Specters of Marx
Derrida's 1993 reflection on Marxism after the Cold War — hauntology and the New International
Tradition: Deconstruction / late post-Marxism / political philosophy
Derrida's 1993 'Specters of Marx' — hauntology, the New International, and 'one must read Marx' after the fall of the Wall
Delivered as a keynote at the 'Whither Marxism?' conference at UC Riverside in April 1993 and expanded into a book published in October 1993 by Galilée (English translation by Peggy Kamuf published 1994 by Routledge), 'Spectres de Marx: l'état de la dette, le travail du deuil et la nouvelle Internationale' (Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International) is Derrida's late, sustained reflection on Marxism after the fall of the Soviet bloc. Against Francis Fukuyama's 1992 'The End of History and the Last Man' triumphalism (Fukuyama is one of the book's principal polemical targets), Derrida argues for a 'hauntology' (a deliberate pun on ontology — the spectre haunts being from the outside, refuses to be reduced to presence) in which Marx's spectres continue to haunt the present. The book contains four major movements: (I) the defence of the necessity of reading Marx — 'It will always be a fault not to read and reread and discuss Marx'; (II) the analysis of the 'ten plagues' of the new world order — Derrida's polemical catalogue of contemporary planetary crises (unemployment, exclusion, economic war, market deregulation, foreign debt, arms race, ethnic war, mafia organisations, the limits of international law, the new conjuncture); (III) the work of mourning and the spectres that resist mourning; (IV) the 'New International' — Derrida's proposal for an emerging non-party, non-class, non-national community of those who refuse the triumphal-capitalist consensus, bound together by a 'messianic without messianism' — a structure of expectation without determinate content. The book is the most explicit late-Derrida political-philosophical intervention; it shaped the post-1989 left-wing reception of deconstruction.
Author
Editions cited
- Spectres de Marx: l'état de la dette, le travail du deuil et la nouvelle Internationale (Galilée, Paris, October 1993)
- English trans. Peggy Kamuf, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International (Routledge, 1994)
- Critical responses: Michael Sprinker (ed.), Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx (Verso, 1999)
- Companion engagements: Antonio Negri, 'The Specter's Smile' (in Sprinker, 1999); Jameson, 'Marx's Purloined Letter' (in same)
School Embodiments
Defining late-deconstructive intervention in political philosophy.
"There is no future without the spectre — and no spectre without inheritance." (Specters of Marx, ch. 1)
Major post-Cold-War rereading of Marx.
"It will always be a fault not to read and reread and discuss Marx." (Specters of Marx, exordium)
Critical engagement with the post-1989 conjuncture.
"The plagues of the 'new world order': the ten plagues." (Specters of Marx, ch. 3)
Late post-structuralist political thought.
"Hauntology, not ontology, names what is at stake." (Specters of Marx, ch. 1)
'Messianic without messianism' — Levinasian-Benjaminian register.
"A messianic without messianism — a structure of expectation without determinate content." (Specters of Marx, ch. 2)
Historicist sensitivity to the post-Cold-War conjuncture.
"To inherit Marx is to inherit a task, not a doctrine." (Specters of Marx, exordium)
Continental-philosophical tradition.
Post-structuralist tradition.
Internal Tensions
Late Derrida's most explicitly political book; coined 'hauntology', deeply influential on post-1989 left-wing thought. The hauntology concept has been continuously productive (Mark Fisher's 'Capitalist Realism' 2009 and 'Ghosts of My Life' 2014 build directly on it); the 'New International' framework has shaped subsequent radical-democratic political thinking.
I. Time
April 1993 conference keynote; October 1993 French publication; 1994 English publication. The book appeared four years after the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and two years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991).
Attributes
II. Space
UC Riverside (conference venue) / Paris. The intellectual space is the post-Soviet conjuncture in which Marxist intellectual traditions were being widely declared obsolete.
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III. Matter
Single late monograph (~270 pages in Kamuf's translation). Form is sustained philosophical-political-rhetorical essay; Derrida's late-prose style combines extended close reading (of Marx, of Shakespeare's Hamlet, of Marx's Communist Manifesto) with direct political engagement.
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IV. Observer
Late Derrida. The observer-philosopher is the most prominent post-structuralist intellectual making an explicit political-philosophical intervention in the post-Cold-War conjuncture.
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V. Energy
Political-philosophical energies of the post-1989 conjuncture. The book combines deconstructive analytical method with the most direct political engagement of Derrida's late career.
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VI. Information
Single volume, expanded from a lecture. The four major movements (necessity-of-Marx / ten plagues / work of mourning / New International) provide the central informational structure.
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Personas that cite this work
Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint
Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.
Computed school proximity
The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.
How Specters of Marx resolves each dilemma
48 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 16 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 9 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas, all mainstream
Matter · 7 dilemmas · 5 distinctive
What stuff is — fundamental, relational, or appearance.
Observer · 37 dilemmas · 5 distinctive
Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.