Disclaimer: This essay is a philosophical investigation into concepts of invisibility, spatial autonomy, and secrecy. All terms — including "infrahuman," "ideal crime," and "conscience hacking" — are used exclusively in an analytical and metaphorical sense. The text contains no calls to action, nor does it advocate or instruct in any illegal activities. Historical examples are cited solely for academic analysis, not as models for emulation. This work belongs to the tradition of critical philosophy examining autonomy and social control — a legitimate field of academic inquiry. The author explicitly rejects any extremist or criminal interpretations of this text. This is speculative philosophy, not practical guidance.
The Invisible Man
Synopsis
Central Thesis
Three paradoxical phenomena have never received recognition in any legal system: the right to invisibility (jus invisibilitatis), the right to inviolable space, and the right to secret societies. The state rejects them because they undermine the foundation of power — the ability to see and control. Yet these unrecognized rights become the tactical arsenal of the infrahuman — a subject acting within the system but outside its field of vision.
Architecture of Three Rights
Right to Invisibility
From Gyges' ring in Plato to Édouard Glissant's right to opacity — philosophy has always known: invisibility is power. The modern system demands total visibility of citizens while remaining invisible itself (Foucault's panopticon). Practices of disappearance: Japanese johatsu ("evaporated people"), digital anonymity through Tor, Barlow's Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace.
Right to Inviolable Space
From "my home is my castle" to Hakim Bey's concept of Temporary Autonomous Zones. Power destroys any attempts to create autonomous space — from the Waco siege to the dispersal of Christiania. But the utopia continues: micronations like Sealand, squats, digital nomads create distributed presence without fixed points.
Right to Secret Societies
From Masonic lodges to cypherpunks — secret societies have always frightened power with their unverifiable goals and parallel loyalties. Modernity has birthed new forms: crypto-anarchists, Anonymous, closed mesh networks. "Anonymity for the weak, transparency for the powerful" — the slogan reverses the logic of control.
The Infrahuman and Their Tactics
The infrahuman doesn't request these rights — they take them as instruments:
Invisibility as weapon: stealth attacks, social noise generation, coordinated banality. Thousands buy three left shoes — the system sees the pattern but not the meaning.
Emptiness as infrastructure: ephemeral bases, absence as protective dome, empty communications through P2P and mesh networks. No address — no pressure point.
Secrecy as indescribable action: the ideal crime that the system cannot classify. Action at the edge of meaning, Aesopian language, hacking one's own conscience.
Infra-sovereignty
The three elements together form an architecture of personal autonomy:
- Invisibility — exterior walls of one-way glass
- Space — foundation where strangers cannot tread
- Secrecy — hidden communications within
This is undeclared sovereignty of the person, realized de facto through skillful use of system gaps.
Provocative Conclusion
The spread of infra-tactics means a power shift from institutions to individuals. The system may intensify repression (chipping, total control) or adapt (right to pseudonyms, private zones without cameras). More likely — a prolonged arms race: better facial recognition versus better masks, quantum cryptography versus quantum hacking.
"The infrahuman doesn't wage frontal war with the system — it's enough to be one step ahead, in shadow."
Question for Contemplation: If personal autonomy becomes not a right but technical reality through encryption and anonymity, can the state preserve its monopoly on sovereignty? Or are we moving toward a world of multiple micro-sovereignties, where everyone has their own inviolable shadow?
The contemporary world actively recognizes numerous human rights and freedoms, yet three paradoxical phenomena have nowhere received full recognition: the right to invisibility, the right to the inviolability of one's own space, and the right to secret societies (or more broadly — the right to secrecy).
These rights are codified neither in constitutions nor in international declarations, and state power traditionally rejects them. Why does this happen? Perhaps because these phenomena conceal something subversive to the established order — the human capacity to hide from the system's all-seeing eye, to create an autonomous zone beyond its control, to unite in an impenetrable community.
Reflecting on these unprecedented and audacious rights, we will turn to their philosophical and historical-cultural examination, and then consider them as strategies for my infrahuman — a subject who acts while constantly residing in the "infra" space, that is, in the system's underground.
Finally, we will attempt to synthesize these themes and present how invisibility, empty space, and secrecy might compose an architecture of personal autonomy — a kind of new sovereignty — and assess whether the existing order is capable of responding to this.
The Right to Invisibility (Jus invisibilitatis)
Philosophy of invisibility. The idea of the right to invisibility implies that a person could, at will, fall out of society's and the state's field of vision — become invisible in a literal or figurative sense. In myths, invisibility was often linked with power: one need only recall the cap of invisibility or Plato's Ring of Gyges. The ring's bearer, becoming invisible, committed evil with impunity — the philosopher hinted that morality becomes questionable when no one sees you.
In the contemporary context, by invisibility we understand rather anonymity, privacy, freedom from surveillance. Édouard Glissant introduced a related concept — the right to opacity. He insisted that people and cultures have the right to remain incomprehensible and unclear to others: "We demand the right to opacity!" — wrote Glissant, responding to opponents who accused him of "barbarism" for refusing to be fully understood.
The right to be not fully read, not completely visible — this is, according to Glissant, the condition of genuine freedom and equality in relationships. If the classical liberal tradition demanded recognition and visibility for minorities, Glissant went further: he demanded the right not to be reduced to a transparent schema at all, not to dissolve in another's gaze.
Historical-cultural paradoxes. Despite the resonance of this idea, no legal system recognizes a direct "right to invisibility." On the contrary, states increasingly demand total visibility of citizens. As research on the right to anonymity notes, authorities today aim to "eliminate anonymity, irresponsibility and impunity on the Internet," justifying this through the fight against crime.
The state argues: whoever hides is likely plotting something sinister. Hence — mandatory passports, registration at place of residence, street cameras, internet surveillance. The partial realization of the right to invisibility — the right to online anonymity — is also under attack: many countries are introducing laws on user de-anonymization, obligations for websites to know their authors, prohibitions on encryption without government access.
