Peter Lamborn Wilson (October 20, 1945 – May 22, 2022) was an American anarchist author, philosopher, poet, translator, and essayist. He is primarily known for his concept of Temporary Autonomous Zones, short-lived spaces that elude formal structures of control. During the 1970s, Wilson lived in the Middle East and worked at the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy under the guidance of Iranian philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr, where he explored Sufism, mysticism, and Persian literature. Starting in the 1980s, he wrote numerous political and countercultural texts under the pen name Hakim Bey, developing ideas such as "ontological anarchy", "poetic terrorism", and "immediatism". His work circulated through small presses, zine networks, anarchist milieus, radio, rave culture, and later academic discussions of post-anarchism, cyberculture, and radical protest.

Life

Wilson was born in Baltimore on October 20, 1945. While undertaking a classics major at Columbia University, Wilson met Warren Tartaglia, then introducing Islam to students as the leader of a group called the Noble Moors. Attracted by the philosophy, Wilson was initiated into the group, but later joined a group of breakaway members who founded the Moorish Orthodox Church. The Church maintained a presence at the League for Spiritual Discovery, the group established by Timothy Leary.

Appalled by the social and political climate, Wilson decided to leave the United States, and shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., in 1968 he flew to Lebanon, later reaching India with the intention of studying Sufism, but became fascinated by Tantra, tracking down Ganesh Baba. He spent a month in a Kathmandu missionary hospital being treated for hepatitis, and practised meditation techniques in a cave above the east bank of the Ganges. He also allegedly ingested significant quantities of cannabis.

Wilson travelled on to Pakistan. There he lived in several places, mixing with princes, Sufis, and gutter dwellers, and moving from teahouses to opium dens. In Quetta he found "a total disregard of all government", with people reliant on family, clans or tribes, which appealed to him. In 1974, Farah Pahlavi, Empress of Iran, commissioned her personal secretary, scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr, to establish the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy. Nasr offered Wilson the position of director of its English-language publications, and editorship of its journal Sophia Perennis, which Wilson edited from 1975 until 1978.

Following the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Wilson lived in New York City, sharing a brownstone townhouse with William Burroughs, with whom he bonded over their shared interests. Burroughs acknowledged Wilson for providing material on Hassan-i Sabbah which he used for his novel The Western Lands.

In later life, Wilson lived in upstate New York in conditions he termed "independently poor".

Towards the end of his life, he showed an interest in the Bābī religion, especially in its Azali form. This was mentioned in his two final books published in early 2022.

Wilson died of heart failure on May 22, 2022, in Saugerties, New York.

Pen name

Wilson's occasional pen name of Hakim Bey was derived from il-Hakim, the alchemist-king, with "Bey" a further nod to Moorish Science. Wilson's two personas, as himself and Bey, were facilitated by his publishers, who provided separate author biographies even when both appeared in the same publication.

Ideas and writings

Ontological anarchy<!--"Ontological anarchy" redirects here-->

In Immediatism (1994), a compilation of essays, Wilson explained his particular conception of anarchism and anarchy, which he called ontological anarchy. He posits that since absolute certainty about the "true nature of things" is impossible, all human endeavors are fundamentally "founded on nothing". This perspective embraces chaos not as an absence, but as the essence of life and becoming, contrasting it with order, which is seen as death or cessation.</blockquote>

He wrote about TAZs at length in the book TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism, published by Autonomedia in 1991. At the time of his death the book had sold over 100,000 copies and was the publisher's perennial bestseller.

Reception and influence

Wilson took an interest in the subculture of zines flourishing in Manhattan in the early 1980s, zines being tiny hand-made photocopied magazines published in small quantities concerning whatever the publishers found compelling. "He began writing essays, communiqués as he liked to call them, under the pen name Hakim Bey, which he mailed to friends and publishers of the 'zines' he liked. ... His mailouts were immediately popular, and regarded as copyright-free syndicated columns ready for anyone to paste into their photocopied 'zines'..."

His Temporary Autonomous Zones work has been referenced in comparison to the "free party" or teknival scene of the rave subculture. Wilson was supportive of the rave connection, while remarking in an interview, "The ravers were among my biggest readers ... I wish they would rethink all this techno stuff — they didn't get that part of my writing."

According to Gavin Grindon, in the 1990s, the British group Reclaim the Streets was heavily influenced by the ideas put forward in Hakim Bey's The Temporary Autonomous Zone. Their adoption of the carnivalesque into their form of protest evolved eventually into the first "global street party" held in cities across the world on May 16, 1998, the day of a G8 summit meeting in Birmingham. These "parties", explained Grindon, in turn developed into the Carnivals Against Capitalism, in London on June 18, 1999, organized by Reclaim the Streets in coordination with worldwide antiglobalization protests called by the international network Peoples' Global Action during the 25th G8 summit meeting in Cologne, Germany.

