Sylvère Lotringer, 1938-2021

Sylvère Lotringer’s life been celebrated as a ‘total work’ – a lived embodiment of the radical theories he did so much work to disseminate and promote. His commitment to an art of living, his embodiment and dissemination of thought, and his cultural experimentation have been widely affirmed – with the ‘primary text’ of his life often eclipsing his published work; as Gayatri Spivak put it: ‘an example of how this kind of philosophy is also an act of the mind, of life, of how to actually live philosophically rather than simply think in a certain way’.1 Semiotext(e) press is also celebrated as his great life’s work – although the singular approach and sensibility that he instilled in it makes it impossible to understand as an individual creation. Like so much of his work, Semiotext(e) is a shared project, as Sylvère would often insist. This situation also allowed him to perform a kind of disappearing act on himself. The many tributes that have appeared following his death have shown his multiplicity, but his ‘personal’ writings and projects (about which he would no doubt have said that there is nothing ‘personal’) have to some extent disappeared from view. The ‘total’ lifework can obscure the work in which he was energetically engaged throughout his life.