Specters of Marx

Specters of Marx is a major new book from the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. It represents his first important statement on Marx and his definitive entry into social and political philosophy. Specter' is the first noun one reads in The Manifesto of the Communist Party . In Specters of Marx , Derrida questions the spectropoetics that Marx allowed to invade his discourse and undertakes this task within the context of a critique of the new dogmatism and new world order' that have proclaimed the death of Marxism and of Marx. Noting its resemblance to the manic discourse that prevails in what Freud called the triumphant stage of mourning work, Derrida likens this jubilant and obscene display ( the body is rotting in a safe place; long live capitalism') to an exorcism and a conjuration. This disavowal attempts to neutralize a spectral necessity, but also the future of a spirit' of Marxism. Derrida argues that there is more than one spirit of Marx and it is the finite responsibility of his heirs (and we are all heirs of Marx) to sift through the possible legacies, the possible spirits, reaffirming one and not the other. How, Derrida asks, does this critical discernment relate to the deconstructive demand of responsibility? This question leads the book across the geopolitical and technoscientific space in which the deafening disavowal of Marx is being proclaimed today. Derrida articulates a stunning reading of Marx's spectrography' not only with the chain of a deconstructive discourse but also with the themes of inheritance and messianism. Under the sign of Hamlet's famous complaint, The time is out of joint,' Specters of Marx is above all the token, or the untimely wager, of a position-taking: here, now, tomorrow.