In public space, the principle also operates: the face must be visible. In some jurisdictions, laws against masks at protests have existed for years — for example, bans on wearing masks at demonstrations (originally enacted against the Ku Klux Klan, later applied against left-wing activists). Visibility is presented as a condition of trust and security — so says power.
Yet power itself contains an irony: as Michel Foucault observed, the modern surveillance system (panopticon) is based on the principle that power itself remains invisible while forcing its object of observation to be visible. The prison warden or surveillance camera operator remain hidden, while prisoners or citizens are in the crosshairs. The invisibility of power is considered normal (secret services, investigative secrecy, anonymous corporate owners), but the invisibility of the subordinate — beyond the law.
The right to invisibility thus threatens to invert the disposition of power: to make invisible not the strong but the weak, not the controller but the controlled. It's no surprise that states resist this right, painting frightening pictures: "If we allow people to hide, terrorists and criminals will take advantage, chaos will ensue."
Utopias and practices of disappearance. Despite the absence of legal recognition, utopian thought and countercultural practices have repeatedly attempted to embody the right to disappearance. In the digital age, a programmatic manifesto sounded: John Perry Barlow in 1996 proclaimed the independence of cyberspace from governments. "Governments... you have no sovereignty where we gather," — declared Barlow, announcing that global cyberspace does not obey the laws of matter and borders.
This was a declaration of the right to digital invisibility from the "weary giants of flesh and steel" — an attempt to create a world where identity could act under a nickname, concealing face and body. Barlow's utopia partly materialized in ecosystems like the dark nets: the anonymous Tor network, cryptocurrencies, shadow markets. In the early 2010s, the DarkNet flourished — a secret internet with unregistered sites (.onion), where one could communicate and trade relatively invisible to authorities. The notorious Silk Road marketplace emerged, where under the cover of encryption, everything forbidden was traded. This was a brief utopia of invisibility, dispersed by the FBI — Silk Road's founder was arrested, and the myth of complete online anonymity was partly debunked (intelligence services learned to de-anonymize there too).
Yet technology continues to improve: encryption, cryptocurrency mixers, zero-knowledge proof systems — all aimed at allowing a person to present to the world only what they wish, concealing the rest. One could say that an engineering of invisibility is occurring — people are constructing instruments of concealment from observation.
Not only technologies, but entire cultures have practiced disappearance. In Japan there exists the phenomenon of 蒸発 (johatsu) — "evaporated people." Every year tens of thousands of Japanese consciously disappear, severing ties with their former lives — they are called johatsu, "the evaporated." Since the 1960s the press has discussed them, and special firms have even emerged to assist in disappearance, "night movers" (yonigeya), who will secretly remove you from your home and start a new life for you.
The motives of johatsu vary: debts, shame, domestic violence, the desire to start over. Their numbers especially grew after the 1990s crisis — when "The Complete Manual of Disappearance" (1994) was published, instructions for those wishing to lose visibility. In essence, this is a quiet realization of the right to invisibility: there is no law, but there is a social crack into which a person can evaporate.
A similar spirit of "voluntary disappearance" existed in the West too — say, in 1960s culture: the slogan "turn on, tune in, drop out" called for dropping out of society, becoming invisible to the System. Some went to communes, some to the forest, some lived under false names. Authors of dystopias and manifestos also fantasized about a world where a person has the right to be unaccounted for. Thus, in cyberpunk novels one finds the idea of the "right to identity erasure" — when upon reaching adulthood everyone can officially delete all data about themselves and begin life with a clean slate, without dossier or number. For now this is fantasy, but it's symptomatic: the right to invisibility — an ancient desire taking new technological forms.
Cases and confrontations. In reality, attempts to become invisible encounter the system's resistance. For example, the right to be forgotten — a softer version of the right to invisibility — is partially recognized (in Europe one can achieve deletion of one's data from search engines), but constantly collides with freedom of information conflicts.
Another example — masks at protests: the Anonymous movement with its Guy Fawkes mask sought the symbolic right to be unrecognized. At protests against Scientology in 2008, people in masks protested while protecting their identity from repression, and it worked — the mask became an emblem of a new tactic of civil disobedience. But laws responded with prohibitions: in France after the "yellow vests," harsh penalties were introduced for wearing masks at rallies, and in several US states (New York, California) old prohibitions on masking in crowds remained in effect until recently. Thus, the right to invisibility remains a utopian right: it is not recognized, but a kind of struggle continues for it — technological, cultural, political. It challenges the fundamental principle of disciplinary society — the principle "to make visible is to make governable."
Jus invisibilitatis as natural right
Applying Locke's natural rights methodology, invisibility can be conceptualized as a fundamental right existing prior to state recognition. Natural rights flow from human nature itself — the right to self-preservation includes preserving psychological integrity against unwanted observation, the right to liberty encompasses freedom from surveillance, the right to property extends to informational property.
Developing the concept of "Jus invisibilitatis" parallel to other natural rights, we discover its universal scope — all people possess this right by virtue of their humanity. This right has an inalienable character — it cannot be surrendered or taken without consent. It exists pre-politically, independent of state recognition or grant. In the state of nature, people are not under constant observation by authorities — therefore, invisibility is the natural condition, and visibility requires special justification. Free societies presume freedom unless restriction is justified.
The synthesis of various philosophical traditions allows us to formulate the concept of Jus invisibilitatis — the right to invisibility as a fundamental natural right. This right is not a simple extension of privacy, but represents a qualitatively new level of human freedom. It includes:
Ontological dimension: The right to exist outside the categories of state legibility, preserving Glissantian opacity as a condition of genuine otherness.
Negative freedom: The ultimate form of Berlin's freedom from interference, where observation itself is understood as a form of interference.
Existential authenticity: Protection from Sartre's gaze of the Other, enabling genuine self-becoming without forced objectification.
Political resistance: The possibility of escaping from Foucault's disciplinary gaze and Deleuze's societies of control.
Recognition of the right to invisibility would have revolutionary consequences for political organization:
Constitutional protection of invisibility would require fundamental revision of legal systems, recognition of invisibility as a human right on par with other fundamental rights.
