Reconciling Derrida: 'Specters of Marx' and Deconstructive Politics

Abstract

Reflects on the politics of deconstruction as presented in Jacque Derrida's Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International (1993), arguing that his attempt to reconcile Marxism with deconstruction forsakes all familiar categories of political Marxism & bases the reunion on messianic grounds filled with religious imagery. Specters refers to William Shakespeare's ghost of the dead father, finality of the death of Marxism, & the implication that deconstruction is Karl Marx's heir. The themes of "inheritance" & "mourning" are explored, along with the paradox of "manic triumphalism" over the collapse of communism; deconstruction as a radicalization of Marxism; & motifs of spectrality & debt. It is noted that the paradox related to Derrida's notion of "historicity" affiliated with messianic affirmation debunks all forms of organized politics associated with Marxism. Further, Derrida describes his "New International" in terms of what it is not, rather than what it is, or could be. He restates the methodological individualism & voluntaristic notion of politics common to deconstruction but adds a tone of religious suffering that is contrary to deconstruction's self-affirmation of the past. J. Lindroth