Specters of marx the state of the debt, the work of mourning, and the new international Jacques Derrida translated by Peggy Kamuf with an introduction by Bernd Magnus and Stephen Cullenberg Routledge > New York and LondonPublished in 1994 by Routledge 29 West 35 Street New York, NY 10001 Gres 998 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London ECAP 4EE lation © 1994 by Rovtledge. red in Pench as Spurs de Mara, © Editions Galles, Copyright © 1998 hy Routledge ne in the nized States of America All rights reserved. No parcof this book may be reprinced or reproduced Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publicnion Daa Dersda, Jacques peceres de Marx. Englis of Spectes de Mars Includes index ISBN D-415.91044-7 — ISBN 0-815.91085-5 (pbk) 1 Mars, Kas 853. 2.Communism. 3. Post-comounisn, 1 Tide HXY9SDIGI3 1998 94-20864 335.4 de20 cr. British Library Cataloguing-in-Poblicaion Dats a available [ ‘ contents editors itroduetion reonthews« dedication = exordium 1 | injunerions of marx 3 conjuring —narei ” swears and tears blesw ofan ageless world) 77 in the name of the revolution, the double barricade mapue “impure impure history of ghosts") 9 apparition of the ineppareut the phenomencl ores 177 index 197editors’ introduction Tn the wake of the orgy of self-congratulations which followed the 1989 crumbling of the Berlin Wal Soviet Union, and a series of confrontations perhaps forever to be capeured 12 subsequent dissolution of the best in ‘Tiananmen Square in the image of a single individual blocking the the Western dei idence ane popularity of Francis Fukuyam: eend of history hhand, thae the fure—ifehat word could still be said to have the same to become the global triumph of free marker economies, time many of us felt a vague sense of foreboding, « haunted sense that international changes of such magnitude were as likely to result,cceESONSE a and perhaps for a long time co come, in transformations as malign asthe xe benign, Some of us grew tired more quickl the many hasty postmortems of Marxism, as if the virtually global sm and Marxism referred to the very same thing, different times a faces as well ast different chinkers. And yet, ic seemed to many that the collapse of com id the Saviee ion, as well as democrat Europe wurgenci bad created a new world onder Pe hhad proclaimed thar the ideological and political al the global community prior to 1989 must now be rethought and restractured, butjuse as signifi ning in 1992, and the cos sans from George Bush to Véclay Havel ices which structused Less dramatic be economic integration of Europe iaued economic growth of Japan and the emergence of South Korea, Taivan, and Singapore as economic forces have all profoundly changed nd pol scapes. The meaning and consequences of these changes are of vital the meaning of past verities and developing new the- retical approaches, Among the central contested issues What remains of the + vision(s) after the “collapse” in 1989? Has the collapse of Iso spelled che death of Marxism, and of Marx as an important ical thinker? Have we indeed reached “the end of his- jes reign supreme? Is Seandinav narker capi ye future now to be simply @ -style social democracy on the one hand, and unrestrained free h care, environmental degradation, and enormous sional debt burdens—what sort of model lor the future do we have? And which have a the wake of che collapse of communism, not to mention virulent perhaps not seen since Hitlee’s Germany? What does this imply, then, about the fature structure and fane~ ning of the global economy and life shroughouc our shared world? What I ( | SERIE ew international tensions will emerge and what will be the nature of theo- retical and political discourse as we approach the wwent must ask such questions and to whom muse they be addressed? intellectuals in the Marxist cradition respon est century? Who theo- How ‘Bucope and the former Soviet Union affected the way 1 the global transformations now occu inteltectuals, scholars, and government officials in chose countries and around the world reconceive their intellectual and political projects? What is «© be the status of Marxist social goals chat informed so many Marxist thinkers and ionaries throughout che world—the egalitarian distribution of eased workplace democracy, the end of economic exploitation social rev of clase differences—given the current rush to various Eastetn Burope, Russia, and China? Does the end of history” also portend the end of Marxist theory? What i dead in Marxism? In Ocwwher 1991 began a conversation at the University of California, at Riverside's Center for Ideas and Society, about whar it might be like to have # conference ‘would not consist éfyet another autopsy administered mostly by Anglophone ‘economists and policy anslysts who typic: are very far from the sites of struggle and transformation, We wondere location, so to speak, understand cheir circumstances, both historically and philosophically. We decided to convene a multinational, multidisci "Whither Marxism? Global Crises in International Perspective"—which ‘would include distinguished thinkers and participants from China, Russia, Armenia, Poland, Romania, Mexico, Germany, France, the United States and, elsewhere. Equally importans, ie seemed to us significant to provide a for which one of the most famous and influential contemporary philoso- and the erad iving and what is iment charged by such questions, several of us jow our colleagues on ry conference— hers —Jacies Dertida—couldreflet on the conference's topic, something he int We thought shat such a sustained reflection on Marx by Derrida would be of rot yet been able to do in a sustained and systematic way intrinsic as well s historical imp ryganized and managed by the Center for Ideas and Society at the University of California, Riverside. lebegan on Thursday, April 22, 1993 with Jacques Derrida’s plenary address and ended on Saturday,. TARTAN ERATED n evo parts on the evenings specters of Marx: The State of the the New International, is the basis ofthe he same name; and this longer ver~ 8 Derrida says—is no less marked by that 1 interlocutors than is the original plenary address. deed, impossible, to convey in summary the many specters thar haunt the texts of Marx, and, through him, of Dercida, Here we would merely wish to note that in this cext Derrida takes sion—“augmensed, clarified. oceasion, set don for a certain spicit of Mar thing, always already noted that, for Derrida, shat “decor ves within a certain spirit of Marx. It should also be speaking of a cectain spitit of Marx Jacques Derrida’s Specter of Mure: The Stare ofthe Debi, the Work of Mourning, ‘andthe New International intend to be in conversation with and supple- mented by its companion volume of conference essays, Whither Marxism? Global Crises in ternational Perspective. This second volume contains selected conference essays by Ashor K, Galoian, Keith Griffin and Aziaur Rabman bdul JanMohamed, Douglas Kelines, Andrei Marga, Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolf, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Sb Shaozhi, Carlos M. Villas, and Zhang Longsi While some ofthe esays ure in directconversaton with the text of Decrida, the force of his argument, whether they intend to do so or not. Specifically and telege from Dersidas Spectr of Marx (1) The proper names “Marx” and/or Marxism have always already been plural nouns, despite their grammatical form, and despite the Fact that they ically, at least four points of contact emerge wd its companion volume Whither Marsizn? wve been understood as if they were rigid designators, (2) “communism turalities) is not the same as 3) both communism nd Marxism ate historically sited, situated, inflected, mediated by particular traditions and histories (4) the proper name "Marx" is—in a certain sense— maces 7 entirely uncircumventable, “The purpose of these two volumes, Speers of Mare and Whither Marion? js eo begin to address questions shout the connection between the death of ism and the fate of Marxisen. The volumes raise these questions in jonal and incerdisciplinary context. Their goal is aot simply to pro- Marxism, nor is it simply to defend Marxism dace another postmortem 0 against its critics. Rather, these volumes, each in its own way, explore the effects thac the global crises engendered by the collapse of communism has pad on avant-garde scholars, many of whom have lived through and often par- these transitions themselves, sicipaced Bernd Magnus and Stephen Cullenberg| note on the text ‘Ac he origin ofthis work was a lectute given in evo sessions, Apeil22 and 23,1993, at the University of California Riverside. That eetare oguium organized by Bernd Maga and Stephen Cullenberg under the ambiguous tle “Whither Maexsno”in which one may beat beneath the quesdon “Where is Marxism going?” another question: “Is Marxism dying” ‘hugmented lrified the presen ext nevestheles resin the argument tive tuetare the rhythm, and the oa orn ofthe lecture. Notes wore added tates of couse A few new develapaentsappenein square bracketsdedication Ohne nme fr amabe, part forth eke: the Apart can beans be reed as a ety. ite pas as yer pa fondenaton, hays decipher throngh its ingaarity the sort. Stone par ease, cect vampl hari bappning rere ress at ace dere alas bee, wherever oe rand heres onl ler me But one shoald never speak ofthe asrassinaton of a man ar a figare not even an exemplary figure in tbe logic ofan emblem, a rhetoric of the flag ar of martyrdom. 6 me as bs death, will aways be ware than a paradign and semetbing other tha a symbol, And this is prectely what a proper name sbould abways namend acd basing reconrve toa comms wow, recall rhs iti 0 communist as such a communist ax communist, whom 6 Polish is ut to death afew days ere eat to get acon ‘manist. They were trying to interrupt negotiations and sabotage an ongoing ‘This popnlar bera ofthe resirtance against Apartheid became das~ intolerable, ie seems, a ue mament in hich, basing decided to Party riddled with co 1Caned perhaps any of role be might one day have held in a country feed of Apartheid Allo me t salar the memory of Crit Has and co dedicate this lecture tim exordium Someone, you of me, comes orwa and sys: Faldo ara mean? And why“ out of context—but a context, alvays, remain jent—this watchword forms an lips ofa master this watchword would always say something about le and asymmetricalss ae XG sR UII ae ‘af generations “Tila gevting ready to speaka se and gen- length about} heri in otbers who are side us eis in the is no longer, Jot present, nor presently name of jute Ofjustice w iene is no longer pnsen, and where i something 0 ore than the law, reduc Suis ‘TE Oaie from eo e to laws of rights, essary cand with And yet nothing is more necessary than th Who are nor yet the, prese learn co live—along, Rom oneal by OHeTEIE LATE Toe oe Low Tready dead or not yet born. No justice—tet us igeke a re Ghose, can only talk with or never present as such The time o self. Now, if this quest se only from the Future (whither? where ry present, would amount to “bith ghosts, in the where are we upkeep, the conversation, merce without commerce of ghosts. T more justly: But with be and the other absolutely aCee TAIT he questi heve jt, must carry beyond pre be the same thing for the feof others, as i was nderstands by this .ctval present: “aon,” raze imievie}, panel races and traces of races, a survival whose possl ‘The time is our of joint Hamletom 1 injunctions of marx 1 Hames .Swoare Gut (emt Sweare With all my loue t dae commend me to yous And shat poore: Doe texpresse his loue and Giending ro you, Tacke Let us goe in together, wan a8 Hams “The sime i out of foym: Oh cussed si “Thar ever | was borne co secie right Nay come e's ge together: [Exerr Act scene v | i | God i j (Bue mainsaining now jsadjusted now, “our of [maintenant] without conjuncture. A disjoinced or joint,” a disajointed now that always risks maintaining nothing together in the assured conjunction of some context whose border would still be deter- rminable) “The specters of Mars. Why this plural? Would there be more than one of them? Plar dum [More than one/No more one]: this can mesn a crowd if not masses, the horde, or society, or else some population of ghosts with or with~ ‘or without a leader—but also the fers ‘our a people, some community wit ‘han one of pute and simple dispersion, Without any possible gathering vopeth xs animated by a spirit, one wonders who would cer Then, ifthe specter is alby their name ‘Specters of Mars, been printed, they were memory; specter” Exordium act: “Bin Gespenst geht um Asin Hamlet, the beginning of the play, he comes he first time on stage, does nor come to, itd ‘one day, Europe, a the movement of le would open the space and the least since the Middle Ages. he experience of the fing sound of | snealogy, in the nocturnal noise ination, the rumbling ther descendant would be Valery. Sbkerpare gui léry(and a few others) Bur what goes on berueen th Da, then fort, exit Marx. In “La cs chally earth of Champagne the granice ear indy of specters. Bat universal peace. And gmat Mars, ui gmt. Hale does iif he abandons then... Will he cease wo be hime! renmare to call shespirit of pirix™ As Valéry quotes man.” At chis pot theone we have‘ LENE ATES coETOENar esa erations of spits, Valéry re st three thing. These three the vitor afer: we de not see who looks 2¢ us very Armour be had or more, a least not by be presupposed by everything we in Marx and elsewhere. As here issomething disap» | nofthedeparted The | werosharpenthisdif” acd toa certain exchange- cy of a proper body wichout out of ignorance, buc because is being-there of an absent or That caacemns us [pl oar COATATT TS aS jawCh WS ph fing to-an absolute anteriority (which may be ‘ofder of generation, of more than one generation) and asy accordingmore than one of them. leave our, we see it cover from head 10 f body of the father: We do not know wheche e society or Une com le catch the Conscience of the King, precisely where he separates from ch, how ve hin (contract of secession, ne reports to Hi fou? Barnard a y Lord, from head co foote”) ‘Then Hamlet gets to the head, o the face, and especially the look beneath the visor Asif he had bees hoping @ «eces from head to foot, the ghost would have shown ne muse stay in ies place. Ina sa belonged ("Whose was 2, Next, one cannot speak of yenes "Vallry underscores te sprit.wo cA AAT ATT what way would itbe si | | | ' aseasteaTm is ching appes the Ghost, Ener the Ghost as before quest always “Then Enter the Gos sulalleca, Tanti 1 ae nor always in the most ‘would comprehend them, but incomprehensil 10 amprebendn a course ofthe end or the discourse about heen Csi / Saree Ger be comprchonded Rnd ths Gppaa be : the expected rerun trical apparition already marked a repetition,2 ara Ra tion, or the complex of Marvallus, ‘The latter was perhay alas would not be able to speak 1 ago, but the singularity of a place of speech, of a place of experience, and of links from hich alone one may address oneself tothe ghost. “Thou arta Scholles— speake tit, Horatio” he says navel, as fhe were taking pac ina colloquium. Hea sual aothe manofeuluare, the nesessary distance nid and the newspapers of incomparable way in the 1e whose powers were analyzed in such ifs. And few vexts have shed speake, ct “Tchange thee” he experience of fought in os with otherremains, and soit will remain—absoluie- tion has the same age as we do, In pa my case, opposed, tobe sure, de fit many young. say sone. The ‘ 4 i q | | | i after the (Civ was on te one band, the ce Haaser of te wid France, untess those with whom I shared. ique expe: the media parade of current often like a tiresome anachrot someness, moreover, comes and sees, whats most mediated in Western capitals As for