Presumption against surveillance would reverse current logic — the state would have to justify each instance of demanding visibility, rather than citizens justifying their right to invisibility.
Graduated systems of visibility would allow different levels of anonymity for different contexts — complete invisibility for private life, partial for economic transactions, temporary visibility for democratic participation.
Technological rights would include the right to use privacy-preserving tools, prohibition of forced de-anonymization, protection of the development and distribution of invisibility technologies.
The Right to Inviolability of Space: Autonomous Zones and Voids
From one's home to the autonomous zone. The idea of spatial inviolability grows from the concept of the domestic hearth, the principle "my home is my castle." Many legal systems recognize the inviolability of the dwelling: entry requires a warrant, searches only by court order, etc. But beyond the private dwelling, a person's space is not fully protected.
Moreover, even the home is weakly protected — the state need only justify suspicion, and the castle falls. In everyday life our space is permeable: police can push demonstrators from squares, city authorities demolish settlements, property can be seized for state needs. A complete right to one's own space (physical or virtual), where no one dares interfere, does not exist.
This right would mean a kind of mini-sovereignty. This is precisely why it's so dangerous to the existing order — for only the state possesses sovereignty. If an individual or group obtained inviolable space, something like a separatist principality would appear in the midst of the system.
Power against free territories. History provides numerous examples of power brutally suppressing attempts to declare the inviolability of autonomous space. In Italy's Constitution, for example, it directly states: "secret associations and any organizations pursuing political goals, even indirectly, through paramilitary structures, are prohibited."
This norm was directed not only against secret societies, but against a "state within a state," that is, any organizational spaces closed to external control (the historical motive was the scandal with the P2 Masonic lodge). In totalitarian regimes the practice is even harsher: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's USSR destroyed independent spaces — from monasteries to villages — through deportations, dekulakization, unification.
Any corner declaring itself uncontrolled is regarded as rebellion. Even in democratic countries, history shows that power invades private zones: one need only recall the assault on David Koresh's commune in Waco (USA, 1993), where the sect defended itself on its ranch — the result was a bloody siege with dozens of victims. This case exemplifies how the state relates to claims of sacred space: if you declare that the law doesn't apply to you here, they will either force you to submit or wipe you from the face of the earth.
Utopia of walls and limits. Nevertheless, thinkers and rebels have dreamed of spaces untouchable by the system. Hakim Bey described one of the most vivid concepts in his famous book — Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZ). He noted that eighteenth-century pirates created pirate utopias on distant islands — lairs beyond the reach of empires. On these islands emerged ideological mini-communities, "consciously constructed outside the law" — autonomous pirate republics of sorts, albeit short-lived. They lived by their own rules, exchanged plunder for necessary goods, and for some years successfully evaded the punishing hand of states.
Bey sees in this a prototype: an autonomous zone can flare up suddenly and dissolve, avoiding direct confrontation with power. He calls for seeking cracks in the system's monolith — temporary free territories where it cannot reach in time or which it doesn't consider important — and there cultivating one's autonomous world. This is the tactic of spatial inviolability through temporality. Not building fortress walls (they'll be broken anyway), but rather pushing back the walls of the world, creating voids of freedom. Bey gives examples: carnivals, hacker online communities, secret parties — in each case the space slips from surveillance for a time, granting participants a taste of sovereignty.
Beyond temporary zones, there have been attempts at permanent autonomous spaces. In the 1970s, hippies and anarchists proclaimed "republics" on occupied territories. A famous case — Freetown Christiania in Copenhagen (founded in 1971). A group of squatters occupied an abandoned military base and declared it an autonomous commune where Danish law did not apply. They established their own rules (for instance, permitting marijuana while banning cars and hard drugs) and even hung a sign at the exit: "You are entering the EU" — implying that inside Christiania you're outside the European Union, while outside you're back in it again. Denmark long tolerated this experiment, though never legally recognized it. Christiania became a tourist attraction — a utopia in reality. Yet it was never fully inviolable: police periodically conducted raids, especially regarding drug trafficking. Eventually part of the autonomy was lost, though the commune still exists today.
A similar case — the experiment of the "Zone to Defend" in France, at Notre-Dame-des-Landes: activists protesting airport construction created a self-governed settlement called "Zone à défendre." For several years it maintained its own governance, until in 2018 authorities dispersed the occupants with tear gas and bulldozers. These examples demonstrate: the utopia of autonomous space is attractive, but maintaining inviolability is extremely difficult — the system, as a rule, takes what's its own once it considers you sufficiently dangerous.
There have also been exotic variants of realizing the right to space — so-called micronations. Most famous is the story of the Principality of Sealand: in 1967 a former British Army major occupied an abandoned sea platform in neutral waters of the North Sea and proclaimed it an independent state (Sealand). He based this on the platform lying outside Britain's then-territorial waters. For a time it seemed he had managed to create a sovereign space of 550 m². There were even attempts at state-building — their own flag, currency, prince, and so on. Britain initially paid no attention, but later changed its laws on territorial waters. In 1978 Sealand repelled an armed takeover (a group of Germans attempted a hostile takeover of the "country," requiring defense by gunfire). Finally, as the founder aged, he sought someone to sell the platform to — but no buyers emerged, and ultimately Sealand remained a curiosity. Legally no country ever recognized it. Nevertheless the case is telling: the right to an island of freedom remains a dream — from sea platforms to plans for colonies on Mars.
Space as void. If invisibility means hiding from the gaze, then inviolable space means hiding geographically, having refuge. We see that solid refuges (with strong walls) the state sooner or later storms. The alternative then becomes void as wall. What if one makes space slippery, vanishing? Some practitioners have done precisely this. Nomadic tribes throughout history avoided control because they had no settled "address" — for them space = movement. They dissolved into steppe or desert; the state had to chase, stretching its communications, and often fell behind. Nomadism can be viewed as a prototype strategy: not defending a fixed point but avoiding the blow by not being under it. Contemporary "digital nomads" no longer claim sovereignty, but likewise illustrate: personal space becomes distributed, you are nowhere completely. If you're in one country today, another tomorrow, while work and money are on the internet, then the system struggles to establish complete control over you. This partly intersects with the philosophy of invisibility: if you are nowhere permanently — you are invisible.
