Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?

Translated by Chris Turner 'Behind every image, something has disappeared. And that is the source of its fascination...' With disappearance, strange things happen - not least, the return in malign, viral form of some of those things that were eliminated or repressed.

Yet it also has a positive aspect, as a 'vital dimension' of the existence of things.

In this, one of the last texts written before his death in March 2007, Baudrillard meditates poignantly on the question of disappearance.

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 project of world mastery to the vanishing of reality through the transmutation of the real into the virtual.