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Temporary Autonomous Zone and a Subject Outside the Law

Park Jongju 1

1서울대학교

Candidate

ABSTRACT

Narratives of historical shifts by a collective, united subject such as a class tend to denunciate small-scale, diversified struggles. But as we know, revolutions have no history of success and others have no history of being fairly evaluated. This article aims at examining and evaluating one of the ‘others,’ Temporary Autonomous Zones conceptualized by Hakim Bey, who proposed to give up a direct confrontation with the power which became a simulation and to constitute sporadic and temporary communities as a means of struggle. It has been criticized as an escapism by political critiques such as Bookchin and Armaitage, or even as giving up of the struggle itself. But opening up a T.A.Z. never amounts to a mere escapism, but an experiment with producing subjects outside the law who do not conform to the existing system. Conflicts and antagonisms which would remain even after a revolution around a single theme e.g. economic class could disappear in a T.A.Z. For example, people hanging together regardless of their ages are establishing a T.A.Z. which works outside the ageist system. Although T.A.Z. guarantees no utopia without any oppression, it shows possibilities of living alternatively. Rather than being a negation of the need for a revolution, even not of its possibility, T.A.Z. is an urge for a subject to revolutionize oneself first, which is possible now-andhere, even without a revolution. It is an experiment and an exercise for a total revolution which should abolish not just an economic oppression but also any kind of it.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.