Another aspect of void — the right to empty space. Is it possible to have space free from information, signals, interference? In practice now even in the wilderness a satellite signal will reach you. But counterculture offers hacker solutions: from Faraday cages (shielding from radio emissions) to retreating into the map's "blank spots." In recent years the concept of digital detox has gained momentum — voluntary withdrawal from networks for a time, to regain an ecology of consciousness-space. This is a partial realization of the right to mental space without intrusion.
Future utopias of space. In the future, special zones of inviolability might emerge — for instance, cities guaranteeing absence of surveillance (no cameras, no sensors). This sounds dystopian now, as the trend runs opposite — "smart cities" are stuffed with sensors. But as a response to total control, an elite demand might arise for "dark cities," where entry requires no devices, where no data transmits outward. This is a kind of commercialization of the right to space: you pay to remain in shadow, behind a wall. For now, the right to inviolable space remains a dream of dissidents and rebels. Perhaps the closest to it in reality — sanctuaries for information defectors like Ecuador's embassy, where Julian Assange took shelter. For seven years an embassy room served Assange as inviolable space: British police couldn't storm it due to the principle of diplomatic extraterritoriality. This case showed how dearly a patch of land beyond reach is valued: one pays for it with years of confinement.
Thus, the right to space contradicts the logic of the state, yet finds outlet in forms of autonomous zones, squats, communes, nomadic strategies. Power abhors a vacuum — but creating new voids to be free is precisely what utopians attempt.
The Right to Secret Societies: Secrecy as Resistance to Transparency
Community as secret. The human being is a social creature, and the right to association is recognized everywhere. But the right to secret association — that's an entirely different matter. Secret societies have long provoked anxiety in states and churches. From ancient mysteries to medieval orders — any groups concealing their rituals and membership were suspected of conspiracy. In modernity, the most famous secret society became the Freemasons. Their symbol — the compass and square — hints: they build an invisible architecture of brotherhood. The Freemasons first gathered openly in 1717, but by the 1730s the papacy had banned their activities, and by the late eighteenth century many European monarchs viewed the lodges with suspicion.
What frightens power about the secrecy of community? Above all, the unverifiability of purposes. If people gather secretly, it means they have something to hide — likely their political intrigues. In a secret order, people are bound by internal loyalty that may prove stronger than public laws. Thus, a secret brotherhood appears as the nucleus of an alternative power — a parallel government (not for nothing was the P2 lodge in Italy called the "shadow government"). Where there are two powers, one must perish. Therefore, no state recognizes a society's right not to report about itself to external forces.
Repressive argumentation. The justification for prohibiting secret societies typically invokes considerations of security and transparency in public life. For example, American politicians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries demanded disclosure of Masonic membership, claiming that citizens have the right to know who belongs to potentially influential organizations. Secrecy is interpreted as a threat to democracy: if voters don't know about a candidate's membership in a hidden interest group, the purity of the process is violated.
In authoritarian regimes, any unregistered circles fall under suspicion as hotbeds of sedition. For instance, in Tsarist Russia, populist circles and Masonic lodges were dispersed as illegal. In Nazi Germany, Freemasons were declared enemies of the people and repressed alongside communists. The same in the USSR: a decree of the 1920s prohibited secret societies, and anyone who didn't fit into controlled unions awaited the camps. Thus, power justifies the absence of a right to societal secrecy simply: "Nothing to hide if you have nothing to conceal. And if you're concealing — that means conspiracy."
Traditions of secret alliances. Despite persecution, secret or semi-secret communities remain an integral part of culture. These include religious sects, monastic orders, political undergrounds. In historical-philosophical terms, they have often been engines of change. Knightly orders possessed secret rites and codes that created an alternative ideology within the feudal world. Rosicrucians and alchemists of the early modern period exchanged knowledge through an "invisible college," hiding from the Inquisition. Freemasons in the Age of Enlightenment formed a network of progressives who developed ideas of freethinking at closed gatherings — precisely why absolutist regimes feared them. Subsequently, revolutionaries frequently operated through secret circles: from Jacobin clubs to Russian Narodnaya Volya. Thus, the secret society functioned as an instrument of resistance — its concealment allowed for developing utopias, uncensored doctrines, preparing uprisings. Yet simultaneously, secrecy attracted dark designs as well: criminal organizations also operate on the principle of brotherhood with initiations and vows of silence (the mafia, triads — essentially orders of the criminal world). Herein lies the duality: the right to secret alliance is a blessing for the dissident, but also shelter for the villain. Therefore society wavers: on one hand, the value of privacy is recognized (for instance, we have confidentiality of correspondence, medical confidentiality, confession — that is, the right to secrecy in certain spheres), on the other — complete freedom to unite in secret does not exist.
Dark networks and crypto-communities. In the digital era, a new type of secret society emerged — online communities of interest, closed to external gaze. This might be a closed hacker forum, a darknet cartel, or simply a private activist chat. Encryption provided the instrument: people can communicate in ways no outsider can read. The cypherpunk movement arose — crypto-anarchists who defended the right to strong cryptography. One of their slogans — "Anonymity for the masses, transparency for the powerful." From their perspective, society must invert the situation: not citizens transparent before government, but government before citizens, while individuals can remain in shadow. Cypherpunks in the 1990s distributed manifestos, wrote open-source encryption code (PGP) and created the foundations of anonymous networks. Thanks to them we have Tor, Bitcoin, Signal and other tools of secret communication. In essence, they fought for people's right to form secret digital societies. And despite attempts at control (like the FBI's demand for backdoors in all messengers), this struggle has succeeded: encryption has become a mass standard. Every WhatsApp chat is now protected by end-to-end encryption — meaning even a major corporation has recognized: the right to secret communication matters to clients, otherwise they'll leave.
