. Unauthorized pyrotechnic displays. Land-art, earth-works as bizarre alien artifacts strewn in State Parks. Burglarize houses but instead of stealing, leave Poetic-Terrorist objects. Kidnap someone & make them happy. Pick someone at random & convince them they're the heir to an enormous, useless & amazing fortune--say 5000 square miles of Antarctica, or an aging circus elephant, or an orphanage in Bombay, or a collection of alchemical mss. ...
Bolt up brass commemorative plaques in places (public or private) where you have experienced a revelation or had a particularly fulfilling sexual experience, etc.
Go naked for a sign.
Organize a strike in your school or workplace on the grounds that it does not satisfy your need for indolence & spiritual beauty.
Graffiti-art loaned some grace to ugly subways & rigid public monuments--PT-art can also be created for public places: poems scrawled in courthouse lavatories, small fetishes abandoned in parks & restaurants, Xerox-art under windshield-wipers of parked cars, Big Character Slogans pasted on playground walls, anonymous letters mailed to random or chosen recipients (mail fraud), pirate radio transmissions, wet cement...
The audience reaction or aesthetic-shock produced by PT ought to be at least as strong as the emotion of terror-- powerful disgust, sexual arousal, superstitious awe, sudden intuitive breakthrough, dada-esque angst--no matter whether the PT is aimed at one person or many, no matter whether it is "signed" or anonymous, if it does not change someone's life (aside from the artist) it fails.
PT is an act in a Theater of Cruelty which has no stage, no rows of seats, no tickets & no walls. In order to work at all, PT must categorically be divorced from all conventional structures for art consumption (galleries, publications, media). Even the guerilla Situationist tactics of street theater are perhaps too well known & expected now.
An exquisite seduction carried out not only in the cause of mutual satisfaction but also as a conscious act in a deliberately beautiful life--may be the ultimate PT. The PTerrorist behaves like a confidence-trickster whose aim is not money but CHANGE.
Don't do PT for other artists, do it for people who will not realize (at least for a few moments) that what you have done is art. Avoid recognizable art-categories, avoid politics, don't stick around to argue, don't be sentimental; be ruthless, take risks, vandalize only what must be defaced, do something children will remember all their lives--but don't be spontaneous unless the PT Muse has possessed you.
Dress up. Leave a false name. Be legendary. The best PT is against the law, but don't get caught. Art as crime; crime as art.”