Wilson's work has also been discussed in academic studies of post-anarchism, cyberculture, and radical cultural politics. Simon Sellars examined Bey's influence and the later afterlives of the TAZ concept in the Journal for the Study of Radicalism. Leonard Williams described Wilson's ontological anarchism as a significant strand of post-anarchist thought. John Armitage, by contrast, criticized Bey's politics of cyberculture in Angelaki, arguing that his celebration of temporary autonomy remained politically limited.

Controversy over writings on sexuality

Some writers have been troubled by what they took to be Bey's endorsement of adults having sex with children, which included writing for NAMBLA's newsletter. Michael Muhammad Knight, a novelist and former friend of Wilson, stated that "writing for NAMBLA amounts to activism in real life. As Hakim Bey, Peter creates a child molester's liberation theology and then publishes it for an audience of potential offenders." In a compilation of memorial tributes in The Brooklyn Rail published a few months after Wilson's death, many writers defended Wilson and rejected the accusation of pedophilia. Kalan Sherrard wrote that after "meeting tons of young people who grew up with him it became totally evident he had never hurt anyone / and people were just freaked out by his writing". Bob Black wrote a rejoinder to Bookchin in Anarchy after Leftism.

John Zerzan described Bey as a "postmodern liberal", possessing a "method" that was "as appalling as his claims to truthfulness, and essentially conforms to textbook postmodernism. Aestheticism plus knownothingism is the [...] formula; cynical as to the possibility of meaning, allergic to analysis, hooked on trendy word-play", and "basically reformist".

Works

  • The Winter Calligraphy of Ustad Selim, & Other Poems (1975) (Ipswich, England),
  • Science and Technology in Islam (1976) (with Leonard Harrow)
  • Traditional Modes of Contemplation & Action (1977) (editor, with Yusuf Ibish)
  • Nasir-I Khusraw: 40 Poems from the Divan (1977) (translator and editor, with Gholamreza Aavani),
  • DIVAN (Crescent Moon Press, 300 signed and numbered copies, 1978) (poems, London/Tehran)
  • Kings of Love: The Poetry and History of the Nimatullahi Sufi Order of Iran (1978) (translator and editor, with Nasrollah Pourjavady; Tehran)
  • Angels (1980, 1994), (abridged edition: )
  • Weaver of Tales: Persian Picture Rugs (1980) (with Karl Schlamminger)
  • Divine Flashes (1982) (by Fakhruddin 'Iraqi, translated and introduced with William C. Chittick; Paulist Press (Mahwah, New Jersey)),
  • Crowstone: The Chronicles of Qamar (1983) (as Hakim)
  • CHAOS: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism (1985) (as Hakim Bey; Grim Reaper Press (Weehawken, New Jersey))
  • Semiotext(e) USA (1987) (co-editor, with Jim Fleming)
  • Scandal: Essays in Islamic Heresy (1988) (Autonomedia (Brooklyn, New York)),
  • The Drunken Universe: An Anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry (1988) (translator and editor, with Nasrollah Pourjavady),
  • Semiotext(e) SF (1989) (co-editor, with Rudy Rucker and Robert Anton Wilson)
  • Rants and Incendiary Tracts (1989) (his writing is featured in the final chapter)
  • The Universe: A Mirror of Itself (1992?) (Xexoxial Editions (La Farge, Wisconsin))
  • Aimless Wanderings: Chuang Tzu's Chaos Linguistics (1993) (as Hakim Bey; Xexoxial Editions (La Farge, Wisconsin))
  • Sacred Drift: Essays on the Margins of Islam (1993) (City Lights Books (San Francisco))
  • The Little Book of Angel Wisdom (1993, 1997), ,
  • O Tribe That Loves Boys: The Poetry of Abu Nuwas (1993) (translator and editor, as Hakim Bey),
  • Immediatism: Essays by Hakim Bey (AK Press 1994; cover by Freddie Baer)
  • Pirate Utopias: Moorish Corsairs and European Renegadoes (1995, 2003) (Autonomedia (Brooklyn, New York)),
  • Millennium (1996) (as Hakim Bey; Autonomedia (Brooklyn, New York) and Garden of Delight (Dublin, Ireland)),
  • "Shower of Stars" Dream & Book: The Initiatic Dream in Sufism and Taoism (1996) (Autonomedia (Brooklyn, New York)),
  • Escape from the Nineteenth Century and Other Essays (1998) (Autonomedia (Brooklyn, New York)),
  • Wild Children (1998) (co-editor, with Dave Mandl)
  • Avant Gardening: Ecological Struggle in the City & the World (1999) (co-editor, with Bill Weinberg),
  • Ploughing the Clouds: The Search for Irish Soma (1999),
  • TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism, Second Edition (2003) (as Hakim Bey; incorporates full text of CHAOS and Aimless Wanderings; Autonomedia (Brooklyn, New York)), (cover by Freddie Baer)
  • Orgies of the Hemp Eaters (2004) (co-editor as Hakim Bey with Abel Zug),
  • rain queer (2005) (Farfalla Press (Brooklyn, New York))
  • Cross-Dressing in the Anti-Rent War (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs chapbook, 2005)
  • Gothick Institutions (2005),
  • Green Hermeticism: Alchemy and Ecology (with Christopher Bamford and Kevin Townley, Lindisfarne Press (2007)),
  • Black Fez Manifesto as Hakim Bey (2008),
  • Atlantis Manifesto (2nd edition, 2009), Shivastan Publishing limited edition
  • Abecedarium (2010),
  • Ec(o)logues (Station Hill of Barrytown, 2011),
  • Nostalgia/Utopia with Francesco Clemente (Hirmer Publishers, Mary Boone Gallery, 2012),
  • Spiritual Destinations of an Anarchist (2014),
  • Spiritual Journeys of an Anarchist (2014),
  • Riverpeople (2014),
  • Opium Dens I Have Known with Chris Martin (2014), Shivastan Publishing limited edition
  • Eclogues (Pilot Editions, Publication Studio Hudson, 2014),
  • Anarchist Ephemera (2016),
  • False Documents (Barrytown/Station Hill Press, Inc., 2016),
  • Heresies: Anarchist Memoirs, Anarchist Art (2016),
  • School of Nite with Nancy Goldring (2016),
  • Night Market Noodles and Other Tales (2017),
  • The Temple of Perseus at Panopolis (2017),
  • Vanished Signs (2018),
  • Lucky Shadows (2018),
  • The New Nihilism (Bottle of Smoke Press, 2018),
  • Utopian Trace: An Oral Presentation (2019),
  • The American Revolution as a Gigantic Real Estate Scam: And Other Essays in Lost/Found History (2019),
  • Cauda Pavonis: Esoteric Antinomianism in the Yezidi Tradition (2019),
  • Hoodoo Metaphysics with Tamara Gonzales (Bearpuff Press, 2019),
  • Polyphony (60 copies printed on Risograph at Publication Studio Hudson, September 2019, 2nd Edition)
  • Mohawk Anglican Freemasons (Publication Studio Hudson, 2020)
  • False Messiah: Crypto-Xtian Tracts and Fragments (2022),
  • Peacock Angel: The Esoteric Tradition of the Yezidis (2022),

