Nowadays, in order to be (the more so in order to have), it is not necessary anymore to have a social life. It is enough to make an appearance. And the ideal place for making an appearance is a place created for the sake of appearances - television. The paradox is that an appearance in this place (not a place stricto senso, being, rather, of its nature an anti-place) is the simplest guarantee of vanishing. Contemporary philosophers can call upon the ‘metaphysics of presence’ and ‘naturalism’ (it’s no accident these arguments have their place in the present), ‘to be’ and ‘to appear’ are terms in radical opposition. Someone who ‘appears’ ‘is’ not. A person who appears on television is given at the most a ghostly existence, an appearance of existence. The dialectic turn-about allows us to assume that vanishing itself can be a way (possibly the only one) to slip from social machinery that enslaves and annihilates reality. If everything disappears (which cannot be denied), it is maybe worth trying to vanish in the face of this general vanishing, instead of vanishing together with it. The surrealists would say that this is above all a moral issue…Vanishing does not have to be escapism. The Roma (who know what’s what) say: ‘everybody has a right to a place in the shadows’. Maybe this is a revolutionary postulate in keeping with our times? Just in case - let’s not take leave just yet.
Introduction to Disappearing: A User’s Manual