those who abandon h the 1 of youthful enthusiasm, they tle asic were p ye last eran after ke latocomers, ference Is perhaps one of the questions that should be asked of those who ar last train of the but who find te 10 the apocalypse and to t out of brea not parliamentarism and ‘which isto say in far, We are going to‘essay from 1959 whose author al pul in 1957, The Last Man, About thirty-five years ago, then, of Philosophy,” to a good ccees inc logy were given av eps In Mas, gathering force Separated and more dh 1 feel himself failing in everythi Hamnler—and of any inhesi sj comes rare-to-come as much asa ot wha it aflinms but defecsing— you everbe cles | 1 | | j i | / | a | (a power without Fe cornTag OF the event, is Future-to-come itsell Taig Shakespeate fore, Duc | cantor hear ince Mars,”history, world Phe time is out ofl acknowledge the fap hatalfoos them, This gaps ‘of a masterpiece, a work of genius, a zing of the pri which precisely seeens to ongince tif [Singénier}. Whether evil or Venvers” the world is upside down.” This “a Venvers” is, 20 be closer to the original nored'* Howes 3."Le monde est very close toad ine themselves, they ae fit dispersed at random. ‘They disorganize themselves as the very effect because of the Cause that is Wy addresses same-|CO curstd spite,/ That ever I was bora to set ici i [rexpligner aver] some faulebuealsome youre isthe oniginacy wrong, We ind, an ieeparable tragedy, eine accancebathasatietB rane iption ofthe day of today; or such w dispenser of justice, of the day T speaking in the space 1 of the Thing “Shakespeare” anslatioas, fo make them possible and nut ever being reducible to th to what-—in honor, insignia hone of the ign general, ifthe ing, the correctness certainly not the only, places day for this singular topolo- inder, Heidegger there interprets 1s of accord or harmony, Fig, Dikéas joining, adjoining, adjustmes Fuge (Die Fug ist der Fug) tnsofar as ‘of presence (ale ged, off its hinges, phos, Now, when Heidegger insists oo the neces side of, before, or ata discance from the juridical-moral dete 1—Freud, Jones, and so forth—one must still beyond repression: there isa beyond he econo fn the course of a Dedipus Res and symmetrizing andbit robten Dingen24gel). Th etar rau de Fagen), Bt of wha of non-con- ‘untimeliness or this JF which we are trying hereto sink the ghost) is, and not said” yet come-from [proven mains to come. The passage of ft go toward the past, coward the going arsives atthe articulatic sents iwell. This in Fuge according to wi ion,” the Spruch also says some~ name the disjointare possible, thar ;,and therefore time, be ou even if Nietasche translates: Sie mssen Burze zublon, they must pay penalty) Dik Not of rosderingjur- payment, or expiation, as Nicizsche and Dice). There shirt of alla i chout accountability Heideguer dus Spruch of Anaxi e present, to the ev of the eaza belongs the aditia, the diOANA ETT depriving ble Has not Heidegger, ashe always Ihe in effect interprets asthe pos- ~ namely, of the accord that does, skewed the asymmetry in fir of of for itself oft leguer's answer: giving rests here only. fy simply co give away (seurben) here, sugshen presence rom what o% leaving to the other what ps the extreme the stakes: ison the bi layed owt ‘of the proper), would be pl props el yy of the Un-Fugand the anachron- cure, insofar as ie draws from there the very resource and injunction0 AARNE MATT time. The ching happens, ic ought o happen here where Blanchot speaks of thac dispenses with the void, the 4 response-—alienation, the primacy of ned, hisiory as process of leaves undetermined ‘Manx’s signature as a whose “logic” we are going 10 ng takes on a body, ac response of his “Mansi consequences (atthe cost of millions a keep on provesting in us, Marx had ngnize such borders by injunction, the pledge or dhe prom rere ~ Lean = Dery Lacee inst junccion and response co the ven here and now, even before, perhaps, adecision (Why insist on imminence, on urgency and injunct them does nat wai bled exogesi of lsd wor can sense a coming fi noe pres inthe ui far what nay als Boome cosh vould be destined, whether oe wi the Maris refed eae eet 20 oe ee emer ermrenersntaern ‘egurd in the culture and here wo worry about here? Why& R always presene” must « paragraph, the demand that he 5 Favfeced bythe Fae ruptre oF dhe sme omen tsa my SECLORD™ san-beot marke REIT People would be read th todecipher but to onthe me people seem to sy, We are go houtbeing bothered—by dhe Marxists and, and more genera “The second voice is politica itis brief and direct, more than bret and Marx, you see, was despite ose works we assign for 8 He doesn't belong ‘come back to, here as assign here an unlimited s against knowledge bur against ‘Theory as Science, had attempeed ro unify the name of Scien: “vote Fra4 inking of lured i an cverflonrsits received ides Blanchot recognizes ia eason, the example thus to be no longer or not yet example fr from him, And we do not exe = ALI a may appear impossibl And, we have to acknowledge ble. Bur since this sums up pet probably impossi- Tecture devoted to the specters of Marx, as wel Geonenrene ime then to turn the objection around. Guaranteed tra ene > TRANSLATION FeTisHist PRELIE ‘alee “iene At ‘Gace ain, here asChewhere wherever Cecomsriction isatstak,iewould grRHD Fav Ra thine: of inowledge.not a lacuna, No pro ss of knowl to do with knowing. , arbi swt 85 ounstives fs BEC ia i cs v c viveo ba Tt he course i- 1897 ares the coming ofthe 48, ofa specter and more precisely of , of the same thing as (das Gespenst des Kemmunismas), A Burope (ale Macht des a” ALATA fa communism, to be sure, already namable (and well before the League of the Just or the Com ame. Already promised but only promised. A spect ‘can never distinguish between the farure-t0-~ sal distinction. He gender what for ic and concept: ‘Yes, on the ed by what ita almost a century announced, specter, seemed 10 say thes x “whither Marxism?” Future of communism of about communis tion did not ‘What exactly is the di ference between 2 thhreat—and a present wo .world~—for which the specter represented a coming. coday, where the specter would represe: id be lend of history in ab Europe and had Ing a consonan ce to believe is pase and whose the oconjure away? here a present of the specter? Are its com- nd goings ordered according to the ~ present, and a presene-furure, between fore and an reer succession of a 3 If there is something like spectrality, dere are reasons ro doubr this reas- were sure for there the border between the present, the Siig? They were sure and cs herween a 20 be safely drawn, ye sureness of his ce bimself (This is the side, ftom the oth Te abgence, non-presence, aligy oF een The Toubrfol The present O76. Before knowing whether one can ‘ter of the past and the specter ofthe future, of and we are coming to it Ma side, thatthe dividing line between the ghost_nnast perhaps ask oneself whether sted him very much a century and a half ago here the hegemony wp and articul aindalso nwa Geran words” | | ‘them to conspire t0 silence the appa promise secrecy on the subject of the one who de an oath from them one must not know whence comes the ised secret. son and the “honest gh «ghost, the spire ofthe father, con the appeal This voice does nat ) oa Tine hewsage encountered again in the having asked “How wears, si, as it grows,”ARENA IMRT One ust analyze the of money new- ety, 4 proper of property and , deprives of its difference most general form of property fr persolichen Eigeniichkeit} {8a supplementary benefit but in are addressed (*TIx was never one ideology among othe genius of great poet—and the spirit ofa great ing faster and farther ‘colleagues in economic theory isthe becoming-god of gold, w host and idol, a god apprehended by the senses. Aer having marked the _iekerogencity between the propeniy oFmTOAEy and je connection” between them), Marx adds, and the ‘poetic flash, with one blow ‘eating inco the body of the test and making ‘Mars, An ieprecation atthe truth, ‘Marx appropriates the words ofthis signs are unmistakable, Declaring his hatred of the b e anger of a Jes ToS {gold and the prositution of gold itself. But he takes the time to analyze, nev jguring alchemy, he denounces the reversal of values, she Phisellos sla ‘wat Make the oar leprosy adored. of this immense maledi the economy ofa long he aporias and and conjuring off into the history of venali 3 hand, the pro} (This yellow slave/ 10n also begs [com him co promise, but he conjures thus by per fd gesture, In eruth, he:” a} to spare all oaths. As ithe were saying in effec: bey you [e vows ew cn- jin}, do not swe, abjre your tight to sweas, renounce your capacity to swear, one is asking you to swear, you are asked ro be the non-oath- ables thar you are ("you are noc oxthable’), you, the whores, you who ate prostitution ice, you who give yourselves to gold, you who give yourselves for gold, you who are destined to general indifference, you who confuse in ceqaivalency the proper and the improper, credit and discredit, ith and his, the “true and the fae,” oath, perjury, and You he you would go so far as to abjue (*orswear”) pour trade or te misfortune and incalculable e—here named literally (pesform,” “perform none hen he asks [come] the other t0 promise no to keep a therefore for perjury or abjurat human discourse on man, Timon 9 Alcibiades *Peomise me friendship, bu perform none. Ithou wilt promise the gods plague thee, for thow arta man. If Phyrnia and Timan« Enongh to make a whore forswear her trade, ‘And w make wholesomenessabawd. Hold up you slo, .prans mountant. You are not asta Although Fknow you'll swear ceribly sweat, {no strong shudders and 0 heavenly agues you. Space your oaths; mon trusts, He gives fai he indeed wantsto joaly inthe improcation of paradoxical hyperbole: he depths of abjuration, from idolatry itself, we believes, fe rust jmself pretends to reuse in that which, from t he of thax which is nor even capabh je), remains nevertheless faidhful wo a patie instinct, | | i never fails co knee! to indifferent power, to that power of bad in chae way, narare 1e confidence here in it, js prostinution, itens censlaves itself co wha laerum, ‘Which are never very far fiom the specter. As is well know described money, and more seen 1) igen Th contingency here, we wi Kantian} form ofthis question wl schema even as it cakes ie ser (Daaein) of money, metallic Dacein, is remainder is it remains, precise~ fy—buctbeshalow ofa great name: seers nominis umbea” The body of money is but a shadow [ur noch ein Schatten). ‘The whole "The body of money is but.a shado _ivemenc of idealization (baling that Marx then describes, whether itis ‘even begin to worry about he cl: seems to margin question of mou ns, 8 4 prnduction of ghost, illusions, sim= that he desire to hoard, speculates on the use of money afer death in the other woeld {acl dew Tade der andern Well. Geld, Geist, Geiz as if money (Geld) were the origin both of spitit (Gein ia der Ursprang des Geizes, says Pliny as quoted by Marx right afer lewhere, the equation berween Gz and Geist will be joined to the c “The metanorphonis of commode (de Metanrplore der Hire wes already ‘idealization that one may legitimately TREN oF Tropoctie, When the State emits paper money at-afixed rates ntervention is ces paper into gold. The State ‘compared to *magie” (Magie) that tran PES Then, Toe esa appearance, decd fansform paper Tiagieseinez Stompels Papier Gold eu verwandela, Mars is referri incthac stamps gold and prints paper money] This magic always bu Wy the magic of pao Tsas jaré of old Europe on is war remains, and ‘ghosts like the consp declares war, However inexpiable cconspires [conjure] the evil plan ore ConSpHRaS Ie termacer™ some power (During the Middle iby means of which the bour- a prince inonter to ic society of those who have sworn together 1 collective represent forces and aly them= the name of common interests to combat a dreaded political lesophers' stone are ion drops the reference to ned co together, sometimes agai selves togetherthe occule power they share wit Tess dream, ofa effective exorcism pretends to declare the death only in order to put OT PRE TORTS If Te isin fact [ov ffi] @ sof allo reassure tell re ofan ae oF war OF tHE conjuring—marxism “The time is out ‘He time, but it refers singularly «sbi the acy? Flow can it be bewarese omeRenT co extend a welcome there to specters. To expec reco be press" nota mot esprit 1 lems de Lepr, the word time of the world, tod idea ofa new {nt continue to represent (th ‘Very novel and so ancient, the conjuration appears both powerful and, be conjured away, for those jing the ace that consists in vg. deciding, eaking a responsitiligy jin a more or ot less public, there where this antly being displaced, remaining ‘SSTUUENSUERAN the press, tele-comanunieations, echno-tele-discursivity, echno-tefe-i squires, chen, what we c just co make up a word, bawatology, We will take roeverythingit “An ioeerpretation that peclormative as unorthodox: submit for your discussion several hypotheses on the nacu Whac is ours? In what way is ical’ And whar does it have to do Seoday inthe worlds becoming don intheFreud assigned to Jn everywhere ongani in the publi space. Ing iscourses of parti everywhere Western «4 a ACER ions and endangers any democracy, Now, this powes, ly combat- tradictory fashion, ted, supported h ce yer andl no, yes in one respect, no in anoths gin par word in which we earlier saw she so well, we ean only bear wi yess to What we are insofar as we inberit, and Tanguage, “the most dangerous of goo sto having inherited what he is ster song ons ere gerbt cu babe) 2, When we advance ate: the end of Marxism and of Marxist so discourse,” we a deny of dissimulate t ing circular or be ‘even quite simply ideas, the Maniferme dectares \gideas [die berrschnden Idoon| of lass (der berrcendon Klasse)” (p- ideas of es fora selectiveae CRATES le nev stage of geopolitics (in the the consensus of the media, over the most visi- wr academic space), it s the one chat diagnoses, in all sorts of tones and with an uashakeable assurance, not ony the end of societies constructed on the Marxist model but the end of the ble and resonant part of in whole Marxist tradition, even of the reference so the works of Mars, not to of this would have finaly come to term in the euphoria of liberal democracy and of the market economy. Thi dogenat and, like dogmacises, like all conjurations, discourse seems selatively homogeneous, most of sometimes politi seer sd and manifestly worrisome, The protocol of our conference ‘evokes the example of the book by Francis Fukuyama, The Bnd of History and most diaiqu, the ‘of Marxism as the end of history? This work freque' the dis Kojve who deserved herter. Yet the book is not as ba ied exploitation that exhi nota benefor a certain yras naive as one might iv as the finest ideo- democracy which bas iy. Tn fac, although lism ina liber finally areived at che grammar school exercise of a young, industriows, but com of Koieve (a se or there goes beyond nuance and is som the questions elaborated in its 4s to cover all the bases, what it calls “ewo broad responses, f ‘a few others}, one must recognize wes suspense to the point of indecision. To rn fashion, iton o ‘This evening we tre of thesis indispensable, precisely in che very steuccure of its logic, im the to the anti-Marxist conjuration, Ie is by design, of course, that we called ie moment ago a “gospel Why a gospel? Why would the formula here be neo-testamentary? This book claims to bring a “positive response” to a question whose formation and formulation are never interrogated in themselves. tis the question of whether and xd” will eventually lead “the atcoher sory of RESO en _preater part of humanit aconce modest and impudent ca course, while