Of course, authorities still find ways to penetrate the secret. Their methods — infiltrating agents, exploiting vulnerabilities, simple device seizure. But the very idea of an elusive community continues to captivate. Hence the popularity of images like "Anonymous" — a global network brotherhood without faces, where participants know each other only by nicknames and masks. Or, say, legends of the "Red Room" — supposedly existing on the darknet as a secret club where elites commit lawlessness far from view (mostly this is myth, but it reflects the fear: what if the powerful of this world have already exercised their right to a secret network?). In response, conspiracy culture offers its own utopia: a people's secret society that fights for freedom from the shadows. An example — QAnon, the mysterious internet cult: it has itself become a secret "order" of believers in some Q, who covertly executes a plan to save America. Despite the absurdity of its theories, QAnon attracted many people through the need for secret knowledge and brotherhood. This demonstrates: the social demand for secrecy is high — people want to belong to something that is intimate and inviolable to outsiders.
The right to secrecy as psychological refuge. Behind all this stands, perhaps, a basic personal need — to have something of one's own, closed off. Psychologists speak of personal space and boundaries: everyone needs a sphere where others cannot burst in without invitation. The secret society is an extension of this idea to the group: our circle — our territory, internal affairs invisible to outsiders. Traditional cultures respected this boundary (Eastern communities: the clan's internal kitchen is never brought outside). Modernity attempted to expose everything (transparent society, total control), but in response arose a yearning for new concealment.
Next, I propose we look at the three described phenomena from another angle: as strategies of action for the infrahuman — one who doesn't request "rights," but takes up invisibility, empty space and secrecy as weapons for their own autonomy.
The Infrahuman and Their Tactics: Invisibility, Void, Secrecy
Above we examined invisibility, space and secrecy as potential rights, addressed to external recognition. Now let us shift to the level of the individual or small group, operating within the system yet invisible to it. Here the concept of the infrahuman comes into play. If the human submits to norms or strives to transcend them, then the infrahuman is one who recedes into the shadow of norms, operating below, at the "infra-" level. They wage no frontal battle with the system, nor do they submit to it — they cunningly slip away, using the three categories described above as maneuvers of autonomy.
Speaking metaphorically, the infrahuman is a hacker of being. They hack through customary limitations (moral, social, juridical) so as to gain freedom of action beyond the system's predictability. In my essays on infraontology, infraethics and infraanthropology, I designated these as sciences studying the hidden, dark, subversive processes of subject-formation that evade the gaze of morality, law and official philosophy. There I also designated the study of techniques of invisibility and anonymity as one of the key divisions of infraontology. If earlier in this essay invisibility, void and secrecy were examined as desired states, now I propose to examine them as strategic techniques. Below we will show how the infrahuman employs each of these tactics — not asking permission, but performing acts.
Invisibility Not as Refuge, but as Weapon
For the ordinary activist, invisibility serves as shelter and protection from control. For the infrahuman, this is insufficient. Their invisibility is active; it becomes a weapon of attack against the system's monolith. How is this possible? Let us examine several facets.
Stealth attack. In military affairs there exists the concept of stealth — technologies that render an object invisible to radar. Such an aircraft strikes first without receiving return fire, for the enemy's radars remain silent. The infrahuman operates analogously: hidden, therefore beyond judgment — and able to attack non-obviously. For instance, a hacker-insider within a corporation, remaining anonymous, leaks compromising data to the outside world, undermining the giant from within. Until they detect him — and he carefully covers his tracks — the corporation suffers damage, not knowing where the blow comes from.
Another example — a political dissident who broadcasts illegally through underground channels. Their texts or transmissions circulate under a pseudonym; power rages but cannot catch the ghost. In this sense, invisibility transforms from defense (don't touch me, I've hidden) into an aggressive tactic: strike and vanish. Many partisan strategies are based on this principle — strike, dissolve into the jungle. In the digital era, the jungle is the network. Groups like Anonymous organize operations (for instance, DDOS attacks on government websites), remaining unrecognized. Their slogan: "We are legion, we are unreachable." This is precisely the infrahuman's position: I am invisible — therefore invulnerable — therefore I can permit myself what the visible would not dare.
Displacement of control. Invisibility as weapon operates more subtly as well: undermining the very principle of control through information oversaturation. In the era of big data, power strives to see everyone, but if the masses begin consciously masking themselves, faking digital traces, encrypting — the system will drown in "noise." The infrahuman spreads the strategy of elusiveness to break the surveillance machine. This is no longer an individual right to invisibility, but collective counter-surveillance: when everyone wears masks, facial recognition is powerless; when everyone generates false metadata, big data goes mad. Here invisibility acquires the quality of a viral weapon: a certain critical mass is sufficient, and the transparent infrastructure becomes useless.
Generation of social noise. Coordinated banality — thousands of people simultaneously perform legal but slightly unusual actions. Buy three left shoes. Transfer 1 cent to each other with the comment "debt repayment." The system sees a pattern but cannot understand the meaning. Obfuscation through redundancy — share false data about yourself everywhere, creating multiple contradictory profiles. You're simultaneously vegan and carnivore, communist and libertarian, homebody and traveler. Performative normality — flash mobs of aggressive ordinariness. Hundreds of people come to the park to read newspapers. Legal? Yes. Strange? Yes. Dangerous? The system doesn't know.
Historical examples:
Operation "Mindfuck" by the Discordians (1960s-70s) — sent contradictory information to the FBI and media, creating informational chaos. Broke no laws, simply generated absurdity in the format of mass performance. Poland's "Orange Alternative" (1980s) — organized absurd demonstrations (for instance, "in support of dwarves"), forcing authorities to react to nonsense and appear ridiculous.
Cases of conscious performativity will be examined in greater detail in my essay "Performative Forms of Freedom."
