The slogan of the ZAD is ‘ZAD partout,’ (‘ZAD everywhere’), a goal which, however desirable, is ultimately impossible. The ZAD’s emphasis on self-sufficiency obscures the visitors who bring money and alcohol, the supermarket that doesn’t lock its bins, the factories which made the tyres for the barricades, which are all absolutely indispensable elements of the ZAD. The ZAD is self-reflexive but it is not self-sufficient. There’s no doubt that the 200 inhabitants are capable of looking after themselves. They are doing a superb job of growing their own food and organising a complex and peaceful community in a relatively small area of land. But their pride in this achievement ignores that their relations with the outside world, however fragile and minute, maintain the ZAD to an extent beyond that which they would like to be the case. The ZAD, which sets itself against the outside world and simultaneously relies on the outside world to exist, is in contradiction with itself.
kinda cool