answering “yes” to this question sof every’ ¢ horrors of tor that allows one to have one's ‘on the same page, co an awaret tatianism Na Pos, and so forth. O1 fascist, doubts: the two world wars, Stalinist—the massacres of ‘can assume that he would have agreed to extend from one end to the other, all these cataclysms (terror, oppression, repression, cextermina de, and so on), these “events” or these *facts" would belong to empiricty to the “empirical flow of events in the second half of the ‘centuzy" {p. 70), they would remain “empirical” p womens accrediced by 1 (p. xx) Their accumulation would in no way refute the ‘of the greater part of humanity ton liberal democracy: As such, as telos of a progress, this orientation would have the form of an ideal del oricotat finality. Everything that appears to contradict it would belong to historical ‘empiricity, however massive and catasteophic and global and rmuleiple and ited the simplicity of this summary dlstinction between empirical reality and ideal finality, one would ‘fone a know how this absolute orientation, this anhistoric lero iscory gives rise, ‘very precisely fv oar diy, in these days, in time to an event which Pukayama ly from "The most ion ofthe last quarter of the twentieth century” (p. xii). To 1e, he recognizes thar what he describes a che collapse ofthe worldwide 3 oFthe right or che left has speats of as “good news" and that he dates very «3 remarkable evo 1 always “given way. to stable xe can assert that, as of this date, news, a dated news, “liberal democracy remains the only -al aspiration that spans different regions and coleures around freedom around the globe,” according isis the good coherent poli the globe. iberal revolution in economic sal democracy and of the free ararker,” there's “good news" ofthis ably insistent. Since it prevails or 1 quarter century. This evangelistic figure is remark- asco prevai ical scale, it deserves tobe atleast underscored.SACS s Land, ‘we can only indicate ures play @ role that see 1 On the ether bend, they demand wus, the geeacest sympto the worldwide conjunccure in w! yele-tochn appears coday to be atte sate tine more conteadicton xy than ever, Such an analys this war of messianic eschatologies in what we more perfectible and nece: agrancinga detern ‘up with an ellipsis in the express jon of Jeruselem" isroday the world wa Toeay Haein ower radical premises Middle-Eastern violence as an unleashing of s of holy remains at once indispensable and str iy Tar prow ied ie be transTormed and adapted « neve provided n be made cient there where the Marxist ontology. ence ot cfitique al itself caries witb itams se many modern mman righee—and an idea of dem its dereemined, “Force of Law” and The Osler Heading), now be thought and thought otheresses com fp. xv}. The neo-evangel reasons than one. A little further on, this Christa profiguration of the Promssed Land, Buc in ones to take is distance from it sight away. Ifthe development of modern phy advent ofthe good news, notably, Fukuyama less accumulation of wealth” and “an ‘technology that permits “the tw the advent oe the "good news” sso-military given only Teads us as fas, he says, ral science guides us to the gates ofthe Land”: “But Land itself, for ther industrializat ‘We mustbe, ‘tence ofthis rhetoric. Whar does it seem to be saying to 8 je modern n wn should produce politic careful tells us n societies,’ it is “in the iary wiscence is significa AT for more Jn figure crosses the Jewish we for nothing in che ked 10 st place” advantages on those coun .gh itis essential and indispensable slaimed by Fukuyama, this physico-tech as the gates ofthis “Promised «i Land of liberal democrary, it dues not defiver vs to the Promised pecessary reason why advanced erty" [p-3¥] ‘co overinterpret, but let ws take seriously the insis- the langusge ofthe Promised Land, and thus of the land promised but refused [to Moses] is «ar least by nlf betcer Fixed to the materialism fone takes into account the fact that Fukuyama associates a certain Jes tr ofthe rationalism of natural science; ble exception the fact that whas he Wi Islamic world” does not enter into che "gene 5 to be taking shape around “liberal democracy” [p. sus" that, he says, soem x least an hypothesis about whi cesta privilege in the eschatolog to which he exp struggle for recorniti dy Jays claim isnot o ifone takes into account thae triangle. The model ‘physics and economism. If angle Fukuyama choos- she liberal State of Hegel, the Hegel of the it is chat of a Hegel who privileges the "Christian vision. If*the existence ofthe State is the coming of God into the world,” 26 shar cook the here on eart Christian escharology. It hp: 199 and passin}. onthe Euro can communi is consonant with the current dis 1 ‘Phe Pliloop of Rghtinvoked by Fukuyama, this coming has che event. The French Revolution would have been “the event aplanced it ian Stas Homecare State, chis community would sti cherefore to some Holy Alliance. [tis the Anglo-Saxon model of the liberal State [Hobbes, Locke) and Hegelian fiberalism" chat pursues first of al “rational recognition, zuishes betsvoen two gestures by Kojve, When the latter describes the perfection ofthe universal an homogeneous State, he is depending too rouch ‘on Locke and on an Anglo-Saxon model «1 consticutes “the embodiment of Hegel's state of universal recognition” [p. 203), In other words, consequently and in all good logic, a Christian Stare. A Holy Alliance. ‘We will not oppose some valgarly “empiri and predictable predications. We wi again later fone considers, coday, in Europe, the date of these declarations, those of Kojeve and those of Fukuyama, one hes difficulty pleading attemat- ing circumstances for a book published and widely translated in 1992, And Jet us specify once again char icis in the name of a Chri of the struggle for recogoition [p. 199], and thus of the exemplary European ‘Community, that che author of The Bad of History and the Last Man (Christian, ticizes Marx and proposes ta correct his materialise economsism, £0 ‘evidence to these predictive problem of e ‘come upon t complete it”: she later would of recog notic”™ soul, The universal and homogeneous Stat, the State of the end of History, sho 204], As atthe time of the Manifes, ted by what it excludes, combats, or represses. End of this parenthesis. The import—past or furnze—of this neo-evangelisin will be spelled out later) no that" rest on "the twin, ‘The econor + materialism or the materialisty of moxlesn physics should then, inthis logic, yield the stage to the s Fukuyama thus deems i necessary to have recourse 1 1c of History, based on the 'scrugle for recognitioa 2ST TTT ARTA the Phenomenology of Spirit. The dialectic of desire and of consciousness is nev- an imperturbable cont political thinkers. also be exemplary i ‘his mepalary even if*the desire for recognition remains all around us in the form of se has succeeded in conjugating what Fukuyama feconomi nality and that of the rymur or she de would be the cease, and rhe bing rend have already happened, accozding to Kojéve at least as be is interps with having “ide America or the members of the Europe: secognition® (p.203)- “importance uth? They give a preity good ‘crude sophise that impels the his segume and supposedly observable event legel’s sate of w Se sigh of an ayes ices any historical event and Depending on how i ia defines liberal democracy here as an actual reality an 4“ : ct eR ime andl why not forever? We indeed say a problematics om the Marxian tradition, in its id the we and will have to characterize it, and indispensable for a long time yet, For a lon the manifestations of what he calls imegal re for recognition), since he must concede that they are raging in the capialist world of a very imperfect he nevertheless qualified as“an importanc truth,” Fukuyama does not hesi- het. For the announcement ofthe de historical, and empirically nt of an ideal good news, the cempicicity: Once aviting ridicule, he cyrannical and dictator a” (excess or asyrmmetcy inthe d nce these *facts” contradict the “identificasion’ ate to slip one discourse in under the _fieto “good 19s)" for its effective, teleo-eschatological good news, «to de-historcie i in this way, he recognizes in this good news the language of “Nature” ( book) and identifies it according 10 er torical” Inthe face of shis word and one of major concepts of the ch he qualifies as “trans-l ‘on the “level of principles” He would the ide of liberal democracy. Recalling his fest article from 1989, “The End of Hisory?", he writes ia fact “While some present-day countries might fa iberal democracy, and others might lapse back other, veral democracy could noc be improved on” (p. x are ina’) Ke would be too easy to show that, measured by tl failure t0 liberal democtary, che gap berween fact andl ideal essence does not 1s of government, theocracy, leary dic is foreig concepe). But this failure and peso wo dt tha al tbe OoraES orheterogeneovs tits very definis Teocraces, Neate here isthe very concept of democracy as concept oF aedequation, dine “Thacis why we always propose © 2 tare demvoanacy inthe Faure presents jis gup also characterize, a previ and. ‘hac can only ats ‘Ton, disadjustment, bein Speak ofa democracy re.come, no ERROR © not even of a regulating idea, in the Kantian sense, or ofa utopia —at least 2 thac ofthe communist prom alvays keep within it andl ie must do so, this absolutely undetermined mes- sianic hope at its heart this eschaologicsl relation co the to-come of an event and of singularity, ofan alterity that eannot be anticipated, Awa horizon of the wai, awaiting what one does nor expect yet or any longer, hos without reserve, welcoming saluras ng without accorded in advance to the absolute sueprise ofthe arrivwns* from whorn or from whi not be asked ro commit co the ic contracts of any welcoming power (Family, Stae, nai not ask gin recurn and who or which wi dos native soil or blood, language, culcare in general, even hum: which ing to what is coming, that is, to the event that cannot be awaited as such, oF recognized in advance therefore, to the event asthe foreigner itself to her or tw him for whom one must leave an empty place, always, in memory of the bope—and this is the very place of spectrality. Ie would be easy, too easy, to 1s any right to property, any ri 4 hypothesis that one can never exclude, of course, is sible itself, and that this condition of posiility of the event is, of mporibilt, Hike this serange nceptof messianism without content, ofthe ‘hessane withour messianisin, that guides us here bepress 70 show that without this experience of the impossibl“ pole of an endiess task another incoherency, despite its tendency to “recede,” “prom 4s noc posed as an infinite re sion, although Here one would have to analyze minutely least afew sentences. For example these: hon ten, and but we must yg quoted 2 Phe German Idevlogy regarding concept of man, not to mention Ni -dto afew miserable stereotypes: for exam! " whom he so often named as such "and not inker ofa “last man’ i (evoked only once as having put human di by reducing closer 10 us, about whom # asad erans-historical mar never bothered he calls “the firse man,” shat is,0 *narusal may.” enealogy of this concept, Fukuyama more- a claims to have recourse c0 a new, synthetic lectic issued by what he cal1s of war, people buy suga he media? A beral a discourse of the Fukuy: and of how I democracy wal at this triumph has ne in reyards catastrophic, and from Marsisro as porated in the also distin- | ave never been in a position ‘cally somethin, que. 1 plays to good effect the role of ehannel- ° because, cleverly tick: ath the one world today. As berween historical emy scentlentality, beeween the ideality of the king oF a new pproad “Opposed to the most anc But once again one should not be unfaie to this book. Although such works very incoherence and sometimes ¢ a rbytion that na for mor ose then in power, Ts:ERATOR ) sense of near cercainty: “This barbarism could last for cencuris. 1, but that bese resists what is c not be thought as long as one the simple (ideal, mechanical, or dialectical) opposition ofthe re ing present to its ghostly simulaerum wirlih} to the non-effective, is also to say, as long as one relies on a general temporality of an historical made up of contemporary with Teer event-ness that one must the teal present or the tion of the effective or act: 1 of presents ident ies that gave themselves the Figure of Marxism. This latency period, which Toone managed Wo TERETE Themselves mich less to calculate in No objective aud homogeneous chronology techino-sci- ral medi is not just a ifica-eeonomico- eral discoucs von if we have pposed 10 it cs for projecting their analysis, we must first ations pereub the onto-theological schemas or ophies and ral ven, te private and the public, and 50 berween State an forth. ‘Thisis where another thinking of historicity calls us beyond the metaphys- ‘concept of history and the end of history, whether it be derived from’ ‘Hegel or from Marx. This is where one COUT pur to work in a more demande The two moments of the Kojevian postscript on post ory and animals, Fe would be account famous footnote, As he tells us in the postscript to his N in 1959, (There is a French tradition, a kind of specialty” of r qrTUtsormariEracrmmonanERRERENS ” peremptory diagnoses upon revurning from a quick trip to a faraway land whose language one does not even speak and about which one knows next 0 nothing. Charles Péguy alveady made fun of this vice in 1913 when Gustave Lanson dared to claim expertise aftor a trip of afew weeks co the United States} Upon returning from chis visit which he made as an importane public official of 1at*post-historical” ‘Japanese civilization had sec out on a path diametri “American path,” and this because of what he then n offhand, nntey, and pataphysician manner which is to be sure, his genivs but fis also his entire responsibility, “the Snobism in the pure state” of the cultural formalism of Japanese society. most important in his view, namely bis previous diagnosis concerning prop- erly American post-history. l’sjust that he wi kredible and indecent tableau: the U ‘Marxist ‘commanism’” The only thing Kojéve now puts in q) idea that this American end represents, ifone European Community, Kojéve concluded ly opposed co the 125, in that profoundly iche nevertheless maintains what is Kojve comes ory, an even, nian, ashe says in extreme Japanese extremity Gu the competition between the two capicalisms whose war will have inau- ‘grated, let us not forget, the era of nuclear destruction), According to Kojéve, the final stage of communism in the postwar United States does indeed, as it ie*snob- 1 nec plus ulvya in the end of history and that is Japanese smust, eeduce man to animality. But there issomething even more beg,” there post-historicity ‘The later succeeds, thanks to the *snobism” of is culture, in saving post nal natuality. Nevertheless, and one mustemphasize this, despite the regret that caused him to think, after his 1959 cep, chat Japan hed gowefirsBer, soto speak, in its race afer the end of history, Kojéve does not put in question again his description of man’s return corical man from his ret n toa coat n extravagant description, not Jigy in che postwar United States. because it compares man to animals, but in the first place because it pus an impercucbable and arrogant ignora 1e service of doubsful effect; and it is on chis point tha it would be appropriate 10 impudence to the incantation of those who, like Fukuyam, 2 0 work in nupare Kojéve's (as for Kojéve,AACA ATRIA democracy as end- victory of capitalism that wo lass problem,” and so forth? Why and how was 1 the United States had already reached the “final ” What did he think he perceived there, what je? Answer: the appropriation, in aby ff human government” and t did he wane to perceive nce, of everything can respond to need of desire, he cancelation of the gap between desire and need suspends any excess, any disadjustment, in partic ular in work, [tis not at all surprising thac this end of che disadjustment (of the being “ous oF joint’) “prefigures [an] evernal presente” Bur what abou the gap beeween this prefiguer i what ic represents before its presence inself? 