The will to disappearance. Let us return to Hakim Bey: he titled one chapter "The Will to Power as Disappearance." The paradox: usually the will to power is associated with self-manifestation, but here — conversely, with disappearance. Yet Bey is convinced: in a world where power has become simulacrum and lost meaning, to confront it directly is foolish. Better to leave the radar — thereby depriving power of the very target for applying force. The tactic of disappearance is indeed a strategy of will, according to Bey. It requires courage and determination: instead of shouting in the square and receiving the baton, the infrahuman recedes into shadow and there, beyond the baton's reach, does their work. This could be called infraactivism: actions of small, hidden groups that bypass direct confrontation yet achieve their goal by stealth.
The "Thousand Masks" strategy. Imagine not one false identity, but a cloud of hundreds of partially real identities. Each exists just enough to be plausible, but not enough to attract attention.
- Digital artist in Estonia (e-resident) - Yoga instructor in Bali (work visa) - Consultant in Dubai (freelance license) - Writer in Portugal (D7 visa)
Each identity generates small but real income, has genuine relationships, leaves traces. The system sees multiple ordinary people, not understanding this is one and the same person.
"Gray man" as philosophical position. To be a spy of normality, consciously playing the role of "ordinary citizen." Study the median behavior of your demographic group and reproduce it precisely. Buy what everyone buys, in the same quantities, at the same time. Change hobbies and preferences by season, like the majority. Summer — dacha, winter — skiing. Predictably unpredictable. Move in the rhythm of the crowd. Go to work when everyone does. Lunch when everyone does. Create the illusion of synchronicity. Perfect imitation of the norm can become a form of resistance. You perform the role of "citizen" so theatrically precise that it becomes an invisible performance.
The infrahuman can switch between modes: be a generator of chaos in one context and embodiment of order in another. The main thing — never be who the system expects to see. If the right to invisibility sounded like "leave me alone, don't look at me," then the infratactic states: "I will disappear so thoroughly you'll regret it." The invisible becomes an unpredictable factor — and unpredictability is the most frightening thing for a system built on algorithms.
Void of Space as Infrastructure of Autonomy
We have already spoken of void — the absence of localization — as a means of evading control. For the infrahuman, void is not simply flight, but engineering of space for their own needs. Here we should introduce the concept of infrastructure of autonomy: this is a set of techniques and environments in which the subject can exist parallel to official reality, practically without intersecting with it.
Ephemeral bases. The infrahuman builds their space on the principle of temporary shelters. They may have no permanent place, but they possess a network of temporary bases: today an abandoned warehouse, tomorrow a like-minded person's dacha, the day after — a hidden server in Iceland (speaking of digital space). Each such base appears and disappears before it enters the crosshairs. Together they form an invisible geography of infrapresence. For instance, performance artists operating semi-legally plan their performances literally as partisan raids on urban landscapes: the gathering point is unknown to all but insiders, everything is kept secret until the last moment — and then suddenly an event occurs in the square, after which participants dissolve. The city is left with only the ghost of an event, no trace to be found.
Absence as wall. Conceptually, the infrahuman transforms non-belonging to place into a protective dome. They have no address, which means — no point of pressure application. How to catch someone who lives nowhere permanently? It's almost like catching wind. The infrahuman might even demonstratively refuse property or rentals and move constantly — then the system can neither seize their assets nor deliver a summons to their place of residence. At the limit — they are an extra-state person: someone without permanent registration, often with multiple citizenships or entirely fictitious documents, who leaps across the world. Such people are few, but they exist — this is the type of new nomad for whom geography is a game. Of course, complete non-localization is difficult: resources and connections are needed. Yet partial non-localization is accessible to many: living in two worlds, offline and online, in different countries for half-years, having multiple small spaces instead of one large one. Ultimately the person's profile becomes smeared: they appear nowhere as a stable unit.
Empty communications. Void as infrastructure also manifests in the infrahuman's communication technologies. They prefer decentralized networks without fixed control points (like P2P networks or mesh networks that route themselves anew each time). For instance, instead of regular SIM cards — "gray SIMs," regularly changed to avoid address binding. Instead of a personal server — mirror sites across the world that flare up and fade out. This is an architecture of voids: gaps between nodes, no central node. This is precisely how the Tor network operates: traffic bounces through nodes along random routes, creating gaps in tracing, untraceability. The infrahuman, using these networks, effectively lives in void, for their digital presence is recorded nowhere in its entirety.
Aesthetics of void. Infrapractice has its own poetics. This is the aesthetics of abandoned factories, night roads, alleyways uncovered by any cameras — liminal spaces where norms do not operate. Infra-artists specifically seek such places to create freely. The wasteland becomes a canvas for graffiti, rooftops — a stage for roofers, underground tunnels — a concert hall for techno raves. I myself have always admired the empty hotel corridor stretching into infinity, intuitively finding in it a kindred space. All these actions are illegal only because they occur in others' spaces, but infrapeople transform them into no one's — temporary appropriation through use. As a result, a parallel map emerges in the city: where the ordinary person sees emptiness and darkness, the infrahuman sees their loophole and refuge.
Infraspace against total environment. The contemporary system strives to transform all space into transparent and controlled (Smart City, camera coverage, IoT). The infrahuman responds by creating infraspace — that is, space that remains undescribed in registries. This is close to the concept of the "rat path": similar to how rats squeeze through where a large beast cannot pass, infragroups use communications beneath the official city. For instance, one can live "in a bus" — constantly moving, sleeping in campgrounds: then you're sort of in the city, yet sort of not. Or work in coworking spaces under different names, not revealing your personal identity. One can even imagine an infrastructure of shadow: delivery, transport, exchange — all through unofficial channels. This partly already exists as the shadow economy or underground service. In the Soviet Union, for example, there was a parallel system of blat (informal exchange of services), which allowed people to live as if outside of scarcity. Infrasociety does something similar: creates a "second city" inside the first, where by their own rules people exchange resources without oversight.
Void as freedom of design. Why does the infrahuman value void? Because the empty can be filled with one's own meanings. If you have a space controlled by no one — physical or virtual — you can construct a new reality there. Thus, autonomous zones have often been laboratories of new life (communes practiced free love, communalization of property, etc.). In void there are no prior structures — meaning one can design from scratch. This engineering of will — the ability to consciously construct one's environment. The infrahuman is in many ways an engineer, only their engineering concerns not bridges and buildings, but relationships and personal life. Refusing the given, they create their garden in the scorched wasteland. And if they cannot hold it forever — no matter, moments are enough. In this their tactic differs from the familiar utopia yearning for an eternal city of the sun. Infra-utopia is content with temporary flashes, as long as they are real.
