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Title: NoGoZone
Author: Hakim Bey
Language: en
Topics: Peter Lamborn Wilson, TAZ
Source: Retrieved on April 23rd, 2009 from http://www.hermetic.com/bey/nogozone.html][www.hermetic.com]].  Proofread online source [[http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=4199, retrieved on November 19, 2020.

Hakim Bey

NoGoZone

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 zodiac we can skry? Can we make some

New Year predictions, like the National Enquirer?

I don’t see Capitalism vanishing overnight like Communism — it’s too

organic, too closely linked up with “what’s really going on”. Marxism

fell because it had entered a state of abstraction and denial — failed

to embrace the Spectacle as the true site of power — but Capital didn’t

make this mistake. Capital will disintegrate or deliquesce, rather than

undergo sudden implosion. The signs of disintegration will become more

and more obvious to experience and theory, but will not erase the

simulacrum of the totality with any “revolutionary” collapse. The murky

clouds in the crystal are starting to drift and clear. Suddenly, a

concept: social triage. And immediately a corollary: the no-go zone.

The state, as the last spectacular locus of the world of simulation,

will be forced to practise social triage, letting go of real control

over zones which fall beneath the level of adequate involvement in the

empty discourse. Zones: classes, races, marginalized groups, and to some

extent actual geographic areas. Triage: gradual and imperceptible

letting-go of “services”, leading to the emergence of no-go zones where

“control” is reduced to purely simulated means (e.g. TV as social glue).

Zones which have been economically abandoned (the homeless, small

farmers, migrant workers, “welfare classes”) will gradually be

eliminated from all other networks controlled by the spectacle of the

state, including the final interface, the Police. Officially of course

this policy will not exist and the specto-state will continue to claim

jurisdiction and proprietorship of these zones — no political autonomy

will be permitted, and occasional terror acts will be broadcast in the

spectacle to provide a veneer of control-simulation. But in stark

economic reality these zones will have been sacrificed, like passengers

thrown out of the troika of History to the wolves of Memory.

Inasmuch as this process is already under weigh, the study of

demographics provides a clue to the future: — where are the classes

leaving, where are they going? Mike Davis has analyzed this movement in

the microcosm of Los Angeles, where a complex pattern of triage and

terror has already emerged to prove him a prescient prophet, whose brand

of geomancy reads the bones of buildings and entrails of urban space

rather than “natural” features of animals or landscape. (Inasmuch as

“culture” has an unconscious it disgorges magic signs and symbols — not

the smoke of burnt offerings but of burning cop cars.) I believe this

process will speed up to the point where it will be quite obvious, in 5

to 10 years, that portions of “America” are no longer on the map. They

will produce no “growth”, neither will they “consume”, and they will no

longer be serviced by any of the spectacle’s vanishing bureaux — IRS,

Healthcare, military/police, social security, communication and

education. These areas (economic/social/geographic) will cease to exist

for all practical purposes of control. The consuming classes will leave

these areas and move “elsewhere”, either socially or geographically or

both simultaneously.

Having been seduced by the commodity, we will be abandoned by it — or

rather, “they” will be abandoned, the alien others who were never really

part of it in the first place. Interestingly, however, this “them” will

gradually come to include more and more individuals and groups who now

think of themselves as “us” — the heirs of that great Bourgeois Rational

sun-lit world which the spectacle still simulates and preserves — the

ones with “rights”, the ones who are “safe” and destined to “survive”.

Triage will be practised in these zones as well. The cracks in the

monolith will widen, and a lot of “us” will miss that last helicopter

out of town. I could move to Boulder or Portland now, hang on to my

rentier status, survive as a licensed clown on the margin of the

spectacle — and believe me the temptation is real enough. Those no-go

zones are not going to be very comfortable — they’re not going to be

utopias — they might even end up nasty as the resurgent fascist

statelets of E. Europe in the wake of 1989. Who would volunteer to live

in Bosnia (or South L.A.) simply because disorder and violence can

produce “wild freedoms” as well as sheer panic and genuine horror? As

for specto-simulo-capital itself, its next (and perhaps final?) stage

will consist of the Empire of pure Speed — the instantaneity of

communications technology, elevated to the status of transcendent being

— (omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence): — a kind of TechGnosis in

which the body (earth, production) will be “transcended” under the sign

of pure spirit (“information”). This will unveil the terminal false

transcendence or totality of the commodity: the final disembodiment of

desire, the absolute flotation of the signifier — language as gnostic

prison, and death the last bargain holiday special. The “lines” of this

structure are already being laid, and a map of these lines transforms

itself into a map of the future, or at least of future “History”. If we

study this embryonic or ontogenic map we can see clearly that the

“South” has already been cut out of the pattern, by an act of

cartomantic imperialism that denies meaning to the same areas which have

been denied “access” to the Commlinks. The South will not enter the

paradise of information — for information is glacial crystalline ice,

while the South is the realm of fire and noise.