1946) whatever they like, work any more than they wish . (between 1948 and 1958) to the United he impression that Americans cause che Russias That the Amarcon ap of of life proper tothe post soricel period and thatthe presence today of che United States in the id profigares the ftare eter ‘vithour having for all hat to Several comparative ti Marxist and pars-Heideggeria the Phenomerolegy of Spiritby Kojbve is interesting? It played a formative and role, from many standpoi reading of | foe a certain generation of Eire just before or just ater the war. Things are noc as simple in segard as people general 1et hand, fone wants to read with some: seriousness that which is not alto- _gother serious, namely Kojéve’s nore a history of umaniey, of postscript on post-Marzism as post- inderscore atleast afew points. Fist jgmatic sentence of this nate, whi a one mus stil last and also most comma going co quote, remains a presetiptive utterance. Who has ever read ie Teis perhaps the most irresistible ope “Postscript.” It defines a task and duty [devwir] for the fiare of post-historical man, once what Kojéve cals the * of the West (including the Russians) will have been realized “post-historical man doit...” writes Kojéve.“Doit" what? Is “do Joted here as “must” or “should”? Whatever may beth cave concerning the modal vein th of SJopanizatio * 0 be teans- 1y or the content of this “devoir,” whatever may be the necessity of this here isan" 9, be it that of prescription, even ifit cals for eternities of interpreta necessary" forthe farure, Whatever may be i sic is necessary [that there be] the fucure” [*i fir Hive post-historical Man, beyond man and beyond history such as they have been represented up un because it points to a ick of speci the farure:tbatroer may be te are comcerning the modality or the conten of this duty, icicy, necessity, injunction, this pledge, chs task, also therefose this promise, this necessary this isis necessary” is neesrary and that is the ls. This indifference 0 ot an atitade of indifference, on prov content here is not an indifference, iti the contrary: Marking any opening to the ev therefore conditions the mnrerost in gud por the mndilference 0 SVU herefore conditions the inserest 8 whatsoever, and to the future as su “Content in general ly-promised, prescribed, assigned, -~in shor, in its law tis ty wich itself, Whether the wether ibe, 1y formal necessity ofits lodges any present out of its conremporsi ism, For lack of time, let ws da no more than read this sentence to which, would sc context and at another rhyt wwe been necessary (©6 Se SNASLORES TSEC ie demands. inds not so much of (who, moreove ‘of those who expl ‘one demanded cerested in this enigmatic con some sense of the actors propaganda 0} ‘The “logic” of the p ‘ject of prime-time media mn just quoted might indeed correspond to lax, id signify the following co us in the ynere history is Gnished, there where a certain deter ny comes to an end, precisely the political “Fora cer in their supposed opposti of simulacrum, of ‘mourning3 ears and tears leaw of an ageless world} ha a. snus, divadjuted, The worl is7 sing very baal of Tinto of Anes ” ‘sere SOT ob freeze-frame image. Tit ‘Oday in the world” We would ie ord speaking of crisis, a very ins he Kojevian picrure of the stato after the war. The optimise fonal war. Under the heading of civil iberal democracy ofthe parliamen- sag up W'aainneguate a evel, use to come aon ad bing to ight the sone ing ia ee day ter wits ng ee isthe relation of the concep of pe ‘What can no longer be measured is the lea the 1920s, bef dangerously weal als and reducing media that, ‘transforming the public sp they were resentation seh atleatar we live knwavs them up wut ve. W there isethnic conflicts, conflicts of culture an woctatic Europe and the world today? ned, armies fr hose divi jore the piceure ofthis wearing. * no more resembles ‘between them and the Eastern buropea ‘and Borween, Ta WT OF Capicalise States seeking ro protect their nationals, oF from cheap labor, which often inter- ven Wester has no comparable s global marker while claiming to protect o ‘or Europeans in geners il protection). How is one to save one’s 0 ' “social advantages” estsNSO RSAC SSTTENASIENTS, rec “conventional” arms or at the Fesearch, economy, and soci ‘Western demparacies Short of an unimaginable rew suspended or even cut back wi worsening o cd) degre remains the largest not always dissociared. apology we mean an value of present-being {on} more and more accelerated ow informed rms of speed that have 1 is no less arch-originai iva place being but’ sabilization oF 3 een; power prepares and apiy the de fcto take-over of FeThas tay remTzzA Ieice, Tne, ee yeral democracy and ofthe ca - he euphoria of the end of history, instead of celebrating the Send of and obvious macroscopic fa ‘on the earth, (A ngof'so-called and existence ofan 5. This question has always been a bate will becomesn corsa oFfts esse -dicates, the very concept of the said ideal. This in gercaip of ies ewential predicates, che very One R ‘Toul extend, for example, 0 the economic analysis ofthe marker, the faws of inorder eo ally themselves, ina the form of ap internat new this cisomeone ever hal to speak, think, ot wait prets the gesture we are then one would have to have he contretemps oro 5 that is more manifest saying. "You picked 2 good " Thelieve in the ps cal virtue ofthe contztemps. And if consretemps does not have the good ated luck, t0 come jt in iarian monstrosity) For, let us speak as "good Marxist” the deconstruction ofUAT AACE “The resgonstilin-once agin, would hee hechaton baie Whether shay ‘men and women, all over the earth, are wxlay toa ance. Whatever one may tink ofthis even senting fil- or ecological give rise (perversions perversions, that ture of that which was thus bey! sian perversions to whi that some have been saying for along mre imperaivey and, let us ay the necessary os wh, daring the human memory that may follow, this unique attempt 100 Fits not Gubéled ates ideal of democracy and emancipation, bor rather BY ork otherwise2 os aeRO, we wanted to announce, to be sure, a certain number of faceable and insoluble debt toward + ily 1 the subject of philosophy. Lets limit ourselves forlack oftime, eo coreain traits, for exam in che figure t ese last decades, namely che deconstruction ‘the metaphysics ofthe “prop- 1m, the demystification or the logocentrism, their originary technizs also of the proper and of noted, a certain ecoi ial economy andl of exap- propriacion, or even ofthe gif, plays an organizing role, as does the concept of work tied to differance and to the work of mourning in general). If this ymic concept of the di attempt has been prudent and sparing bur rarely negative in the strategy of beca {FMarx had been in a way t00 s its references to Mars, the Marxist ontology, the app Macs, the legitimation by wi idly over [asraisonnges]. They appeared to be welded to an orthodoxy, to appara ken ruses and strategies, whose least fault was not only’ that they were, as such, deprived of a future, deprived ofthe future itseff. By “welded” one may u stand an artifactual but solid adher whole history of the world for the fast century and a ce whose very event constituted xd thus the whole story of my generation But «radicalization i always indebted to the very thing itradicalizes® That SESSLER Matsist “spirit” Iris noc the only one andl itis not just any one of spirits, ofcourse. One ought to extend and refine these examples lacking, I ny subtitle specified the Star ofthe dby, ic was also in view of problema- of the State or the state, with or without capital initial, and ing the concey in ree Daye Fits of ll, we have sai ivoften enough, one cannot rabih the sure of a debs, for example as regards Mack and Marxism os one would abalance sheet av ET recordin stewed HaiiaT magnet, Te aceon CARD ‘Dine snakes oneself accountable by an engagement that selects, ‘prerpeets, and orients Ina practical and pesformative manner, and bya dec a thac begins by getting caught up ikea esponsibility, inthe snares of an ton tha is altealyusuliple, heterogeneous, contradictory, divided — always keep its secret. And the secret ofa n my dayes of Natoce iaeand pargd away: Buc that Tam forbid Every revewanr seems here to come from and return (0 the earth, to come fo ‘ranean prison), to return to i a8 to the lowest, coward the humble, humid, as from # buried clandestinity (humus and mold, tomb and subter- tumilated. We must pase by here, we too, we must pass over in silence, as low ‘on from “ears of flesh and blood.” jemocracy, the sad systematic manner as possible, Widh this name of with thisOc ] 4 in the name of the revolution, | the double barricade (impure “impure impure history of i I | | i i | immovable and quiet neards notary, che ‘eas theca re wis between he ominous "The one seemed a gaping% was composed ofan anger Ibasicede the dvagon, end behind the seco amiss uP TO TALE hncation ofthe fae bener Sinteen yes tellin the subrersan mere, an Jaue 1848 understood a2 “These were no longer ulans agi ‘Dante rather than Homer Demons attacked, spec- loa Ie he mame ofth great anonymous births. le, who decreed “the protest the formula ofthe common snd crrible ery, death Spec of Marsh te ofthis lecrure woold commicone to speak rst ofl about Mar. About Nar himself About ses inveritance. And about a specter, the etme so may eased vices olay ace atempring con Tesemble a conjuration or conspiracy, because of the agreement oF theo teat siguod by 20 many politcal subjects who subscribe co the more o ess nore or les secret causes (the point ila to conquer orc keep ey to power), but ist of al ecaase such ¢ conan nor his haclow of Marx, the revenatt whose away: Fort does conjure avay. On sinues o haune che cencury ” ‘ork, perhaps more than ever. There is ric mode of pro~ aiustbe able to work, so a mode of produ duction. Asin the work of mourning, after a erau the conjuration has to ‘make sure thatthe dead will nae come back: quick, do whatever is needed to keep the cadaver loy ized, in a safe place, decomposi inhomed, or even embalaed as chey liked todo in Moscow Quick, a vault 10 re keeps the keys! These keys would be nothing other than those of the power that the conjuration would like hus ro reconstitotewpo of Macx. We were speaking eatlier of an unfacking ‘The logic of wthich I hoped eo orien this keynote address was one of @ po and a topology of mourning. A mournin rminable, without possible normalicy, Without reliable i right where ie was whi |S concepe between introjection and jacorporation, But the same Fogle, as we Faquesed,Fespondh fo the injunction oF ajusIce which, beyond sight or Lavy presen Ting Mourning always: Mourning always follows aus, \woil of mourning is nor one kind of work among others Te is work itself, work Tats at work in any sobfne. There is the temptation to add here an aporetic to Freud's remark that linked ina same comparative history three of the traumas inflicted on human na _podbelogicalteauma (the power of the unconscious over the conscious ego, dis- covered b eer the biological ceausna (the ani man discovered by Darwin—to whom, moreover, Engels alludes in the 1888 Manifen), after the cormologcal trauma (the Copernican, mnger the center of the universe, and this is more and more the ssism when itis thus de-centered: the descent of| hoanalys” Mears will have been the firs to herald the best and whose event he ‘azism and fascism, which are the the deepest wound for gathers together the other three. Ic chus presupposes them today century. Ie carries beyond t The century of ” will have been that of the t effective decen- theological identey or its ge whose aporias a ‘ourselves a lor oF references, the exph mais endlessly denied by the very mi [Ein eebt um in Eurepa—das Gespenst des Kommunsionus|". Marx, unless itis the other one, Engels, then puts on stage for the time of a Few paragraps, the specter inspires in all che powrers of old Europe. No one speaks sms are projected onto the project its images—somet fe the sound of the telephor inthe space of a salon during a5 Tooks ics to the ftightening hypothesis of a hing; which does not mean that he kn hematized in hi fear an app: self be posed thre, expared befire a series of blows to 7 1or present anyone in person bu of these values ‘one could say of the revenant 1 hesis or a synth are disqualified by the specter, there is any “Che specters of Mars: with these words we wiA cone sees and which one projects—on an imaginary sereen where there is RNP TO SE Nov even te serecn sometimes, and a screen always bay, at [Sart The orton of background that ies a eructure of disappearing reversed, ance le, the specter n: ghost or revonent, sensuoUs-nOM-senSUOUS, forces (alle Mace dey for conjure away the firs oF all sees ue From che other side of the Falore we see ior even before we see period. We feel ourselves observed, ‘All the powers of old Europe hav einer bilggn Hetnjingd) against this specter [gegen dies Gespent|.” ie Wan PeTpayS US a VINT [I ons Pond wie). Visit upon Vist, since ie ret Grand since olrtare,frequentative of wiser (to see, examine, contemplate), 1e recurrence of returning, the freq of the old or the new "The lateer does not always mark the moment of a generous apparit al figure ofthe Holy Father the Pope, who is woday in a promines rocess of being formed agninst tr ney of a visitation, friendly vision; it ean signify strict inspection or violent search, consequent se in this alliance, persecution, implacable conaenation. The social mode of haontng its original is confirmed by Gorbachey that lapse of communist totalitarian cof « Polish bishop who boases, and in ¢his the was not for pothingtin the c and in che advent ofa Europe that from now on will be what it sh have beer Europe. As in the Holy the nineteenth century, Russia could once again take part. That is wh in Europe I shay eof sccording to him, a Cheist sted on the neo-evan; ism—Hegelian neo-evangelism—ofa rhetoric of che specter demands thac one take is times and its history into consideration, the “Fukuyama” type leas a Hegelian neo-evangelism that Marx denounced the singularity ots temporality o of ts historicity: When, in 1847-48, Marx with great verve and vehemence y of hoses, We will names the specter of communism, he inscribes i in an historical perspective get co this later, but already here we must point out the intersection. We thacis exactly the reverse of the one [was initaly thinking ofin proposing a believe is significant te such as “the specters of Marx” Where I was cempted to name thereby | dhe persistence ofa present past, che recurn ofthe dead which the worldwide ‘work of mourning cannot get rid of, whose return it rans away from, which ala the same tive purses), Mae, for his pat, Is for a peesence to come, He seems to predict and pre~ the Stirnerian it buses (excludes, younces and c seviber What for representation of old Europe a ‘Story and what is its time? ment figures only as a specter in the ideological ifsc y: We must see toi thar in «calls for chs presentation of the living reality. The Man fiature this specter—and first of al ng roa an association of workers forced to remain secret until bout 1848—becorform of a manifesto thar will be the For Marx already gives the party form to the proper have to be, according to the Mam correspond to d hink that the essence very anessence ofa ghost) mene or history of Europes + when it was a reac y gesture co Jnadequation of ex put forward here is no longer the case, nor wleays the case (for the may sorvive fora 1e must do the constative mode; itis announced, promised, mode. From the symprom, Marx draws a the realty of communist the legendary 5and an languages nor ofall languages in London, the party, omly by co «cule? The ghost that finds itseFcaled upon to take side Imet and visor eect? remains difficult to the enemies of the hemselves. For one fear bofore the ghost ‘response ofa frightened and ruthless war and it was on 17 was also responding seems to me, take such an hypot ‘oneself fea” in the experi sill goingon, butts awar against a camp chavisitselForga~ the one in front of ie and the oy106 aN A ATARAST bby nothing else. For finally we muse ye around co this, the revonant was the persecution of Mats: Asi was that of Stirner. Bot of then, a i quite understandable, kepton persecuting their persecutor, their own persecutos, their most intimare stranger Marx loved the figure ofthe ghost, he detest ithe called ito wit ic, harassed, besieged, obsessed by it, ‘outside of him, fn him outside of he was haunted b Deinem Kopfe!" one might say to him in a parody net). But for this very reason he also did not love the ghosts he loved. And who loved him—and 1 from beneath the visor, He was doubtless obsessed by them (the he did against the adversaries of commu Je against them. ‘withous knowing what he was tatking about (“Mensch, es spuk observe ‘word is his, as we nism, he waged a merciless b ul harassed the obsession, ‘There are countless signs of this, each one more explicit chan the other. To cite only «wo very different see) bur, ‘examples from this rich spectrology, one could evoke in passing his 1841 Dissertation (The Difivewein the Philoseply of Nature of Democrtas and Epica, "There the very young Marx signs 2 filial dedication (for itis always to che father, the secret ofa father that a frightened ehild cals for help against rhe specter: “I am thy Fathers Spi the secrets of my rison-House").