Jean Baudrillard: Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? (2007/2009)

“Behind every image, something has disappeared. And that is the source of its fascination,” writes French theorist Jean Baudrillard in Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? In this, one of the last texts written before his death in 2007, Baudrillard meditates poignantly on the question of disappearance. Throughout, he weaves an intricate set of variations on his theme, ranging from the potential disappearance of humanity as a result of the fulfillment of its goal of world mastery to the vanishing of reality due to the continual transmutation of the real into the virtual. Along the way, he takes in the more conventional question of the philosophical “subject,” whose disappearance has, in his view, been caused by a “pulverization of consciousness into all the interstices of reality.”

Interspersed throughout the text are photographs by Alain Willaume that help illustrate Baudrillard’s argument. Baudrillard insists that with disappearance, strange things happen—some things that were eliminated or repressed may return in destructive viral forms— yet at the same time, he reminds us that disappearance has a positive aspect, as a “vital dimension” of the existence of things.

Originally published under the title Pourquoi tout n’a-t-il pas déjà disparu ?, Editions de L’Herne, 2007
Translated by Chris Turner
With images by Alain Willaume
Publisher Seagull, 2009
The French List series
ISBN 1906497400, 9781906497408
72 pages

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PDF (updated on 2012-7-29)

Michel Houellebecq: The Map and the Territory (2010–) [EN, FR, DE, NL]

The Map and the Territory is the story of an artist, Jed Martin, and his family and lovers and friends, the arc of his entire history rendered with sharp humor and powerful compassion. His earliest photographs, of countless industrial objects, were followed by a surprisingly successful series featuring Michelin road maps, which also happened to bring him the love of his life, Olga, a beautiful Russian working—for a time—in Paris. But global fame and fortune arrive when he turns to painting and produces a host of portraits that capture a wide range of professions, from the commonplace (the owner of a local bar) to the autobiographical (his father, an accomplished architect) and from the celebrated (Bill Gates and Steve Jobs Discussing the Future of Information Technology) to the literary (a writer named Houellebecq, with whom he develops an unusually close relationship).

Then, while his aging father (his only living relative) flirts with oblivion, a police inspector seeks Martin’s help in solving an unspeakably gruesome crime—events that prove profoundly unsettling. Even so, now growing old himself, Jed Martin somehow discovers serenity and manages to add another startling chapter to his artistic legacy, a deeply moving conclusion to this saga of hopes and losses and dreams.

La carte et le territoire
Publisher Flammarion, Paris, 2010

English edition
Translated by Gavin Bowd
Publisher Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2012
ISBN 0307701557, 9780307701558
288 pages

Review (Alex Clark, The Guardian)
Review (Benjamin Kunkel, London Review of Books)

Wikipedia (EN)
Publisher (EN)

EPUB (French, updated on 2014-9-14)
EPUB (English, updated on 2014-9-14)
EPUB (Dutch, updated on 2014-9-14)
EPUB (German, updated on 2014-9-14)

Semiotext(e), 3(2): Schizo-Culture (1978)

“Semiotext(e) began in 1974 as a journal started by French philosopher Sylvère Lotringer in an effort to bridge radical French theory and the intellectual and art worlds of New York City. The original editorial board included ten people, mostly graduate students at Columbia University where Lotringer teaches, who chipped in fifty dollars apiece to get the journal started. They held their first conference in 1975: the Schizo-Culture conference on prisons and madness. Speakers included Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Michel Foucault, and Jean-François Lyotard, now all staples of the Semiotext(e) backlist.” (from Wikipedia)

With contributions by Kathy Acker, Lee Breuer, William Burroughs, John Cage, David Cooper, Gilles Deleuze, Douglas Dunn, Richard Foreman, Michel Foucault, John Giorno, Phil Glass, Christopher Knowles, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Ulrike Meinhof, Jack Smith, Robert Wilson, and others.

Edited by Sylvère Lotringer
Publisher Semiotext(e), New York, 1978
ISSN 00939579
221 pages

PDF (8 MB, updated on 2013-12-8)

See also Semiotext(e), 3(1): Nietzsche’s Return (1978).