Peter Lamborn Wilson | |
|---|---|
 Wilson, circa 1970s | |
| Born | (1945-10-20)October 20, 1945 Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. |
| Died | May 22, 2022(2022-05-22) (aged 76) Saugerties, New York, U.S. |
| Resting place | Woodstock Artists Cemetery inWoodstock, New York |
| Other names | Hakim Bey (pen name) |
| Awards | Firecracker Alternative Book Award, 1996 (forPirate Utopias)[2] |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | |
| Main interests | |
| Notable ideas | |
| Signature | |
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Peter Lamborn Wilson (October 20, 1945 – May 22, 2022) was an Americananarchist author and poet, primarily known for his concept ofTemporary Autonomous Zones, short-lived spaces which elude formal structures of control.[3] During the 1970s, Wilson lived in theMiddle East and worked at theImperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy under the guidance of Iranian philosopherSeyyed Hossein Nasr, where he explored mysticism and translated Persian texts. Starting from the 1980s he wrote numerous political writings under thepen name ofHakim Bey, illustrating his theory of "ontological anarchy".
Wilson was born in Baltimore on October 20, 1945.[4] While undertaking a classics major atColumbia University, Wilson metWarren 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 theMoorish Orthodox Church. The Church maintained a presence at theLeague for Spiritual Discovery, the group established byTimothy Leary.
Appalled by the social and political climate, Wilson decided to leave the United States, and shortly after theassassination of Martin Luther King Jr., in 1968 he flew to Lebanon, later reaching India with the intention of studyingSufism, but became fascinated byTantra, tracking downGanesh Baba. He spent a month in aKathmandu missionary hospital being treated forhepatitis, and practised meditation techniques in a cave above the east bank of theGanges. He also allegedly ingested significant quantities of cannabis.[5]
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. InQuetta he found "a total disregard of all government", with people reliant on family, clans or tribes, which appealed to him.[5]
Wilson then moved to Iran where that he developed his scholarship. He translated classical Persian texts with French scholarHenry Corbin, and also worked as a journalist at theTehran Journal. In 1974,Farah Pahlavi Empress of Iran commissioned her personal secretary, scholarSeyyed Hossein Nasr, to establish theImperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy. Nasr offered Wilson the position of director of its English language publications, and editorship of its journalSophia Perennis, which Wilson edited from 1975 until 1978.[5] He would go on to also publish on theNi'matullāhī Sufi Order andIsma'ilism withNasrollah Pourjavady.[6][7]
Following theIranian Revolution in 1979, Wilson lived in New York City, sharing a brownstone townhouse withWilliam Burroughs, with whom he bonded over their shared interests. Burroughs acknowledged Wilson for providing material onHassan-i Sabbah which he used for his novelThe Western Lands.[5]
In later life, Wilson lived in upstate New York in conditions he termed "independently poor".[4] He has been described as "a subcultural monument".[8]
Towards the end of his life, he showed an interest in theBābī religion, especially in itsAzali form. This was mentioned in his two final books published in early 2022.[9][10]
Wilson died of heart failure on May 22, 2022, inSaugerties, New York.[4][11][12]
Wilson's occasional pen name ofHakim Bey was derived from il-Hakim, the alchemist-king, with 'Bey' a further nod toMoorish Science. Wilson's two personas, as himself and Bey, were facilitated by his publishers who provide separate author biographies even when both appeared in the same publication.[13]
InImmediatism (1994), a compilation of essays, Wilson explained his particular conception of anarchism and anarchy, which he calledontological anarchy.[14] 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.[14]
Unlike traditional anarchism, which might seek a new form of order, ontological anarchy asserts that no "state" can truly exist within chaos, rendering all governance impossible. The goal is not a "Revolutionary" institution, but a continuous evasion of power and a pursuit of the excessive and strange.[14] In the same compilation, Wilson discussed his view of individuals' relations to the outside world as perceived by the senses, and a theory of liberation that he called "immediatism."
Wilson wrote articles on types of what he called temporary autonomous zones (TAZ), of which he said in an interview:
... "the real genesis was my connection to the communal movement in America, my experiences in the 1960s in places likeTimothy Leary'scommune inMillbrook ... Usually only the religious ones last longer than a generation—and usually at the expense of becoming quite authoritarian, and probably dismal and boring as well. I've noticed that the exciting ones tend to disappear, and as I began to further study this phenomenon, I found that they tend to disappear in a year or a year and a half.[15]
He wrote about TAZs at length in the bookTAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism,[16] published byAutonomedia in 1991.[4] At the time of his death the book had sold over 100,000 copies and was the publisher's perennial bestseller.[4]
Wilson took an interest in the subculture ofzines flourishing inManhattan 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'..."[17]
HisTemporary Autonomous Zones work has been referenced in comparison to the "free party" orteknival scene of therave subculture.[18] 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."[19]
According to Gavin Grindon, in the 1990s, the British groupReclaim the Streets was heavily influenced by the ideas put forward in Hakim Bey'sThe 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 networkPeoples' Global Action during the25th G8 summit meeting in Cologne, Germany.[20]
Some writers have been troubled by what they took to be Bey's endorsement of adults having sex with children,[21] which included writing forNAMBLA's newsletter.[22]Michael Muhammad Knight, a novelist and former friend of Wilson, stated that "writing forNAMBLA 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."[23][24] In a compilation of memorial tributes inThe Brooklyn Rail published a few months after Wilson's death, many writers defended Wilson and rejected the accusation of pedophilia.[25] 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".[25]
Murray Bookchin included Wilson's work (as Bey) in what he called "lifestyle anarchism", where he criticized Wilson's writing for tendencies towardsmysticism,occultism, andirrationalism.[26]Bob Black wrote a rejoinder to Bookchin inAnarchy 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".[27]
He doesn't know that I've read the NAMBLA poems orCrowstone or that I would have a problem with it. I'm not a liar yet, because at least I'm trying to work this out for myself. But it doesn't look good. I try to see it as Sufi allegory, a hidden parable somewhere in all the porn, like Ibn 'Arabi's poems about Nizam or Rumi's donkey-sex story. Does anyone accuse Rumi of bestiality? Apart from the uglyzahir meaning, the surface-level interpretation, there could be a secretbatin meaning, and the boys aren't really boys but personifications of Divine Names. It almost settles things for me, but 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. The historical settings that he uses for validation, whether Mediterranean pirates or medieval fringe Sufis, relate less to homosexuality than to prison rape: heterosexual males with physical and/or material power but no access to women, claiming whatever warm holes are available. What Hakim Bey calls "alternative sexuality" is in fact only old patriarchy–the man with the beard expressing his power through penetration. His supporters might dismiss "childhood" as a mere construction of the post-industrial age, but Hakim Bey forces me to consider that once in a while, I have to side with the awful modern world.
Though still indebted to Wilson for publishingThe Taqwacores, Knight has disavowed his former mentor due to Wilson's advocacy of paedophilia/pederasty. While standing up for an Islam that embraces all sorts of heresies, Knight has felt compelled to draw boundaries of his own.