And indeed the “South” is (or will become) the body, the realm of

everything which is not pure spirit and information, everything heavy

and mortal — the realm of agriculture and industry — the dark last

vestiges of the neolithic — of production (that crude demiurgic barrier

to the free mutagenesis of significance and the free exchange of emblems

and images — of pure information). The South will supply “us” with

microchips and soylent green, so we can all jack into virtual reality

and download our consciousness (what a relief!) into the software. The

information economy may have already begun to cut its ties with the

material economy — it’s not at all clear that certain kinds of “money”

retain any link — even a symbolic link — with actual social wealth. This

is “virtual” money. In the context of specto-simulo-capital this money

is hyperreal, and thus seems more powerful than money which is merely

real and still tied to the “material bodily principle.” In this scenario

we can finally “let our servants live for us” (Maldoror) while we go on

and rise up to something better. The machine is not our servant (as some

old sci-fi authors believed) but rather our symbiont. Our servant is the

South.

So part of the North disappears into Cyberspace, leaving the other part

deserted and bereft, no-go zones, cracks in the monolith. What could be

more natural than this: — that the South will interpenetrate the North

like mycelia in a loaf of bread? The holes and cracks in the North will

become more Southern, more African, more Latino, more Asiatic, more

Islamic. (P.K. Dick, a true Gnostic visionary, seems particularly

prophetic on this point.)

Now the crucial question: is it possible to imagine the no-go-zone

fulfilling a liberatory function? (in any way other than as a reversion

to primitive warfare interesting perhaps to a few Neitzschean Vikings?)

— that is, do the NGZ’s play any necessary role in the emergence of the

Temporary Autonomous Zone or even the Permanent Autonomous Zone? Does

the NGZ represent — in some weird paradoxical way — the rebirth of the

possibility of the social?

Forget political autonomy — no Republic of the South Bronx or Free State

of Western Wisconsin — no Libertarian enclaves or anarchist liberated

zones, no Ecotopia, no New Afrika, etc., etc. The spectacle (even in its

last gasp) will ruthlessly destroy anyone who threatens its monopoly of

spectacular authority. The TAZ, the clandestine time/space society of

the festival, provides a much more realistic model for the NGZ’s than

the model of micronationalism. The important thing is not postage stamps

or flags — the image of freedom (freedom as commodity) — but the reality

of freedom on the level of everyday life. We can forego the emblematism

of power for the possibility of power over our destinies (or at least of

unmediated failure!).

The sine qua non for the NGZ as a possible locus for liberation consists

of the implementation of an economy adequate to this function; and the

implementization of such an economy depends (at least in part) on an

idea of the social. So far neither of theses stages has emerged in any

but the crudest preliminary outline — so here we shift the burden of

this text from prediction to prescription. We’ll try to imagine what we

could do — right now — to turn the NGZ’s into autonomous zones, and

snatch our freedom even in “hell” even from the Lord of the Flies.

Is it possible to picture an economy for the NGZ’s which would relate

somehow (in countless and complex ways) with the economy of the South —

which is already beginning to appear in marginal areas of the North

where control is shaky? I’m not at all sure what this would mean, but I

picture an advanced and “borderless” stage of bricolage, not just of

things but of entire systems and fragments of systems. I envision an

alternative communications system, self-organized and non-hierarchic —

what I call a “web” rather than a “net” — which might make use of some

“cyberpunk” ideas, but only the poor ones and the rough ones (and

really, fuck “cyberspace” — I’d rather live in New Jersey!). I see not

only “black work” (lavoro nero, a fine art in Italy) but also “black

service”, “black production”, and “black exchange” used in “alternative”

