Micronations of the Caribbean

Abstract

A micronation might be located in an apartment, a garden, or a caravan, on a pile of sand or a submerged reef. Some are born of social discontent and idealism; others are created by pranksters, for a laugh; still others from the desire to avoid paying tax; some are fraudulent money-making schemes; and some charge a fee for citizenship, or even a noble title. All are performative fictions - inventions - unrecognised by other 'legitimate' nations. Micronations generally are speculative. The online Invent-a-Micronation Contest organised by Building Blog, is dedicated to architectural as well as urban speculation, and to landscape futures. Its 2009 winner was a member of the Barricades Commission, 'an urban micronation made of reclaimed and barricaded space' inspired by the Paris Commune of 1871. Constructed from 'permanently borrowed' materials, it was intended to 'take shape from the wreckage of a world it helps dismantle'. Micronations in this sense might be considered post-colonies - in Achille Mbembe's sense: the 'thing that is, but only in so far as it is nothing' - erupting out of that 'closure of the map' which was the historical result of geographical imperialism, or what Hakim Bey calls 'territorial gangsterism'.