Ghosts of Marx

Derrida is undoubtedly one of the most original thinkers of our time. Derrida was not directly involved in structuralism, which was especially influential in French culture in the 1950s, and in the Marxist, critical and self-critical discussions that followed. After reading Plato, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger and Freud, he emerged on the intellectual scene with "deconstruction", which is also known with his name. This complex conceptual mechanism was a tool suitable for analyzing the mechanism of the history of Western thought and related cultural, political, technical practices and attitudes. Deconstruction was created in dialogue with the cultural environment in question as well as with the ghosts of the past.

Derrida spoke about Marxism with Ghosts of Marx in 1989, after the wall collapsed and at a time when even the man on the street said that Marxism was buried under the ruins of the wall. He responded with an analytical assessment to the triumphant cry of liberalism and democratic governments as they currently exist, and to Fukuyama's declaration of the "end of history," an old Hegelian theme. He argued that Marx's legacy should be re-read and appropriated within the framework of a messianic theme separate from religious messianism. With this attitude, which he took at a contrary time, he declared that he remained faithful to a certain "spirit of Marxism". He began to read Marx with a new perspective through Shakespeare and Max Stirner, whom he loved very much. He even proposed a "New International": timeless and positionless, nameless and titleless, barely public if not secret, contractless, uncoordinated, partyless, stateless.... a "counter-sedition" union.

In Marx's Ghosts, topics such as "time separation", "time going out of control", "existence's inability to coincide with itself", "alienation", "commodity", "fetish", "increasingly complex tele-technologies and the problem of prosthesis" are discussed. Derrida argues. It goes to the roots of the logic of ghosts and haunting, which is why these living problems cannot escape the poetics of Marxism.

According to Derrida, Marx outlines a logic that can be called "stage logic". But in order to overcome this, this sketch is drawn with the irony and pleasure brought by the belief in the assumption of a "real" world outside this logic, where time is resettled and justice is ensured. This connects him to a messianic vein. Marxist criticism allows itself to establish such ideal oppositions between the "authentic" and the "fake." However, deconstruction leans on Marx's plural spirits while emphasizing the irreducibility of the ideal and the "ghostly" that makes criticism itself possible.

If Marxism has more than one soul, it transcends the ontological categories of to be or not to be. In this case, the real reason for fear is that the diagnosed "death" lacks certainty. Then there arises the need to protect the secret of a ghost for the sake of justice and the future, which cannot be reduced to a given law.



Number of Pages: 268

Year of Printing: 2001


Language: Turkish
Publisher: Details Publications

First Print Year: 2001

Language Turkish