[n this dedication to Ludwig von Wesephalen, “personal adviser to the government” in Trier, this “very dear pacernal friend {seinen shewen uiterlichen Freund)” He then speaks of a sign of filial love (dere Zk als erste Zc Kniher Like) a regards some ‘one before whom “all the spirits ofthe world are called to appear {oor dent ale Geister der Walt erscbeinon}” and. who never recoiled in fear from the shadows Gespenster) or From skies often {Der Geist asthe pirioval father entrusted hi ician [der grosse Zaulerkundig Arad)” to \ (anvertraut and for whom he of the ghost. Ivis the spirit against the specter. In this adoptive father, in this hero ofthe strug against revcograde ghosts (which Marx seems implicitly co distinguish from the specter of progress that communism will befor example}, the young Marx ‘gE 107 sees che living and visible proof (arzumewtum ad atlas) that “idealism is not & fiction bur a truth.” ‘Youthful dedication? Conventional language? Surely. Bur the words are not so common, they appear calculated and the statistical accounting can begin. Fret xy counts. The experience, che apprehension of the ghost is cuned fegucney: number (more than one}, insistence, rhythm (waves, cycles, and periods) The youthful dedication continues co speak and to proliferate i ional when one notices, todenounce, thats 10. fava), and with great verve, bu also with great fascination, what he German Hedogy wil all he history of ghosts (Gepensteresbiht), We ment iis crawling with th ere: shrouds, errant souls, clanking of chains inthe night, je appeats more significant and less conver years that follow, che relentless determin: come back, to this textin a 8 crowd of revenants are waiting for us groanings, chilling bursts of laughtes, and heads that look at us, the greatest concentration of all specters in che history of ‘humaniey: Mare (and Engels) try to straighten things out, they seek to identi- they pretend to count, They have trouble. ‘A itele late, in Fact, The Bigheeruth Brumaire of Lnie Bonaparte deploys once again, on the same Frequency, something like a spectropolitics an a genealo- 4 of ghosts, more precisely a parrinonial logic never stops conjuring and exoecising there. He separates out the good the bad “ghosts.” Sometimes in the same sentence, he desperately tries (0 oppose (but how difficult it is and how risky), the “spirit ofthe revolution {Geist der Rewution)" to its specter (Gespenst). Yes lexicon, first ofall: like esprit ond like “spit,” Geist can also signify *spectes” and Marx thinks he can exploit, even as he controls ts rhexotical effects ‘The semantics of Gespons themselves haunt the semantics oF Geist, Kfthece is some ghost, reference hesieaces, un shose heads, so many invisible he guration ofgborts. Mar is difficult and risky. Because of th is to be found precisely where, between the ovo, s, or else no longer hesitates where it should have. Burifiis so saan indiscernil jew, the specter ® the historical fing of spirit. For, first of all, Marx the Hegelian remark on the repetition of history, whether one is talking about reat events, revolutions, or heroes (the remark is well known: first tragedy, then farce), Victor Hugo was also attentive, as we have seen, to tbe revolSg own history [reer for example “phantasmagoria,” aw inks ie co speech and to public speect ing something that bas neve sely in such psiods isso (die Gare hee sas bat 1 itself or losophies guage, borrowed names says Marx. A ques langage, a ‘rs Ir designates the very element ofthese rights of succession, ‘Thus Luther donned the mask ofthe Aposta same, as he holds co lif; strates icin one of those eloquent revolutionary n only do justice by reading it aloud, until one is out of breath. Te begins thus by the emyiontiny (Besobuirmyg) of the dead on the scale of worldwide history (zeliescicbnliebe Totenbesctromeng) shan to paedy [porn] no 1789, nor he revo .emvanset a beginner who has Fearne 2 new lat [appropriated bat er sich nar angie te spi tna can freely express himself it | pro ‘whe he finds his way’ in it without re: native tongue in the wie of the new. (P.104) the masres ofthe old French Revolutio die Auf ibrer Zeit) x Roman cose a the tk of unchaning a ‘ones knocked the feudal basis co pieses and mowed off the feudal heads ‘which bad grown on it The other created inside France th "under which ree competition could frsebe developed, par property exploited, ..and beyond the Freach borders... (Ibid) Cons of ‘Tahericance supy tive of mother tongue In order to forget not what one inherits inherits. This forgetting is Bur synchrony does not have a chanee, no time is contemporary with itself, ‘only forgetting, For what one must forget wi neither che time of the Revolution, which finally never takes place in the pre~ ny oF follow from it What happens? Nothing, kas moreover hrough the pre-inherieance, eve seng, nor the times that fo Jn. And while the 1 Mare never the as ne (ale fie iver Zeit, appears in a time thas already ‘cless does not vilorize ias simply as one might think. Things are very located, disjointed, off its hinges out of joint” or “aus den Fugen’ ican complicated. One must forget the specter and the parody, Marx seems 0 2, res cel onydhvough the Roman haunting. in the snachrony of antique story can continue, fut ifone is content to forget costume and phrases. Then, once the revolutionary task is accomplished, anuesa necessarily sets in Ir vas already on the program ofthe anachrony, in appropriae forgetting corresponds to the momé mory, in order wo “find the “task of their time.” Anachrony practices and promises Forget again the spriof the revolution without making is speter enn [dow Git dr Bourgeois society forgets, in its sober place, that ghosts fiom the days etulution eiedersufinden, wit br Gespenst wieder umgrhen machen, emphasis Rome had watched over its cradle {dass die Geipeuster der Rimerscitibre Wiege added)” biter bor, question ofthe head as always acconding to Mars, 2 ques- "This isthe Fold of a striking difference [ei springender Unterscbied]” says tion ofthe head or the cap: ‘Marx, berween two my e (the one that dead (Tironbervinng), in che (cued replaces pas to admit chat chey resemble each other: They contaminate each other sedentary, bourgeois ind the spirit: in the amnesiac order of capitalist wes, like an animal, on the forgetting of ghosts), the ye head at the summit, the lard-head of a fattened, 1, replaces the pol Iutionaries on che march * n the conjuration of the bourge wocation ofthe spectes. One at ical and vigorous head of revo~ since the simulacrum c the other, es, precise! ind leaps into view sometimes in such 4 troubl rmiming the ing” ditfe order to jump up and down before your eyes. To disappear by appear ‘of es phancasm, Marx holds to this difference al the seal commanders [dv wirklich Heefirer] sat behind the counter, 1 the hogheaded {Sperthp/ Louis XVII was its political chie [ir ulsces Haupt, Wholly absorbed in the production of wealth and in get comprehended tha ghme mary frequen, Tn regul ye specters. The great spect -econjuration} RATATAT | LERMAN smonpiace 5 (B.105) only the difference of a hes the mask (ruaskier ‘parody,” and “caricature’ ddesth mask of Nay good and the bad hed we who do the law of anachrony is p Fhe pase. Those sare coming, a preseur and stained and occupied payed or ricked fjouer] by the dead, speak them and speak fo hem, bear theeREL TRTANSTIETENES shout the pase Earlier rev- ory in order to dull he nineteenth century oust let the dea 1 words ment beyond de content; here the com ns {Dot ging de Plows i don nba, bir er 104 ry empha shot. One must lend an ear and read close- the imperative of an “active forgetting” asa certain Nietzsche will soon put it, What does Marx mear have never bucied anyone. Nor have th i, who properly bear w always be ye dead have fing, the ing, The gods never bury anyone. ein the ground. If ‘only living, the immon dead as such, north as such have ever put a Masx cannot not kn co the make-onesdlf-fia o she dead: wanted first of ‘oneself. During past revolt the conjuration convoked the r ra 5 gaat sities (Jewish prophets, Rome, and 30 forth), but only in order for~ cs beter) in he Face o past protected the con Je to protect it aga ‘centuzy still ro come in Mara’ and no more borrowed figure, Bur as unleashed overflowing, at the moment be fone ought to ree~cRNA a ye exposed itselfindetin e worst, here rather Buc who oF as one says, a real xdera history: r ed (away) by che co he revolution appeared in cffect disin ly camated, As if that were possible. Bu ? And t0 understand histor nut border, Mary means ro denounce apps these men and these events whe lose fle 1 erreeinen), to be Sure, but this is but an appari sense of phenomenon and in the sense of rey on geey (gra i gran it wetted Schlemils [eseleinen als passionate frcefulness. Wl conjured pend exorcised [bamufexdrwren and gla!) bY Finally appears [ondicb ere) ie appears0 mR thatthe figure ofthe ghost is not just one figure among others. Ieis perhaps figures. For this reason, it would pechaps no longer mn among others, There would be no mets igure as one tropological we shecoric of the ghost. In the face of these paradoxes, what would be the task here? One of the leas, would be for example to reconstitute a bacte plan, the spectro- logical map of what was, in The German Ideology, phan- Le whole history of philosophy, One would have 10 follow icin detail, shrough the extraordinary play and the reciprocal excesses of what jm ehe passages we have just quoted, an “own content” and a hase.” Pleasure ou ot co lose a single spark of the wit, the spirit of pd beyond the w Features and its barbs, but through and beyond she trans-subscantiation between Giaz and Geiss ‘We will be able to isolate only a few traits in a long and witty spiritual icis a question of a bunt Anything close at hand is made ays wid Marx (and Engels) throu in the economy ofthe Ii to serve as arrow for the bow. The sometimes without respect forthe cues of conduct (which isto say, without too mich good faith), of someone who aging co chat Jing about above. Saint Max (Stirner), ld have eatused the Apocalypse of Saint nat merey, claims man, the secret (dar Geb inigen) And then te desert ofthe spirit die Wate der Geite), the whole history ghosts, or revenants: fest the pure history of spirits (sine cory of the possessed (ae Besssene) as impure istry of ph ine Geist), den the impareimpuse history of spits (nnrine unreine Geist) 16 ever the word was made flesh since the workd war spiritualzed [regi ewitehed [vers 3s a ghost {ein Spub}."™ Mark ironizes on the Scirner” ease (the proper name in quotation marks because, as everyone knows, it is a pseudonym): Stirner’ sees spirits (siebr Gister,” For, tourist guide or a professor, Stirner would claim to teach us the net fora good introduction to ghosts. After having determined the spirit coe something other than (the) sel (“Der Gest ir etwas Andres als I of sp coms ( of 5 sR SATE definition, we dave say, not lacking in insight, Siener poses yet another excel- tent question (But this other, what i ie [Dives Andre her, was ist?" wu ch Mars, it seems, is too quick to scoff at and too eager to do ‘whatever necessary 10 exo ‘All the more so in that, as Marx. aself remarks in order to mock ite ‘wodify, with a supplementa question (die urpapringlice Frage, the abyssal question that bore in effect on se in his ca the dis-adjusted untimeliness of this thing that is ‘ously, with an ingenu~ is less so than it appears. ied spivit. Marx sald not have made fun of i, but he does, and mal ‘ousness chat would like ta appear feigned. Perhaps (Go let us nor try to hide the fact here, although th ‘moment, that we take seriously the originality, audac {ilosophico-political seriousness of Stirner who also should be read fut Marx or against him; but cis isnot our topic here). Marx is nor exactly che Fig and, precisely, the the spirit other than ch ego? ing tits cr ax jumps t0 the next is created som nothing other Init first and simple “impurity,” the history of ghoses unfolds moments Bven before one watches from the comfort of one’s cha called the theory of specter the procession ofthe ghosts of concepts chat lerscore that this theory Heaps its origin, namely, father irbeteays: I allows one to see its ancestel ine and itis ‘unworthy of that ancestor. It denounces that ancestor. Stisner’s Hegs genealogy would also be a decline of the son, Stirner descends from He 1c is haunted by the author of Tie Phenomenology of Spi ing ghosts like « whale suffering from he cannot stand He spits out ‘ord, he does not comprehend Hegel as wel s another dans, Saher who comes back every night, ready also to bereay itis sometimes the same thing), is busy giving lesson here in Hegelianism to sss who, The latter, just as persecuted by the shadow of this great of to avenge himm Ee TSAR brother Stier. Steer always slips into Hlegelian language, he slides his words “Hegelian phrases? (p. 149), But this unwor- will and testament, he has into “the loog-fa thy heir has not understood the essentials of not read 1 Christian version (*S: stan spirit” [p. 153]}. What has be not he wants r0 give us # phenomen ‘understood? Wh the spirit, he has nor seen chat, for Hegel, che world wa ived (vergestign) but de-spiritualized (entgristin,a thes ‘The Gorman Idevlogy seems ro approve: this de-spiritualization is quite cor rectly (gave richtig) recognized by Hegel, we tead. Hegel managed to relare the two movements, but oar “sine dialectician,” who is ignorant ofthe “his- 1e had been a 1g with Hegel. For the 1as not learned how so do so. What is mor torical med better hi he would have ended up bre: reproach ageinst Stiener is both that