The following is an outake from my Hauntologies manuscript. It no longer seems to really fit, but maybe someone can find some use for it. It’s on William Gibson’s Agrippa (A Book of the Dead)

Such a flickering status enacts a central concern to the whole project. Kevin Begos’ stated goal with the whole project was to criticize the way the art world worked; the increasing value which works of art gained as time passed, the almost religious connotations given to a work of art and the whole capitalist inflection of buying, selling and re-selling art simply in order to turn a profit (“Kevin Begos on Agrippa (A Book of the Dead)”). In other words, what Begos was dissatisfied with is what we also know as the aura of the work of art, as articulated by Walter Benjamin in his famous essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936). By creating a work of art that would die in the process of reading and viewing it, this auratic process would be circumvented and disrupted. They did this by making a book that would literally die and disappear and so lose its value.

Walter Benjamin’s argument about the aura of a work of art is of course well-known, but it is worth rehearsing here, to read it against the Agrippa project. Benjamin’s basic argument is that the aura of a work of art comes from its “presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be” and that the “presence of the original is the prerequisite of the concept of authenticity. (Benjamin 1969, 220), which is equally important. The unique authenticity of the work of art comes from the fact that it cannot be reproduced, it cannot exist in more than one place at a time and that only the original can be authentic.

At first glance, Agrippa fulfills all of these criteria and it is also evident that due to the limited print run of both the deluxe edition (fewer than 95) and the standard edition (an unknown number of copies, certainly less than 350). The fact that every deluxe edition was hand-bound (by Karl Foulkes) and then signed by both Gibson and Ashbaugh further increases the aura of the book and makes every book unique, as well as a truly collaborative project with several ‘authors’ or creators (Hodge 2005). Although Agrippa is thus in one way mechanically reproduced and so should have no aura in Benjamin’s sense, it’s uniqueness and rarity means that it has ended up as an object with a very strong aura. Seeing the actual book thus takes on a deep meaning of authenticity. As Benjamin points out,

reproduction as offered by picture magazines and newsreels differs from the image seen by the unarmed eye. Uniqueness and permanence are as closely linked in the latter as are transitoriness and reproducibility in the former. (Benjamin 1969, 223)

The very unique nature of Agrippa thus provides it with an aura of an authentic art object which cannot be reproduced. This much is certainly true; the complicated process of making the book and the fact that the poem encrypts itself as we read it, means that the book cannot be reproduced without losing its uniqueness. Conceptually and performatively Agrippa is a transitory object, since it disappeared from public circulation after its publication and since the poem will vanish upon execution. Agrippa is thus a very strange aesthetic object; it is both unique and transitory at the same time. In fact, its uniqueness is dependent on its transitory nature, on its very act of disappearance. In other words, the work of art enacts its own death and exists only as a ghost –  the aura of Agrippa becomes spectral, a function only of its own death and disappearance. Agrippa is authentic only because of its death, since that is its very aesthetic device – to die and exist only as a memory. Benjamin argues that the

authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced. (Benjamin 1969, 221)

Agrippa, particularly the poem “Agrippa”, certainly had a substantive duration but most of what we are examining (here and what others have examined elsewhere) is the history of the poem; the corpse of the poem as we may now find it on Gibson’s website, as well as the permutations it underwent before its interment. But this deathly existence, this disappearance of the book (if only of the readable text that it contained), is not as rare or unusual as we might imagine. Peter Schwenger cites Maurice Blanchot as an inspiration for the entire project, and further argues that a “book never realizes its desired full presence; its realization occurs only and paradoxically through absence” (Schwenger 1995, 278). The realization of the book occurs only through its absence. That is exactly what Agrippa (re)enacts and makes explicit; yet, this absence is what Schwenger (citing Sartre citing Mallarmé, plenty of ghosts lining up here) terms a “resonant disappearance” (Schwenger 1995, 278). Resonant because it generates and creates meaning; as Victor Vitanza points out (writing explicitly about Agrippa):

The centermentalist idea here is a book disappears. It is not about a professor selling his books; it is about a writer sky-writing, that is, writing the disappearance. “Writing” that doubly disseminates and dissipates. It is about remembering is forgetting. (Vitanza 2001, 81, italics in original)

Disseminates and dissipates. Only by dissipating, by disappearing, can the book become what it was meant to be: a textual and digital ghost. The material form of the book and the poem both attempt to enact the theme of the poem; it attempts to become what it thematizes – the passing of death into memory. Yet there is something which we should keep in mind here and that is the already planned rarity of the book as physical object – even the small edition was only meant to be produced in 350 copies, a print run which is exceedingly low, especially considering Gibson’s status at the time as a bestselling author. Furthermore, the fact that the book was supposed to disappear and that the poem can only be run once before being lost, it is rather evident that the book and accompanying floppy diskette would become extremely collectible. With the print run being cut off before completion and no records of the actual number of copies made and the fact that only three copies plus one inspection copy being accounted for, the book has in fact become more of a sacred object imbued with more aura and uniqueness in time and space than is the case for most books published.

Certainly, when I went to the New York Public Library on November 5th, 2009 it felt more like a quest for a long lost artifact than going to read a book. With the need for a special appointment, sending my research ahead for the librarians to judge if it was worthy, being required to hold up my newly acquired New York Public Library Card against the glass door before it being unlocked so that I might enter, handing over my bag, ensuring that I only brought pencil and a notebook (no exploding pens in here), finally being presented with Agrippa and pieces of foam to place it on so that the table would not damage the book, this certainly felt like a Work of Art – more like the Mona Lisa than a novel. Because of the rarity and scarce circulation of the book, it has also been natural for most critics who have worked on Agrippa to primarily focus on Gibson’s poem and its logic of disappearance and transmission. While most have invoked the physical book and its unusual status no serious work has really been done on the book or on the connection between the book and the poem-program; yet it is clearly evident that much of the aesthetic effect resides in the book and in the space generated between the book and the poem-program. In order to fully appreciate the work, we need to analyze this hauntological space and the status of the book.