Derrida’s Declaration Of Specters: The Mystifying Tricks Jefferson Pulled To Legitimize A

Nation And Its People.

By Ezaridho Ibnutama

In 1776, thirteen representatives of then-British-Colonies in America signed The

Declaration of Independence penned by Thomas Jefferson to lay out the reasons for the

separation between the British Empire and the American Colonies. The so-called Signers of

the Declaration of Independence are one end of a linked chain with no attachments on the

other end, at least that is the perspective set forth by Jacques Derrida. In his critique on

Jefferson’s Declaration, Derrida calls into question the contexts of the performative

utterances within The Founding Document. He points the limelight to the blank bodies

imbuing their coup de force to the independence from the good people and their

representatives to God. Based on that premise, Derrida’s main issue is that the foundational

authority the Founding Document draws upon for its validation as a declaration for the

“good people[’s]” independence is non-existent – a specter beneath the labels. Derrida, as if

an expert magician seeing through his peers’ tricks, reveals to the reader Jefferson’s smoke

screens with the Declaration’s smoke coming from the signers, God, and the writer.

The foremost point Derrida conjures into question is the document’s ‘real signers’ as

Jefferson is only The Declaration’s writer and the representatives do not sign as mere

individuals. At one instance, Derrida spotlights the unending chain link of representation:

“’good people’ who declare themselves free and independent by the relay of their

representatives and of their representatives of representatives.” (49). The long linkage of

representatives to get to the ‘good people’ is an illustration to pull back the curtain on the
emptiness for who actually wants the declaration to be made. And this web of linked bodies

of people (real and spectral) throws the context of the whole Declaration into question of

whether it was intended to declare the “the good people have already freed themselves…

and are only stating the fact…[o]r…free themselves of and by…the signature of this

Declaration” (49). Through layers of representatives, it becomes unclear whether the good

people have or are freeing themselves. This “undecidability” shakes the Document’s “coup

de force” to its core since, according to Derrida, “[o]ne cannot decide…whether

independence is stated or produced by this utterance” (49) which shatters the illusion of the

Declaration’s once clear contextual stance on the surface to produce the “sought-after

effect” into an unambiguous one after dissecting deeper into each responsible signer;

because in this case “the signature invents the signer” (49), the signers, Derrida believes,

would find themselves affected by an ambiguous context that can render the Document

itself meaningless. The plausible meaninglessness of the Declaration with the absence for

any decidable context from the responsible party (‘the good people’) atrophies the strength

the Document holds, for the intentions of the responsible party is unclear, so the responsible

party must step forward, but ‘the good people’ do not exist—leaving the Document’s

credibility to crumble. Once finished inspecting all ‘real signers’ to be spectral, Derrida

realizes the officiator for this political disbandment is a mere shadow with the best name

any and all men can call upon for an excuse: God.

The next point Derrida pulls out is Jefferson’s forced inclusion of God to officiate the

disbandment of “political bands” and certify the freedom of the Colonies by right from The

Supreme Judge’s Natural Law. This is evidenced by his statement: “They [the good people]

sign in the name of the laws of nature and in the name of God. They pose or posit their

institutional laws on the foundation of natural laws and by the same ‘coup’…in the name of
God, creator of nature. He comes, in effect, to guarantee the rectitude of popular intentions,

the unity of goodness of the people.” (51) The mention of God within the Declaration,

according to Derrida, is to uphold the cause for the Colonies’ Independence as moral in

relation to “the laws of nature,” for the aim is to inexplicably link the ‘good’ being referred to

in ‘good people’ with the “name of God, creator of nature.” The reason for this link is to

elevate the moral grounds in which the Document stands into a near-religious

argumentation for “the rectitude of popular intentions, the unity of goodness of the

people.” In unity to this, Derrida describes the usage of God makes “this Declaration as a

vibrant act of faith” (52), and this act of faith is the essence of what he calls “the last

instance” to permanently stamp on the Declaration’s meaning and effect with God as the

“ultimate signature” ratifying the Document as if it were a Sacred Text. But one cannot seek

or ask for God’s approval; one can only use God’s name for his or her own purposes –

another form of a line of credit being used to form another line of credit. Derrida spoke of

this as “…God—who had nothing to do with any of this [The Declaration] and, having

represented God-knows-whom-or-what in the interest of all those nice people, no doubt

could not care less—alone will have signed…Jefferson knew this.” Jefferson is being accused,

under a thin veil, of forging God’s signature to legitimize “those nice people[’s]” rights and

freedoms. The accusations set forth paradoxically legitimizes the claim that the document’s

authority on guaranteeing independence stems from a specter under the label of God

whose representing God-knows-whom-or-what.