he dacs not understand Hegel ond—this Iy a concradiction—that he is too Hegelian in his genealogy Jimself accused at once of being the too ‘son and a bad son of Hegel A docile son listens o his father he mimes but does not understand him aca, implies Mars—who would have liked ta do not the opposite, that is, become another bad son, bat something else by interrupting fliation, Easier ssid than done. In any case, the work of St ss null and void. “But even if he had given us this phenomenology (hich afte Hegel is moreover superfluous), he wouk all the same have given us nothing” (pp. 153-54) "A bad son and a bad historian, Stirner would be unable ro break with the ancestor and the precedent of the Péenomenolagy (and wat i. plesoonolagy i nota logic ofthe phainera’ and of che plantaoma, therefore ofthe phantom? Unless one goes to desperate lengths, a5 Marx finally does himself, co try distinguish between spirit and specter). The author of The Egy and His Owe does not see that concepts as abstract as Self-Consciousness or Man are reli rious in nature, He makes of religion a causa sui, as if specters could move ‘con their own, He does nor see that “Christianity” has no history what- done, the “self determinations" and the “developments” of *the religious spir~ ions? and "empirical causes,” on “a determined cy ofits own, Frdaes not manage to explain, as it should have it” based on “empirical c form of society,” determined relations of exchange and industry." He abissed sot ns both the being-determined, therefore “necessary.” he missed the determina tor (he master-word of the accusation) and more precisely the empiricity of this derertnination. He thus pation of spicit as hetero-determination, The apparently declared empiric jn fact, to a law of alter always, empiricism has a vocation for heterology. One recon’ ing overlooked this ipprehended what determines chis derermi- that inspires this ritique always leads it ba ssactual expe- rience by its encounter with some other. Nov for h cecerordetermination ofthe Christian sprit, Stier is under a spell he hal- Tucinates, he phantomalizes, one might say he fantaizes the spisit, Tn tru saved by the Hegelian (iequency. He is inhabited only by that. The rity" of which he is capable isthe “being-other” of the professorial "being-oth cs” of Stirnerian man and world are universal history incarnated is 1 of Hegel, incorporated into “the body of Hegelian philosophy [i tow Leib der Hegelschen Pilosopbie 0 only apparently are of the thoughts of the Berlin professoc” The “meta- ‘metamorphosed and incorp ye-othe? of the thoughts ofthe Berlin professor.” ‘They are only that, and they are apparently that. In The Penowsenology of Spirit in this Bible or this Book, Flegel transfigures the indi- ingo “object? Life and history are co relations ofenciousess to the objet [visstill a matter of ruth and itis a phenomenologization of the truth as truth ‘of canseiournezs that is here puc in question. The history of the ghost remains a bistory of phantomalization and the latter will indeed be a history of truth, history of the becoming-true of a fable, unless i is the rever 2 ghosts, whi vidual into “consciousness” and the w hus transfigure, in their very diversity a fabulay of truth, in any case a history of ghosts describes (1) the relation of consciousness to the object as eruch or as relation 0 the trath as mere object; (2) the relation of coms ue relation of consciousness with tu ousness, insofar as itis she (wobres castvine ar Wabrbeit y: God the Father, Christ, and the [oly Spirit The spirit provides mediation, thus passage and unity: Ie gives rise, by into the spectrak this is the same token, to the metamorphosis ofthe spi of Stiener in any case, Marx spirit, as if he still believed is reg ‘out to get the specter above all and not € nating purification in this ing ghost were not watching the spitit, asf it were not hawALANA ne st the spirit, precisely roma the threshold of spititualization, lization and the spiitualization of the idea," did nor erase avy critical assurance as to the discemment between discerning, That is the price ofthe these ewo concepts. But Mars in vinci of the exitique. 5 apparition of the inapparent the phenomenological “conjuring trick” An articulation assures the movement of this relentless indict- nent. fe gives some play. Ie plays between the spit (Geist) and the specter (Gespent, between the spirit on the one hand, the ghost or the revenauton the ‘thes This articulation often eemains inaccessible, eclipsed in its tun in shad- ‘ow, where it moves about and puts one off the tail. First of again underscore that Geirtean also mean specter, as do the words “esprit” ot “ its. Next, The German Idedlegy uses ‘vocation. It is its principal weapon. And especi spirit” The spitt is also the spirit of and abuses this eg although it operates with constancy or consistency, and even ifitis less tenable than Marx himself thinks, the argumenc that permits him eo di hetveen spirit and specter remains discreet and subtle. The specter is of tbeparticipates double. The difference betwe: the ghost effect, ju n advance devoted 1c [une chazie. And even to a count every moment runs thi 1g the reply. adversary athe moment ofthe retort, incor: reproducing ina mirror the logic of take apare at he produ the ghost, the eualization not 5 matass matandi ‘would be the given, oF roswed body, the second inearnation conferred on an initial body thats, tobe sure, nether perceptible s flesh, in a body without nature, in an a-plpsizal body ins, a technical body or thar could be cal incorporaced by the very subject of the its oz human bods, then becomes, according t0 Marx as critic of St er also maintains a Jemeat of the deb formed the context of this “Leipzig ‘would be but a raising of the ante of negativity, a accumulation of ghostly layers. Marx ing trick” in one ofthe elearest mom inous ergum such tropics necessarily lea heads spinning. ctation of ghosts proceed by so many cmyjuring tricks? conjuring trick in fact fet carried away with itself, and is unleashed in a series. hem and then gives up. The word “ of subserfage or theft in the exchange of merchandi Mare begins 1i CSA RATER sleight of hand by means of which an illusionist makes the most perceptible body disappear tis an art or a technique of making disapperr. ‘The exeneteur noses how to ake fnapparent He is expert in a hyper-phenomentogy. Now, 1g to disappear wl producing “apparitions,” which is only contradictory in appearance, precise- since one causes to disappear by provoking hallucinations or by inducing visions. Stimner has just been quoted at length and there then follows a nearly literal commentary, a paraphrase: 1 Gedankn) corporeal (ds. ses Gesponrtern gemacht bat rte er nam vider dese Leb [nn eri sine ign Ls ec) Te fact [Labi des Mono, i Bat aha ecy of self by the adolescent becoming an adult. But only up to the point x Stirner, determines the ultimate moment to be a ghost, ne body proper of the I, the mine, my property (als de Meinige alr Mein Figntum) There where Stiener sees a carnal and living ceappropriation, more je (there where there Marx denounces a hyperbolic more dea (ghere where there would be no mare if): since surplus of spectr the living body, mine, the unique, is but che common place, the space in which smized entities are gathered, is ie not itself the *body of ghosts (Leib der Gespruster}"? n this whi fiemness ofa few obvious facts, What Stiener and Marx seem to have in com- ahem want To have done with the 1 us ty te hold on to the atleast apparent ing dance of ghosts, man isthe crt ‘he pyjalinn-oflifein.a body pruper This hope at Teast is whae impel prescriptive injunction or the promise of their discourses. Is pechaps even ‘what gives its first determining content to the messianic formality of their toa simple [bale ie, Agathe con ing edck (Pp 125-26), "The spectral effect corresponds then, according to Marx, 10 position (Setzung) of the ghost,» dalertca position of the ghostly body as body propes [All of this would take place among ghosts, between re» ghants, Two according to Marx, while for Stimer only the frst moment would be spectral, and the of taking ideal prostheses, This second eviously posed, thought thachas ion is then negated exposed on the outside, objectiied, namely, the idea o been incorporated «fi time This fi osized The yells what takes it back within (serdninne) ST" incor- spectral neo by deposing the place coward which all the fopattiated specters run: the forum me back, for there isa loc of talking going on. Tcscoy as ifwith a spel, in an instant, the "corporeality® (Letbluftighet) of the n onder to reincorporate them alive. This magic of immediacy, which ‘would give life back to the specters by simple transition from exterior to inte ior body, from the objective to che subjective, inthe simple avto-affection of Me," "creator and owner” of these thoughts, thac is what Stirner seems to recommend. In the absolute certitude of the pure contact with itself, che immediacy of an “F-Me" would have exorcised the ghost by depeiving i fromihe nop elasa confabulatios the specter: And Marx each other, erect plans, ready their arm antagor ile the crossed (ecesroy that isthe ticle frend) over how to pot \who are sometimes pl ‘or exchange secrets, There, sof das Jn ghost, the one named by the inst an army of specters aginst is a good war. We realize a century before The Gor misims among Mars, the paternal ts first reapparition. To accuse nself up co this general and precipitous spect we, Stitner accepted a series of di n-selfin she face of which 5 fving and incarnate individual els kbbaftiges Indviduam. Stirner has often been res opriate hi 1 simply “it spooks,” as we just hosts” “it specrers") The essential made of self presence sis t any cogito? The Cartesian cal eg cngito® A real presence is my body.” S: other moreover as two “beings ofas LOOT LLL ATETN view a construction.” Now, to analyze and take apart what is licerally in struct what resembles & speculative edification, sometimes Marx sug ‘merely an edifying discourse and a new form of right-thinkin ests that beneath ths seromblance with Jesus Christ the Stimnerian phantasin “Sancho is the modern Ch the whole historical constructs i ‘simed” (p. 382). systematic study would repeat edly bring out tat the theme of food, the Last Supper, and the hast crosses the critique of x the disguises and conjuring tricks thar always con- Ay accrediting discursive powers (abuse of etymology privileging of nomination, autonomiza- {aie ganze as explanation, play on homom sion of language, and so forth). ‘A question, then, avust be asked, and ic isa question of method, a second Kitang)t0 the vision of spirits: How does one transform che Lin das Gespens der Wabrbeit|”? And how docs one transform oneself “into something holy or spectral [} einer Gebsiliggen oder Gespenstigen)"? Saing Max (Stirner) to: is reproached for the very thing that Marx reproachies Stier fos, name! that he should not be “surprised” when “he now finds nothing but a specter” sel [i ih wits als nen Sp finde.” From the moment he is no longer concerned with details, he treats 1 produces the object in gener: manufacture of specters on a lagge scale [Lire Gespeustrfabrikation is ® He believes in that with which Stisner threatens him and the rea~ son Stizner accuses hint conceiving the truth as specter (die Wabrbeit ale is precisely what Marx is reproaching Saint Max for! He aging of portions and oppositions end up in an “arithmetical series of appasitions” whose “diectic jre(p. 156}. Vertiginows metry: the tech- esl oie vagine oneself [pose oneself sic stan) to be Sueliga, and then say 13 to this Szeliga: Look around You inthe world and say snot looking at You from everywhere!” (ans self, as Saint Max for Yoursell whet UENCE Allon Dich ein Geir anschaut"(p. 152) and the Tock hardness of Commandatore Pecus follow this guze, Righeaway and the rock hardness of Commanssor ‘Yelose sight of disappeared, the departed, in the ball of mirrors where i¢ -illon), ie proliferates «prov, a mob of specters to which irpurs in place, while depriving them of any pl igthe specter, Burin order (o Inbabic even there where one 1s not, © haunt places atthe same time, to be apie (mad and non-loealizable), not only is \ecessary to see from behind the visor, to see without being seen by whoever nd to hear voices. The spectral rumor now resonates, ic invades everything: the spir- i of the “sublime” and the spirit of “nostalgia” cross all borders. “One hears” Marx quotes, “millions of spirits speak chrough the mouths of people’ [wr ‘nan bis ‘aus den Menschen Milonen Geiser rede)" (bid.).A mesciless spiraling movement then draws in a series of quotati ‘Mars wants a the same time to extract them from Stimner's witness-text and to use them against him, As always, he grabs the weapons and curs them back against the one who thought he was their sole owner. We underscore here the jections that one might be tempted co address to the phenomenological the phenomenal form of the 1 eg9(Me, You, and so fosth} is soa itself (before its determination as phenomenon or phantastn, thus as phantom) is the very possibility ofthe specter, it brings death it gives death, ic works at mouroing® Consequence, concatenation, rate of chains, pomenal forms that file by, all white and diaphanous, in the middle of the ight The apparition form, the phenomenal body of the spirit, that is the def- in of the specter, ‘The ghost is the phenomenon of the spirit. Let us cive Marx who, citing Stirnes, wants to force him to admis that he identifies ire sistibly with the witness-adversary whom he cals to appear, the poor Szeliga. The lateer will have survived obl speaks only through tis i he German expression er pur, which translations are obliged to circumvent. 