Profiles of Legendary Anarchists #3

Profiles of Legendary Anarchists #3
Profiles of Legendary Anarchists is a recurring feature of P-CRAC's News and Information Blog

Peter Lamborn Wilson aka Hakim Bey
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Peter Lamborn Wilson (b. New York, 1945) is an American political writer, essayist, and poet, perhaps best known for first proposing the concept of the Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ), based on a historical review of pirate utopias. He sometimes writes under the name Hakim Bey. (The pseudonym may or may not have been a name-of-convenience used by other radical writers since the 1970s, and is a combination of the Arabic word for 'wise man' and a last name common in the Moorish Science Temple. Bey is a generic word for a gentleman in Turkish generally used after a name and Hakim means "Judge.")

He spent two years in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and seven years in Iran (where he was affiliated with the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy), leaving during the Islamic Revolution. In the 1980s, his ideas evolved from a kind of Guénonist neo-tradionalism to a synthesis of anarchism and Situationist ideas with heterodox Sufism and Neopaganism, describing his ideas as "anarchist ontology" or "immediatism". In the past he has worked with the not-for-profit publishing project Autonomedia, in Brooklyn, New York.

In addition to his writings on anarchism and Temporary Autonomous Zones, Wilson has written essays on such diverse topics as Tong traditions, the utopian Charles Fourier, the proto-national anarchist Gabriele D'Annunzio, the connections between Sufism and ancient Celtic culture, sacred pederasty in the Sufi tradition, technology and Luddism, and Amanita muscaria use in ancient Ireland.

Bey's poetic 'texts' and poems have appeared in: P.A.N.; Panthology One, Two, and Three; Ganymede; Exquisite Corpse; NAMBLA Bulletin; the various Acolyte Reader paperbacks. Many of these poems, including the 'Sandburg' series, are collected in the as-yet unpublished DogStar volume. Currently his works can be found regularly in publications like Fifth Estate and the NYC-based First of the Month.

Bey's translations include a volume of the poems of Abu Nuwas, O Tribe That Loves Boys. He has also published at least one novel, The Chronicles of Qamar: Crowstone (a sword and sorcery boy-love tale) (Coltsfoot Press, 1983).

Wilson is a controversial figure within the anarchist milieu. Many social anarchists denounce his ideas as "lifestyle anarchism", seeing his ideas as a kind of extreme individualist anarchism that is ultimately apolitical. Many atheist and materialist anarchists dislike the tendency toward mysticism, occultism, and irrationalism in his work. He is also reviled by some anarchists for his defense of spiritual pederasty.

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