References

Further reading

  • Rabinowitz, Jacob. Blame It On Blake: A Memoir of Dead Languages, Gender Vagrancy, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Corso & Carr (2019), . Section 6, comprising four chapters, pages 155–179, concerns Peter Lamborn Wilson / Hakim Bey.
  • Greer, Joseph Christian. "Occult Origins: Hakim Bey's Ontological Post-Anarchism". Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies 2 (2014).
  • Sellars, Simon. "Hakim Bey: Repopulating the Temporary Autonomous Zone". Journal for the Study of Radicalism 4.2 (2010): 83–108.
  • Armitage, John. "Ontological anarchy, the temporary autonomous zone, and the politics of cyberculture: a critique of Hakim Bey". Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 4.2 (1999): 115–128.
  • Ward, Colin. "Temporary Autonomous Zones". Freedom (1997).
  • Bookchin, Murray. Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm. Edinburgh: AK Press, 1995.
  • Shantz, Jeff. "Hakim Bey's Millenium". Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research 15 (1999).
  • Rousselle, Duane, and Süreyya Evren, eds. Post-anarchism: A Reader. Pluto Press, 2011.
  • "An Anarchist in the Hudson Valley: Peter Lamborn Wilson with Jennifer Bleyer", July 2004 interview from The Brooklyn Rail.
  • Audio of 1993 talk featuring Hakim Bey.
  • "Interview: Hakim Bey: Sexual Revolutionaries and the Temporary Autonomous Zone", Roots of Rebellion audio interview with Hakim Bey. Interviewer Alex Megelas, December 15, 2007.
  • J. Christian Greer, "Hakim Bey", Chapter 43 in Christopher Partridge (ed.), The Occult World (2014).
  • "Living Under Sick Machines". Peter Lamborn Wilson/Hakim Bey in conversation with Jarrett Earnest. The Brooklyn Rail, June 2014.