Secrecy as Indescribable Action
The third component — secrecy — for the infrahuman is not simply a way to hide information. It is an entire methodology of action that fundamentally escapes the categories of external morality and law. Here we approach the concept of conscience hacking and engineering of will, described by me earlier in works on the infrahuman. If the moral subject is limited by their internal censor (conscience), then the infrasubject has outwitted this censor. They have reprogrammed their will to act outside the imposed coordinates of "good/evil." As a result, their actions may be indescribable in familiar terms: neither good nor evil in the accepted sense, neither legal-illegal — they fall entirely outside existing classifiers.
The ideal crime that doesn't exist. In infraontological methodology I introduced the concept of "crime without crime" — an infralegal act, that is, an action falling under no statute. This may sound like an oxymoron, but the logic is thus: the legal system describes a finite list of the forbidden. If you commit an act that formally falls under no prohibition, yet is subversive in spirit — the system finds itself at an impasse.
Secrecy here functions as encoding of motives: externally the action is neutral or even well-intentioned, while the hidden meaning is understood only by the chosen. Example: an artist stages an action that power can interpret only as street noise, but in reality this action inspires thousands to protest. Formally they said nothing against the law — yet factually undermined its foundations. This is the ideal crime. The system cannot punish without exposing its own vulnerability.
The indescribable action is one that exceeds the boundaries of the system's language application. For power controls through language: giving names to what happens ("extremism," "rebellion," "theft"). If it cannot name — it struggles to punish. The infrahuman strives to act at the edge of meaning: for instance, using Aesopian language. Throughout history in censored societies, underground thinkers wrote so that the censor could find no fault, yet the reader understood the deeper meaning. This tradition of secret message extends into the culture of secret societies — Freemasons loved allegories and symbols comprehensible only to them. In our day this might be steganography: hiding a manifesto inside an innocent image. A revolutionary call travels incognito disguised as a cat on the internet — the miracle of secret packaging.
Conscience hacking. Secrecy for the infrahuman is also their own opacity to themselves to a certain degree. It sounds strange, but they realize: to commit audacious acts, one must suppress innate fears and internal prohibitions. Therefore they conduct work on themselves — something like hacking their own consciousness. The theses formulated in my other works: "training for overcoming conscience, algorithms for invisible action, development of a 'crypto-personality' within the ordinary person — a personality that can become invisible to society" — this is a direct reference to the practice of internal secrecy. The infrahuman carries within themselves a double — a crypto-persona whose existence no one knows about. Their apparent "I" may be an ordinary member of society, while in secret they perform their infra-actions. To live this way requires a strong psyche and will, the ability to literally switch identities. This is akin to the conspiratorial life of an underground operative, but elevated to a philosophical principle: "I am two: one — by the rules, another — by my own, and the second is always secret."
More detail about conscience hacking can be found in my essay "Conscience Hacking," as well as the conscience-overcoming training project at infrahuman.com.
Unpredictability as tactic, secrecy as force. The secrecy of the infrahuman's actions is not necessarily conspiracy with someone; often it is radically individual unpredictability. The system expects we will all behave according to set templates. The infrahuman breaks the template in the most unexpected way. For instance, the completely selfless criminal: they commit the forbidden not for gain, but according to some super-idea of their own. This stupefies the authorities (like philosophical maniacs or aesthetic hackers whom prison doesn't frighten, because something irrational to the system drives them). Such secrecy of motive is also a shield: it's difficult to fight what you don't understand.
In practical terms, the infrahuman is a master of conspiracy. They use the technologies of secret societies — ciphers, false flags, disinformation — to conceal their steps. But the difference is that they don't expect recognition or the right to secrecy, they live in it like fish in water. For them the world is divided into layers: visible banality (the screen) and underground reality (the essence). And they move virtuously between them, leaving the opponent in ignorance. This is like the art of the ninja: throw a smoke bomb — and in that moment change trajectory.
The infrahuman realizes: what the system presents as "transparent good" is actually a means of control. Therefore they reverse this: make transparency their target. Say, they expose the hidden mechanisms of power (make them apparent and thereby undermine them), while themselves remaining impenetrable. The picture turns inside out: the system is exposed (scandals, leaks, revelations), while the infragroup remains concealed. This is the asymmetric weapon of secrecy. Example — the organization WikiLeaks: it exposed state secrets but kept its informants anonymous. Even Assange's arrest didn't destroy the network — some sources were never found. Thus, the secrecy of collective action is not just defense but also offense: an attack on the monopoly of knowledge.
Infraontology: Being Inside While Remaining Outside
All these tactics — invisibility, void, secrecy — can be generalized under the concept of infraontology: a particular mode of being in which the subject is present in the system yet outside its field of vision, outside description, outside calculation. Infraontology is, in essence, the ontology of action through the back door. Official ontology — who you are, where you are, what your status is — records a person in registries, assigns them a number, a profile. But infraontology describes one who has passed behind the scenes. They're still here — but it's as if they're already not. There's a term "non-exit" — for someone not allowed to leave the country. The infrahuman, conversely, is non-entry into the registry: they cannot be fully inscribed within any border.
At the center of infraontology lie the concepts of lacuna and shadow. The infrasubject uses lacunae of reality — gaps where there is no clear structure. They exist between the lines of official history's text. This is almost a literary trope: important things happen not on the main stage but in backroom dealings, in invisible influences. The infraontological hero is the gray cardinal, the invisible conductor of events. They need no recognition; on the contrary, they are more influential the less known they are.