0 makes himself or herself seen (me, us), its also necessary to speak ad to v0 conclusions. world itselfis specera; (2) d a specter The phi less procession of phe- on only in this insubstantial guise, he rect voice. Everything is concentrated then in ave to say: it haunts, it ghosts ic spectes, there is some phantomus AAI there it has the feel of the Fiving-dead—manor house, spiritualism, occult science, gothic novel, obscurantism, atmosphere of anonymous threat or jimminence. The subject chat haunts is not identifiable, one cannot see, focal- ize, fix any form, one cannot decide between ballucination and perception, there are only displacements; one feels oneself looked at by what one cannot ‘Mone has achieved ths level [shore alk passes through 1 Atenshon Miltnen Ce fone Stier: * Ye, ghosts are ceemng inthe whole won [Jae pai der advance tothe point” (p. 93) nay: far whasioever is more than these cometh of isthe wundering pseudo-body of a ist der waded Scheie is Gest in ook near at hand or ito the distance, you are world. You see spit Fer, Dich umgib eine espns Wals—Du set Goi" cation be, Yea, yea Nay I have clarified, i It isa differance. The g jong other chings, the difference again, fora spiie (auf Erlosung barr adnlch ein Ge Tetecred spirit, the promise or calculation of an expiation. Wages x al] calculations, STA transition between the ewo moments of spin ist passing through, Stirner, notes Marx white citing him, takes this passage of the “spirits” (in the plural) chat are the “offspring of te singular (Sent May mdbt jst Ernst mit dew “Geist,” welebe de ] sar a “Kinder des Geistes rind”), He atleast (Gespensterbafighis Aller), To this whole progeniture, to sagines this spectrality of everything ese children whose sex is never determined, neither by Max nor Manx (but everything s that they are brothers of the same Son, thus sons ofthe same Father, he mediation of the same Holy Spirit), he is content just to give names. Incantatory magic of onomasties and appedlasons contrlées, The names 1 the concepts have aged, they drag along behind chem a single ides: the idea chat men reprerent, precisely by means of new appellations, general ‘concepts. The whole debace here concerns, of course, the status of concepr- al generality and the rough treatment it receives from Stirner, who according, co Marx, phantomalizes it, These “represencacives™ (Repniseutanter) that are yen present ot represent the generality of concepts in “the Negroid fora Gin negerbafion Zustand), Perfidious, bifid, the word "Negroid” does double duty. On the one hand, it denounces the confusion within which Stirner Jns the concept, more precisely the presentation of the concept, fh concepts “come onstage” in the intuition: the indetermina~ tion of the homog in the dark element af a nocturnal obscurity. The js thus also, as some august ancestor had said just a state” ggnealicy and moreover, to preoeeuph thy to couchude that the crime sone Bscurancism plus occulesm, mystery plus mysticism and mystification. Blackness is never far from the obscure tis. But, on the other hand, “Negroid form” m these pseudo-concepts that have no autonomy. They are not ye occult. Spiritualism is but a das having any internal necessity. For they are working merely the Negroid fort as objective spirits having for people the char- acter of objects [a ebjetive, den Menschen geenstandlicbe Geir and ates level ace called specters or apparition der Sp" (9.157? ‘men, formen, “These general concepts appear here nd ison auf dieser Stnfe Cespenseragein 2 ing fe gets in one’s “The axch-specter, the auptgespens) sch" elt), BA, Is gepenstge, Cespenster fr einarder Lor series of ghosts. Docile recitation of The Pharomenology of self by having the pr Marx suggests and he anvuses hi ory, the parade of these specters march across hat ner py pampbleteer and a so sly no doubs is worked over by some Js to count off the Marx only feigns to count them, he pretends 0 sumerable. ‘These simulacra of iden uses every means to com adversary. Botb the rete and ordered (in a tou: der Reibe nach) sevil- cept, the pare for the whol turn the cause, ye Thing or the HRD the fither an son for Mara’s rage? Why does he harass Samer fe as the Impression, since the critique shat it projects itself neces. hypothesis, or my is never possible to avoid this preci acts, writes with bie or Ber ghosts, even when one goes 2), My feeling, the self [ie he buff porsues [i suchumebui-méme} relentlessly someone who ike one forthe other: a its names w ig consonance and refer Someone who is ike him, by the same and by awe ‘you muss not go ait immedi ly, abstractly, egologically, fantasm: A CREAA NER cally, ‘with the word, with ehe language act of a phantasmagoreuen, You must pass J of the detour, you must traverse and work onthe shrough the laborious ord practical struceures, the sol forth, Otherwise, you wi body, not che body itself of ehe uh fd mediations of real, “empirical” ac namely, the reality ofthe State, and so jaye conjured away only the phantomality of the pero, "Nation, Fatherland, and s0 an, Buc obviously, for ee rime ofthis detous, you mus agceptto rake inco account the autonomous, relatively autonomous body of ghostly re self pursuing thi going is way his ‘lar. This risk ieritaces him, so he has ro keep endle the distinctive traits and the polemical traits, He wi He counts off the other's ghosts. There are ten of them. We stops atten. Is it simply 8 sefore all the more insabstan is double who isin aru ‘own ghost: a specter at once speculative anx ly never be done bur itis in order to be done with i, to close out his account that he things up. ie can count om his fingers? A ma to get things over with, ars always euns the risk of 1d spec- wgon the cats, with i, way, he ‘operation in view of a manal? But what is Mara’s hand doing here, undechandedly soto speak, as Pacrice Lora. (One might read the inexhaustible gloss op this table of yhosts. For one ca ight say2** Why ten? doit ole German Ideology, We ke asthe ‘his way, asa table, a Table ofthe law in ten parts, the specter of a Decalogue and a deca- logue of specters. The new table is presented also as 2 ableas, taxonomy, or the statistic of ghosts, A table ofthe tabulasiastion, the fictive ‘categories ofthe object or of being as specter in general. And yet, des stasis that is appropriate knows no rest in any tal stance table [thle turnant table™ i Capital whi ity opens up the ea nension of secrecy, mysticism, and fetis sof ghosts in this new table whose capital categories stand like the counss of for the exhibition of a tableau or picture, t Ic begins to dance before our eves, cer see move, when its becom sn. For roche “This tableau of spirits moves on the model of nis cannot be distinguished. “They are not added one tuen of the other. We eannot read here The’ isbuc the developed exposition ofthis ele and thereby pass in turn one into German crac even quoting the mocking semacks in the exclamatory style (the curions read- cris referred to them) with w apporit ic ourselves to a few observations about distinctive trait, Whereas in the "pure history of spirits [reine Geisergsciche, ‘Mars had counted *ten theses,” here afew pages later, in the “impure history ofthe ren is or that cofspirits,” he banks on [able nur Jeqpnst No.1 (ghost No.1) the supreme being (das hihste Ween), God, Not 1et nor Marx, moreover, stops to consider the essence of believing, here th ar excellence, which can only ever believe in the unbeliew~ st be what itis without thar, beyond any “proof of the able, and w existence of God.” Geypont Na 2: Being or essence (Dar Wésen). (Apparently, we ae fiom the highest, das bicbste Wesen, tothe less high, das Weser pe problem, at least since Aristo ontology. Will itbe so simple? Meson remains the common concept, as we shall see, and the guiding thread of ly ontological, in truth onto-theologie: Descending class hat cherefore remains essen Gesponst No, 3the vanity of the world. Nothing co say about th: Ieebrwigh what follows. And what is non-existent (here, n ie Hesen) than the shadow and the vanity ofa ghost? ink with what follows, namely quien und bisen Wesen, Das Wesew has come back but, notes Mars, Max has nothing © say on this scare, even if there {sso much to be said Tris ust to make follows, namely: Gerpenst No, 5- Being and is real (das Wese and sein Rete, This s the frst eretmination of Being, It possesses an empire, whence its metamorphosis co an evangelical ground. spenst No. é-beings, therefore (dic Wesen). We have passed over into the 19 of the progeniture, from 5 t0 through meta- ‘morphosis and spontaneous generation (dasrer“das Wesen” it, woraufes sich ‘fg i Geipenst Nr6: "die Wesen” vertanddt.SAAT Geipenst Na. the Man-God {der Gorm). tis descending hierarchy, 1e moment of conversion oF seversibility (descent and ascen- .e category ofthe third, che mide or the mediation, for che synthesis of speculative idealism, the binge (charnitte] of t nchropo-theology of the ghost. Does not the Man-God play the same tole so situates the place of this sin su sion). Fis al onto-theology as becoming- flesh, the pi corporation Ie is nota al surprising that Mi gest commentary (0 it, wl J. snot the Cheistic moanent, and within it the eucharistic of acharnen ric by an incorporation, by the of specters. He tells us something about absohute spectrality. Stimer himself would be ready eo grant hi is transcendental privilege. Without this incarnation, would the concept of incarnation have any sense ata nce? Jus isa once the greatest and the most “incomprehensible of the most eapkiva Snstang, the hype sis nor “oirlcben Leib". According © oduced geeat distress into history and our sentiment how the strongest Christians have racked jes—"there has neverbeen (pissy! Thing, Ieis of the essence of she ‘ofthe mast “unheimlich” of ns overlook most often and that i far the doqrestc, or even meas RETNA oN ws this becoming) causes even more fear as he comes closer tous. He is even more spect snakes himself'into the fear that he inspires’ Hence the contradictions that makes himself into the fear that he inspices.* Hence che contradictions th ‘Sgrder humanism untenable, We see rise up here the Togie of this far of oneself that is guiding our remarks. The ipseity of the selfs co ere. No ‘one will have escaped it, neither Mars, nor the Marxists, nor of course theit inorsal enemies, al hose who want to defend the property and integrity of ic home [cbr si} the body peopes, the proper name, nation, blood, teri tory, aad the “rights” of side facing, in 8: 8, uc he does so in the other, Max ‘Marx seems to suggest, it Ic has to do with the phenomenological fold, that difference, both decisive and insubstanti 1c, that separates being from appearing at the same t ‘being, 358 that appears; 1¢ appearing of not the being s phenomenality of its is the fold of the “unk yenomenon, is and ‘very man a “Irightfol specter” specter [ein “unbcalibos Spa, int Max is ready to blow hisbeain out (once again the sign ofthe hunt: cine Kage doh dem Kop ag) thecother makes hmm suffer in wherever todeduce (Dies brings ibm auf) the next ghost. is incarnated. This leadsONSET 16 able to forget, 2s Fhe too had made of Ww a technique of per jn the ghosts of non (Gespensterelate vous and acable wi have spoken of nothing 0 tables, and tables armed from head to coe. And the origin of exchange-value is separate fiom the edola, are the dead: when they are not hanging around fan sepulchers (Phaede), they are haunting the souls of certain background whose consequence ea Max, fo Marx and beyond. ‘The lincage of this he question of the idea, the before being a quest 10 adimension yg and onto some opMe TAA IAEA would be the interest of such an operation? ‘The treatment of the phantomatic in he Germ Ideology announces or con- lege thac Marx al firms the absolute pri seen feacure [le pre, soc speay of the religious, according to Marx, thauis mised when one eflace the semantics or the lexicon of the spects as ned eobe more o less equivalent (Fn mn). “The mystical fecsh, in the mark it eaves on che experience ofthe religious, ghostly character. Well beyond a convenient mode of presents ke is, om the one asmagorical, bal «from a psychology of jmaginary, no more than from an anto- or me-ontology, even though Marx seems ¢o inseribe it with losophy of ‘a socio-economic genealogy or a pl ans suppose the possibility of spectral the religious model in the construction of the concept of Marx evokes specters at the moment he analyzes, for examp! character ot the becomingefetish of the commodity, we should therefore not tums of pliase that ace contingent or mere- jnation, [Fthar were che case, moreover, har only eflects of rhetoric 4g effectiveness inthis respect. One would have to reckon with the invincible force a ghost effect. One would have co say why it fHightens or strikes che imoginas 1 subject, the life oftheir subject, and 9 .¢ original power of th ‘Lorus situate ourselves fora momentin that place whese the values of ole {between use-value and exchange-value), sere, mrtiga, avg fish, and “doa form « chain io Mars’s text, singularly in Capita and locus ry a least to indicate (it ot) the spectral mor i, The movement is staged there where itis a question, precisely iar the stage, any stage, withdraws from oor indeed constructed W Ing the c ac the mos sera is a great moment atthe beginning of Capital as everyone recalls: Marx js wondering in effees how to deseribe the sudde jon of the thing itself/—and of ty’s simple form isthe "germ." He wants to voming up of the myst character of the commodity, the myst money-form of w) analyze the equivalent whose en stical character only strike the the finished form of money, gold oF moment in which Marx means to demonstrate that the mystical cheracter bourgeois economis Wer Iris the owes nothing 10 8 use-value, Ist just chance that he illustrates the principle of his explanation by ition of a corning table’ cis found at the opening of the chapter fetishism of the commodity and its secret (Gebeimnis)* This table has been worn down, exploited, overexploited, or else set aside, no longer in use, in antique shops or auction rooms. The thing is at once set aside and beside itself Beside itself becavse, as we will soon be surprised co soe, the said table: ‘ale mad, weird, unsettled, “out of joint” One no longer knows, beneath the hermeneutic patina, «this piece of wood, whose example suddenly Jooms wp is good for and what it is wort. bbe a mere example? Yes, bur the exam- ‘that seems to loom up of iselfand co stand fonts paws Tis the example of an apparition LLetus take the chance, then, afer so many glosses, of an ingenuous reading, Lets try to see what happens. But is this not right away impossible? Me ‘warns us with the first words, The poincis right away to go beyond, in one fe swoop, the first glance and thus to see there where this glan hac one sees. One must see, at Fist sight, what does not ler itself be seen. And this is invisl atonce ‘one’s eyes wide there where one does nor see ‘what frst sight misses is the see, and not to notice the im then the not, a simple thing deemed to be trivial and too obvious. ‘This trivial ‘seems to comprehend itself (ein sllstuertndlicbes, riviates Ding: te thing iselFin the phenomenality ofits pl Soas to prepare us to see this invisibility, co see wi the body without body of this invisible visibility—the ghost is alread shape—Marx declares that the thing in question, namé Je Trone daes not give oneself up t0 commodity, immediately perceived, remains what itis nomenon, a quite simple wooden table, ink ing ne commode, your seeing, thus 10150 iO ASEAN ‘end of time, who thar they see what thac is seen, only what is seen). The blurred, engled, paralyzing, aporet= jo, pethaps undecidable (vin br nerimackte Ding) Ics so disconcerting, this physical” subtlety commodity iseven very com roach it w' and the theological that constructed itself, of the immediately visible commodity, in flesh and blood: as what iis at fist sight (anf den ersten Blick). ical good sense may pethaps be valid for use-value. It isp tobe valid only for ‘use-value, as i the correlation of these concepts answered to his fa phenomenology a8 the discourse of use-value soar nat to think che market or ‘view of making onesef blind o exchange-value. Perhaps. And icis for this ical good sense of phenomenology of perception can speak of pure and simple use reason that phenomenol {also at work in Marx when he believes’ value) can claim to foster Fl nce use-value has nothing at all ‘etious” about i (wich Mysteriérer am ib), Wane keeps to use-vale, properties (Fishin) ofthe thing (and itis going to be a question of prop- erty) are always very human, 2¢ bottom, reassuring for this very reason. They always relate to what is proper to man, to the properties of man: either they respond to men’s need and that is precisely their use-value om ese they are the produet ofa human activity that seems to intend them for chose needs. For example—and here is where the table comes stage—the wood ordinary, is quice different wher remains wooden when itis made into arable: iis then {elu ordinaires sinicbes Ding)" ‘commodity, when the curtain goes up on the market and the table plays actor ss Marx, ‘becomes 2 and character at the same time, when the commodiey-tabl stage (axfirin, bey self forward as a market value. Coup de shine: the ordinary, sensuous thing is transfigured (verwandelr siet), ix becomes someone, it assumes a figure. This woody and headstro ddensoness is metamorphosed into a supernatural thing, a seswnus non-senswour thing, sensuov: sible (sersamaet si inci slic abersinliches Ding) The ghostly schema now appears indispens- igi fighe that ‘odorless; but to walk around and to pu jut non-sensuous sensuousty super able, The commodity is 2 “ching” surpasses de senses (ici invisibl wr