Autonomy and Alliance: Dialectics of the zad

In its withdrawal from the territory and control of the state, the zad (“zone à defendre”) at Notre-Dame-des-Landes (2009–2018) presents a singularly durable instance of the Temporary Autonomous Zone, as theorized by Hakim Bey in 1991, and more recently a feature of Black Lives Matter protests in several US cities. In the case of the zad, this autonomy frames a very different mode of existence from the independence it appears to name: here, relations are understood as alliances of diverse actors, whose agency is precisely not autonomous, but derived from this relationality and dedicated to its cultivation. Such alliances characterize in particular the zad’s commitment to the ecosystems of its territory: inhabitants of all kinds emerge alongside one another as actively sustaining the diversity of these systems, against the monocultural logic of the surrounding political and economic regime which pursues their destruction. And in turn, such alliances nurture and compose the combat by which the zad is obliged to protect its autonomy. Drawing on writing by the zadistes, and situating the zad’s ecological solidarities in relation to the work of Malcom Ferdinand and Jean-Baptiste Vidalou, this article tracks this dialectic, in which autonomy and alliance are less opposed than mutually constitutive.