This book addresses the question: what happens after the betrayal? And it comes after the orgy of Why hasn't JB already disappeared (Delere Press, 2017): keeping in mind that the title is in the form of a statement, and not a question; even though the quest constantly haunts what is stated, and remains with us -- quite possibly -- as l'intelligence du mal. For, even as writing on someone, even in homage, is always already a writing on, writing over, perhaps even a writing-out of someone, it is also an addition of, an adding of, something onto; where writing is a scratching into a surface, at the very same time as something is scratched out of a material, from a medium. Thus, writing on JB, about JB, is quite possibly literally writing JB's disappearance. And, where what is read, can be read, is perhaps what allows itself to be seen, to be glimpsed at -- the remains of the skin which comes to us; the simulacrum, as it were. Where the very disappearance happens in the appearance: otherwise we could not even know of its possibility. Where the very art in the notion of « the whole art is to know how to disappear before dying and instead of dying lies in the artifice called disappearance itself. Which opens the possibility that my reconciliation with JB -- our making up, as it were -- could lie in nothing other than make up itself.
![[Given, If, Then]: A Reading in Three Parts](/covers/9780692298374.jpg)