(but not purely PC) technology. I suspect we’ll have a technology more

human than “green”, more concerned with farming or permaculture and

low-tech ad-hocism than with wilderness and deep ecology. The green

aspect of our tech will arise not out of any sentimental predilections

but from inescapable economic logic, the “mad” logic of briocolage and

the “poor” logic of recycling. These ideas are not specifically utopian

in the maximal sense, but we can admit them as adequate to the concept

of the “utopian minimum” (Fourier) — and for this reason, these forms of

technology will involve at least some satisfaction — which is not at all

the case with commodity economy (based as it is in the surplus of the

image as mask for the scarcity of good). The economy I foresee will not

adhere exclusively to any current model, neither the entrepreneurial

humanism of the Libertarians nor the “Associational” schemes of

Socialism, but will concoct a melange of whatever works within a very

broad framework of organic non-authoritariansim. The NGZ must be

self-organized in non-hierarchic form, or else fall prey to

crimino-fascism or sheer entropy; no other possibility seems very

probable, or at least very palatable! We’re looking at vacua of control

— if we don’t fill the NGZ with positive chaos, it will be filled with

negative chaos. This line of thought predicts that the NGZ will develop

at least one “political” form — the “Peoples’ Militia” — which can all

too easily be mistaken for (or become) a vigilante committee. Only an

economics which resists hierarchization, not out of ideological

conviction but rather out of sheer “will to power”, can guarantee that

the People’s Militia will not become the posse of the secret elite. A

vital task in the present: — to imagine and to begin setting up the

conditions for such an economy now, in the pre-NGZ areas where it can

already serve a real function — i.e., by providing “good things” (as the

IWW Preamble calls them); and by preparing the kernel of the new social

within the (rotting) shell of the old, to paraphrase the Wobbly

manifesto. By the way, “syndicalism” has a future only in the NGZ’s,

where production will actually be capitalized directly by labor and by

simple accumulation, in part amidst the ruins of the early industrial

era — Bayonne, New Jersey, Detroit, Michigan, etc. — where the NGZ will

first blossom in all its appalling ugliness. The same holds true for all

forms of agrarian radicalism — that is, no future except in the rural

NGZs; — all this, however, not as a Museum of the Social, but as a

living mutating (drifting) situational praxis or nomadic bricolage of

social models — real-life experiments based on dire necessity and the

obsessive passion for freedom. No one will willingly risk life in the

NGZ for mere ideology — but the ulility of certain utopian models can be

tested.

To speak of such models however brings up the question of the idea of

the social, which is (according to a very loose categorization) either

political or “religious”. We’ve assumed that the NGZ has abandoned — or

been abandoned by — the political. Can it be that the idea of the social

appropriate to the NGZ is “religious” in nature? I mention this for two

reasons: (1) religion has not gone away, as predicted by Rationalism,

and (2) religion has proven to be a powerful source for social cohesion,

for example, in the history of intentional communities — more powerful

than political ideology or utopian planning. I hypothesize the

possibility and reality of non-authoritarian, autonomous,

self-organized, non-hierarchic aspects of the huge complex subsumed in

the word “religion” — shamanism, for example, or the multivalent and

infinitely expandable pattern of “paganism”, in which no culture can

gain a monopoly of interpretation, or even a hegemony. I’m not saying

the NGZ should be “religious”, I’m saying it will be “religious”, and is

“religious” — and that if we believe in the desire for some liberatory

potential in the NGZ, we should begin now to find a “religious” language

that will reflect and help to shape and realize that potential — or else

we will face a “religion of fascism” (xtian right-wingers attempting to

dominate the NGZ’s) or a spirituality of entropy. One good reason, for

instance, to ransack the history of Protestantism for radical models

(Ranters, Diggers, Antinomians, etc.) would be to resurrect them — and

not merely to serve as camouflage. Earth and body forms of spirituality

(shamanic, neo-pagan, Afro-American, etc) — immanentist rather than

transcendentalist — emphasizing an existentialism of works not faith,

hence ethicalism not moralism — radical tolerance for all cults (on the

“pagan” model) — distrust of dualist models but also of

totalitarian-monist models — mystical but not ascetic — festal but not

sacrificial. These would be some of the models proposed by our form of

spirituality. None of the established means of propagating a religion

would be appropriate here, however. Just as we need now to re-imagine

the “Economy of the Gift”, so also we need to re-invent (or even to

fabricate) a “spirituality of freedom” relevant to our future as

inhabitants of the NGZs — a spirituality of “everyday life” in the situ

sense of the word.

I’m thinking of certain old European genre paintings which always

fascinated me as a child, depicting peasants or gypsies living in the

ruins of some vanished empire — usually Roman. The images appealed to a

Bachelardian sense of reverie and magic about certain kinds of “home”,

certain kinds of “space”. I like the sense of abandonment implied in the

paradox of abandoned ruins brought to life by “abandoned” bohemians,

low-lifes, Breughelian fiddlers and dancers — the contrast of the heavy

remains of vanished triumphalism with the lightness and brightness of

nomads. I may very well be romanticizing the NGZ as a possible utopian

topos or site — but then again, I might be inclined to defend the

occasional usefulness of romanticism: — it beats despair. The NGZ is on

the way, whether we dread it or romanticize it.