snscendence is not altogether spiritual, it retains that bodiless body as making the difference between specter and spi 1 surpasses the senses still passes before us in the si jomerte of the sensuous body eat it nevertheless lacks or that remains inaccessible to us ‘Marx does not say sensuous ad non-sensuous, oF sen jons hur non-sensu0us, he says: sensuous non-sensuous, sensuously supersensible.” Transcendence, he movesent of :mper-, the step beyond (ihr epee), is made sensuous shat very excess. It renders the non-sensuous senswous, One rouches there ou cone feels there where suffers chere where suffering does nor take place, when at least it does not cake place whore one sufers (which is als, let us no forget, what is said about phantom limbs, that pi of perception), The commodity hac one does not rou we does not feel, one even nenon marked with an X for any phenomenology ing, its specter is at work n use-value, This haunting displaces itself like an anonymous sithouette oF ter Ie changes places, one no invades the stage with its mer: chere isa step there [ily « 41 un pas] and its gs only to thi «d muse describe dhe appatit allure! guage of the commodity as a stage entrance {aufri), And he must deseribe the table become commodity asa table that turns, eo be sure, during a spiritualist séance, but also as a ghostly sithowette, the figuration of an actor or & dancer: Theo-anthropological figure of inde- isa masculine noun), the cable has feet, the table ive, it erects its whole self like an institution, it its che specter nutant Marx must have recourse to theatrics terminate sex (iso abl has a head, its body comes stands up and addresses itself to others, first of all to other commodi fellow beings in phantomality, it faces them of opposes them. en engaged in competition or im a war as soon as it makes is nor desire, nor love, nor peace would be tenable, ‘One would have to put this rable make it sped the auction block, subject it to co- ‘ith so many other tables in our philosophy, thetori, pootcs, from Plato to Heidegger, from Kant to Ponge, and so many others With cof the able Mar chen, asus announced is entrance on stage and its transmutation ‘occurrence of concurres pal so many that we have fost count of then fof them, the same ceremor toa sensuously supessensible ing, and now here itis standing up, nor2 holding itself up but rising, geting up and lifting its! deessing itself and addressing itself. Facing the others, and first of varase afew Ie is oot enough for this wooden table also stands (sondern French cranslacors nad made him concede, frightened as they were by the description) it also stands on its head, a wooden head, for it has become a commodities (ese sich allen ans Waren gegeither ang den Kepf) Pacing up to the others, before the others, its fellows, here then is the appar strange creatu ‘Thing, Beast, Object, Commodity, ‘Automaton—in a word, specter. This Thing, which is no longer altogether 8 thing, bere ic goes and unfolds (emrsicel), ic unfolds iff it develops whas it (parthenogenesis and he same time Li engenders through a quasi-spontaneous gener indeterminate sexuality: the anitual Th the dead-living Thing is a Father-Moths extracts omits wooden head a whole lineage of fantastic or prodigious crea neous character parts, that i, the lineage jons far more bizarce ot ye animated-inanimated Thing, sgives birth through its head, ic sures, whims, chimera (Gril) no ‘ofa progeniture chat no longer res marvelous (viel wenderlcher} than iFthis mad, capricious, and uacenable table, its head beginaing co spin, starced to dance on its own bef ans freien Stcken)2 Whoever understancls Greek and say of this genea that it also gives a tableau of the beco knows, bul, matte, is frst ofall wood. And since this becoming. matter seems to take no ime and to operat an instant, ina single glance, through the omnipotence of a thoug! iso be tempted to describe ic ss the projection of an animism or a spiitism The wood comes alive and is peopled lack of maturity before Englightenment, childish or primitive 1 be withour the market? And who ige-value? les it, iw hich tcansfigures the igneous into the non-ligneaus, ing-immaterial of matter. As one nateria of in the magic of night at would Enlighten will ever make progress without exch Capital contradiction. At the very origin of capital. Immediately or in the te induce the “prsge as wits x9 head (de som propre chef}, with a movement ofits head but ae controls its whole body, from head to toe, figneous and dematerialized, the Table-Thing appears to be at the principle, at she beginnit the controls of itself, Ie emancipates itself on its 0 ves al and without of ts body, appears I ghosts, a little mad and unsettled as well, upset, .? delirious, capricious, and unpredictable. 1c appears to put itself spon taneously into motion, but it also puts others into mi everything a ‘encourage the dance: *One may recall and it ineo motion, as thou hers), Marx specifies in French in a note about this ghost ‘China and the tables began to dance when the on pont encourager les autres” (to rest ofthe world appeared to be seanding still-—pourencourager les autres: ‘The capital c conjunction of contradict radiction does not have to do simply with the incredible sensuous and the supersensible inthe same Thi n of automatic anton s onto the stage of a marker, the table but aatomacism resembles a prosthesis offtsell. Autonomy and automatis If into motion, wo he sure, of this wooden table that spontaneously puts lize, spirivaalize, spivtize itself, but while remaining an artifactual body, a sort of automaton, a puppet, a stiff and mechanical jose dance obeys the technical rigidity of a program. Two nd that genses, two generations of movement intersect with each othee in js why i figures the apparition of a specter. It accunmulates undecidably, nett thing appears suddenly tancanniness, their contradictory predicates: the Inpired, iis all at once transfixed by a pneuna ora pryc Become like a living beeing, the cable resembles a prophetic dog that gets up on its four paws, ready toface up to its fellow dogs: an idol would like wo make the law. Bur, inversely, wy igneous body, and auconorny the spirit, sou, or life that animares it remains caught in the opaque and thingness ofthe is no more than the mask of automatism. A mask, indeed a visor that may he inert thickness o always be hiding no living gaze beneath the helmet. The automaton mimes the living, The ‘Thing is neither dead nor ali time, le survives, At once cunning, inventive, and machi heatrical machine, a mebdan. What one from the iv is dead and alive atthe same ke, ingenious and ‘unpredictable, this war machine is haa just seen cross the stage is an apparition, «quasiat NSERC STELET sky or come out ofthe earth, But che vision also survives. es hypertucicity iration, “encouragement, seduction countering seduction, we o hate, provocation af other ghosts Marx insists om this a fot for there isa mull ofthis sociliy (here is always more than one com: ore than one spirit, and even nie process of specialization (Baudelaire re specters) and sumer belongs 0 the movement itself 1 the m s+ very well in the ant crowd, money, prostitution —and Benjamin likewise in his wake). For ‘use-value can ie fr produce this mysticality or this spectral effect of che he secret is at the same time profound and super we secretin that no substan- city of modera capitalism —a commodity, ‘opaque and transparent a secret that isall che tial essence hides behinut ir, it is because the effet is bor difference, reference, and differance), as double relation, one should say as double social “This double seiurbinds on te ne band men toc simes interested in time, Marx notes right fa relation (Ferance, her. Ieassociates them insofar as they have been for away, the ime or the duration of Tabor, an this inal cultuses and tall stages of techno-economic development. This sin nds “men” who are first xi by this relation to time which jeself would not be possible without surviving and returning, without thet ocates the self-presence of the living present and to the other The same socius, the same “social fori” of the re: on the other hand, commodity-things r0 each other: On the uber bard, but how? And how is what takes place an the oe bond among men, in thei apprehension of time, explained by what akes place te ities? How do those whom ther layed among those specters that are comm fone cals “men? living: men, temporal an finite existences, become subjected, jn their social relations to these specters that are elasions, egal sci rela- tions among commodities? [Since temporality appears to be essent in which an exchange-value is merchandi tion and to the sor ye men and stomen inseribed in spectralizing itself, since the existence of this process is determined fitst ofall, in Capital, as tempo quickly, in passing, t ws deserve a more sustained analysis, In question is che formala that, at the open~ ines exchange-value and determines the table as recalls (and 1 of time—of time as well as of spac ‘cannot be taken a8 fortuitous or exter Hegel's Emeselopeia (Philsophy of Natur, Mechs), legel subjects the Kantian definition to a dialectical interpretation, that i, v0 the Auflehing He analyzes time a tac in Idee) since it is the negative unity of ideal oftime is siation and any fetisbization, whatever difference one must respect between these ewo processes} Now, “Auflelung as ternporalization of abstract and ideal time that Hegel adds this remark: "As space, time is a pure form of sensibility or ofthe act of intuition, 1e non-sensuous sensous [da unsinaliche Sinalice)..* (258; | proposed a ofthis passage in Margin—of Philosophy)” in order to make explicit the movement of ‘The commodity table, the headstrong dog, recall, 10 all other commmadities, The marker is confrontation. Commotit 1e wooden head faces up, we front, a front among f ave business with other commodities, these hardhesded specters have commerce among themselves. And not only in te~ ‘tie ‘That is what makes them dance. So it appears. But if the “mystical ifthe “enigmatic character” of the product of bor, one mus still analyze character” of the commodi labor ar commodity is born what is mysterious or secret about this process, and what the seerer of the commodity form is (dar Gebeimnirvlle der Warenform). "This secret has to do vith pro quo” ‘The term is Marx's? I takes us back once again to theatrical intrigue: mechanical ruse (mekboué or misting a perso repetition upon the perverse intervention af aprompter {slew parole sof fle sobsication of actors or characters Here the theatrical guid pro quo fr an abnormal play of mirrors There isa mirtr, is als this mieros, bu since all oF sudden it ao Tonger pay oes not reflect back the expected image, those who are looking for them the commodity form s role, since it selves can no longer find themselves init. Men no longer recognize in it the «asia character oftheit on labor, eis as i'they were becoming ghosts in their turn. The “proper” fearure of specters like vampires, i that they are deprivedSane iS ERRATA 3 ae ences of a specolar image, of the ere, right specular image (but whois no so $ How do you cecognizea ghost By the fact chatit does nor rec- mirror. Now that is wh: commodities anung demedoer. These ghost thet are commodities ¢ransform human producers into ghosts. And tis whole theatrical process (visual, chen: in) sets off the effect ofa mysterious mirror if the later does not rerarn the right reflection es, this is Frese of all because it nauralizes. The “mysteriousness” of the commmodlity- spens with the commerce ofthe form os presumed reflection of the social form is the incredible manner in which chis mirror sends back the image (surispiegl) when one thinks ve image ofthe “socal characteristes of mets ows labor mage” objectives by nataralizing Thereby, thsi is truth, it shows by hiding, it reflects these “objective” (qegnstindicte) characteristics as inscribed right on the product of labor, asthe “socio-natural properties of hese things” (al esechiicbe Natreigenschafin dieser Ding Therefore sind here che cormmerce aniong commodities does not wat, the returned deformed, objetified, naturalized) image becomes that of «social relation among commodities, among these inspired, auconomous, and automatic objects” that are seance tables. The specular becomes the spectral at che threshold ofthis objecting nacoralization: “it alo reflects the socal rel tion ofthe producers to the sum tots of Iabour as socal relation berwese ject, relation which exss apart Fim and ouside the producers. Through this substiztion [guid pro qu} the products of labour become commodities, sensuous things which are at the same time superse 164-65). Forthe thing as well as for dhe worker his relation to ime, soc} the becoming-social passes by way of this spectral smagoria” that Mares working hereto describe, the one that i going 1 Pe» up dhe question of fdshism and the elgions is the very element off jsocial by the same token. While pursuing the same way, ofcourse, the lum reflecting for me such and spectral becoming: at the same his optical analogy, Marx concedes that, nous impression left by a thing on t objective form before the eye and outside of sve itself But there, in visual perception, thexe is eal (sified) he says Tighe hat goes rom one thing, he external object, to anoshes che ey" BHFE ical relation between physical chings” But the c y-foram and the ‘optic nerve also presents itself a8 not as an excitation ofthe optic value between products of labor in which it presents iesel have ox with ies the “thingly (material) sis nothing but the d themselves which assumes here, for them, dies phantasmagoriscbe physical nature" or ns" (dingiche Beziohunger) that ati from it ite social relation between the fantastic fo yr} of a relation becween things” ‘macket things, on the mernaror the agora, when a piece of merchandise (mers) seems «0 enter into a and negotiate of the human a denaturalization, able when it comes on stage as exchange-value and no longer as use-value, For commodities, as Marx is going to poine out, do not walk by themselves, they do not go 0 market on their own in order to meet other commodities. This phantasmagoria, The autonomy lent to commaities corresponds to an anthropomorphic projection. The latter inspins the commodities, itbeathes the spirit into them, a human spirit, the spirivof'a speecband the spirit of a il, A. Of aster frst o ona, actor, oF character say? jon, to converse, speak (agor with another, corresponds at she same time to a nara Tabor object tnd a dematerialization ofthe ching become commodity, of che woode in things, and co a denat commerce armong things sterns from I, bue what would speech say? What would this per~ ommodities could speak, they would say this: our use-valwe may interest men, bu ie does not belong to us as objects, What does belong to us as objects, however, is our value. Our own intercourse [Usrer tiger Verkeb\ as cornmnotities proves it. We relate to each other {ir besiebo ns} merely as exchange-values” (pp. 176-77). This thevorical artifice is abyssal. Mars is going to claim right away that the economist aaively reflects or reproduces this fictive or spectral speech of the commodity and lets himself bein some way ventriloquized by it he “speaks” from the depths ofthe soul of (ons den Warenseleheraus) But in saying “if commodities could speak" (Kine de Waren spreeken), Marx inmplies that they cannot speak. He makes them speak (like the economist them say, paradoxically, th speak, and thae they speak or maincain 2 commerce among themselves insofar as they speak, That co them, nd speech, ‘Ta speak, to adopt or borsow speech, and to be exchange-valve is here the same thing, Iris use-values that do no speak and that, for this reason, are not