A Party in the Desert or a Polis on the Playa?

A version of this piece was originally published in Volume 6 of HA: The Journal of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and the Humanities at Bard College (2018).

A key area of interest to Hannah Arendt was the concept of freedom, and how it does or does not emerge in the context of human community. In particular, she saw the emergence of freedom as rare because the necessary context “does not always exist, and although all men are capable of deed and word, most of them . . . do not live in it.”

As a participant in Burning Man annually since 2010, it seems to me that the organizers have happened upon a formula that generates a community conducive to the emergence of the kind of freedom celebrated by Arendt. In this essay, my aim is to use Arendt’s political theory as a way of understanding the qualities of the public realm intentionally created at Burning Man, while also exploring how the structure and rules of the event make it a kind of lab where Arendtian freedom can emerge. I conclude that this temporary community — with its emphasis on participation, performances, art, and limitations on commerce — is as much a polis on the playa as it is a party in the desert.

The “playa” is a dusty, white, hot, flat, alkali seabed devoid of visible life that is part of the Black Rock Desert located north of Reno, Nevada…