From the perspective of infraontology, to be unnoticed means to be free. For the visible object is always defined — labels and expectations are hung upon it. The invisible, however, is what it is, outside others' definitions. They achieve a kind of metaphysical freedom: their existence is indescribable, and therefore open to self-construction. This resonates with the existentialist idea of creating one's essence — only in an infra-manner: quietly, secretly, without entering into discussions with "judges." One could say the infrahuman has exercised the right to invisibility, space and secrecy without waiting for it to be granted. They have taken these phenomena at their own risk as instruments of engineering of will — designing their life according to their own project. Of course, such a path is elitist and dangerous. But the infra-character is often a solitary figure, marginal, ready to risk for genuine autonomy.
Personal Sovereignty and Challenge to the System
We have briefly examined separately three elements of personal autonomy: invisibility, inviolable space and secret action. Now let us combine them: together they form the architecture of infrasovereignty — a kind of parallel state contained within the individual or small community itself. In classical understanding, sovereignty is the supreme power of the state over a defined territory, with monopoly on laws and force. Here we speak of sovereignty of an individual person or group, realized not de jure but de facto, through skillful use of invisibility, void and secrecy. Such sovereignty can be called undeclared: it is not officially proclaimed, but exists as fact while its protection operates.
Architecture of autonomy. Let us imagine this architecture in figurative form. Invisibility — these are the outer walls of one-way glass: you see what happens outside, but you are not seen. Inviolable space — the foundation and inner rooms: your territory, perhaps small, but solid under your feet, where no stranger will tread. Secrecy — this is the complex pattern of communications within the building: hidden rooms, secret passages, ciphers on walls known only to inhabitants. In such a house the infrahuman feels like a sovereign ruler: though their "state" may fit in one room or inside their head, there they establish their own laws.
The future may lead to this model of personal autonomy becoming more widespread. With technological development, the individual gains instruments that previously belonged only to states: encryption (formerly secret communication was the prerogative of intelligence services, now everyone has it in their phone), surveillance (anyone can now have drones and cameras, meaning the state too can be watched), even force (personal drones, 3D-printed weapons — gradually the monopoly on violence erodes). Thus, the personality arms itself with sovereign attributes. Simultaneously, states invade ever deeper into life through digital control — the reaction will be individuals' retreat into the infrafield, as we've described. Perhaps a stratum of people will form, living by the principle of infrasovereignty: de facto they are outside jurisdiction, though geographically among us. They will be able to conclude secret contracts between themselves, exchange resources bypassing the state (say, cryptocurrency deals, offshore living). Already now the super-wealthy effectively possess personal sovereignty: they can change citizenship, dictate terms, conceal capital. Infratactics could make similar things accessible to ideological communities or loners without billions, but with will and intelligence.
The equivalent of sovereignty. If our three rights become at least partly recognized — or at minimum, commonly practiced — this will mean a new quality of freedom. A person will be able to disappear from the system, create voids within it and act secretly without being a priori criminal. This is like the emergence of personal domains of sovereignty. The aggregate of such domains won't destroy society — rather, it will make it more pluralistic and stable. For when everyone has a corner beyond oversight, the tension caused by total control diminishes. On the other hand, for power structures this is a nightmare: the fragmentation of sovereignty undermines their foundation. The state risks transforming from an all-seeing Leviathan into a blind giant surrounded by nimble invisibles. How and with what can the system respond?
System's reaction: repression or adaptation? The initial response will likely be intensified repression and control. That is, even more total surveillance, criminal punishment for any forms of concealment (as they now punish VPN use in some countries). The rhetoric might be: "only criminals want to be invisible and have secrets." The extreme scenario — technological dystopia: chipping, round-the-clock sensors on everyone, punishment for "going offline." But the paradox is that the stronger the pressure, the more valuable and inventive invisibility becomes. At some point infratactics may prevail: power simply won't see what's approaching because it has learned to mask itself perfectly. As Sun Tzu wrote, victory is possible only by remaining invisible to the enemy until the end. And the system, maniacally intensifying control, exposes itself — its vulnerabilities become visible, it becomes predictable.
There is another possible outcome: system adaptation. If a sufficiently large number of citizens desire these "new rights," smart governments might make partial compromises. For instance, introduce legal loopholes: the right to online pseudonyms (without revealing passport data), the right to private zones in cities (not equipped with cameras — say, like relaxation rooms), the right to closed communities (even now concepts exist like "commercial secrecy" or "attorney-client privilege," recognizing that groups can have secrets). Perhaps certified secret orders will appear, paradoxical as it sounds, but why not — as religious communities are given autonomy in rituals, so certain communities might be officially allowed not to reveal their internal kitchen, if they prove loyalty. However, such half-measures will likely not satisfy infrapeople in spirit — for recognized secrecy is no longer quite secret. For if it's allowed, then one no longer desires it: all the charm is in the forbidden.
The likely main effect of spreading infratactics is a shift in the balance of power from institutions to individuals. Personal autonomy will become not just beautiful words but technical reality. The system may prove unable to take full control of the new generation of "infra-nomads" — they are too diffuse and mobile. Then the social contract itself will need revision. Instead of the paradigm "state — above, human — below," a more networked order will emerge where the personality also has zones of sovereignty that no one touches. This resembles the concept of "personal digital sovereignty" discussed by futurologists: when each person manages their own data and privacy, while the state is merely a guest in these domains.
However, perhaps no peaceful treaty will emerge, and we will long be immersed in a battle of visibility and invisibility. On one side — omnipresent sensors and profiling algorithms, on the other — clever masking algorithms, simulacra, and infrasubcultures. This will be a peculiar arms race: better facial recognition — against better masks and makeup disguises; quantum cryptography — against quantum hacking. In this race, infralogic doesn't seek to destroy the system, it's enough to stay one step ahead, in shadow.
Interestingly, if such infrasovereignty is widely realized, the concept of system will also change. Power will no longer be able to identify itself with totality — it will have to acknowledge the existence of insoluble remnants, black spots on the map. This is essentially a return to a pluralistic world where much is hidden. Initially this frightens (seeming a step back from transparency and security), but in the long term it may prove beneficial: people will reclaim personal depth and freedom of self-expression, which are possible only beyond universal surveillance.