For a final point, Derrida focuses on the Declaration’s draftsman Thomas Jefferson as

a writer who is suffering not only from his work’s constant “mutilation” between

representatives of representatives but also from placing his own name as signature to the

Declaration. The proof is provided as follows: “It was very hard for him to see it, to see
himself corrected, emended, “improved,” shortened, especially by his colleagues. A feeling

of wounding and of mutilation should be inconceivable for someone who knows not to

know write his own name, his proper name, but simply by representation and in place of

another.” (p.52). Derrida assumes Jefferson has a “feeling of wounding and of mutilation”

from the self-knowledge to avoid giving his signature—in effect his approval and guarantee

—for such a document as only representatives sign it. As the representatives of

representatives (“his colleagues”) to correct, emend, improve, and shorten the landmark

document, this calls into question the legitimacy of the real writer; behind Jefferson, there

are rows of representatives which fade into the background like specters. In context, the lack

of clarity is whose voice is the reader reading because Derrida does not think it is the

draftsman Jefferson speaking through the page after all. Derrida elaborates his thought by

telling a Benjamin Franklin’s story of a hatter named John Thompson (who has an inversion

of Thomas Jefferson’s initials) snipping out details of his shop’s signboard from the advice of

his friends; at the end, the hatter only shows the product on sale on top of the hatter’s

name. Interpreting “the story reflected [Jefferson’s] unhappiness but also his greatest

desire” to have America’s formation be the launchpad to “erect” his proper name, Derrida

views Thomas Jefferson as a self-centered man who wishes to have a ”total erasure of his

text…leaving in place under a map of the United States, only the nudity of his proper name”

because the text is secondary to Jefferson’s true self-aggrandizing goals. Therefore, Jefferson

the draftsman—the representative writer for representatives of representatives—has no real

motive to say all the grievances and has no real underlying authority to post such a

proclamation, so taking this as the context, the performative utterances of the Declaration at

the underlying surface holds neither ground nor merit as the writer himself takes orders

from a representative body detached from the good people being represented. The whispers
of specters “mutilated” Jefferson’s works but it was Jefferson’s ego that created an internal

compromise to publish the voices of these specters. The validity of The Declaration from its

own physical maker, hence, is ambiguous and non-existent.

Reviewing the above arguments, Derrida’s main issue with The Declaration originates

from a question he asks at the end regarding the ambiguousness of whether a State is made

or found itself. This is the crux of Derrida’s found problem with The Declaration due to the

fact that the Founding Document recruits a mirage of supporters and of a Supreme Judge to

cast their votes in favor of Independence. From the whole article in which Derrida speak of

the Declaration, he makes excuses for not having enough time to for The Declaration—

neither to elaborate on his thoughts nor to celebrate the Founding Document’s bicentennial;

Derrida’s dismissive tone to the Document as an unimportant piece reflects the vacuum of

importance which he sees beneath it. He would rather speak of Nietzsche and of his

signatures. While Nietzsche was a real person with real thoughts and real motives, the

Signers of the Declaration of Independence are one end of a linked chain with no

attachments on the other end, at least that is the perspective set forth by Jacques Derrida.

Dear Ezar,

Wow—I am so impressed by the depth and insight you bring to Derrida’s brief article.

Your writing shows a nuanced understanding of a truly complex argument. You have taught

me much about the article in the way you’ve unpacked it here. We had discussed, briefly,

that your essay could function mostly as an explication of the piece, with an “intervention”

of some sort near the end, which is what we get here (though, as you’ll see below, I think

you can make more of your intervention).

For the final version, I would like you to focus on three issues related to key terms,

thesis, and structure:

  Key terms: Your title appropriately carries a key term for your paper:

specter/spectrality. Whether you found this from research or knew it going in, the

specter/spectrality is a key concept in Derrida’s oeuvre (your title evokes his Spectres

[his translators use the British spelling] of Marx). For the final version, I would like

you to define this term, citing any outside sources you utilized when writing. I can

provide some assistance if needed—we can discuss more in our conference.

 Thesis: Related to the above, if properly defined the “specter” can be a path toward

making more of an intervention into the problem/question Derrida brings up.

Derrida does not use this term here, so perhaps you can tell your reader that the

concept of the “specter” can help identify the nothingness at the center of the

Declaration? Again, we can talk more in conference.

 Structure: Right now, the paper appears to move chronologically through Derrida’s

paper/ideas. An analytical paper should proceed according to its own inner logic—

usually, the number of steps needed to answer the question or resolve. I would like

you to think more about the ‘flow’ of ideas in the piece and how you might create

transitions out of connected ideas rather than chronological sequences.

Please see my comments and suggestions above for more local, sentence-level issues. Again,

great work on this draft!

Works Cited

1. Jefferson, Thomas, et al. “Declaration of Independence.” The Norton Reader: An

Anthology of Nonfiction, edited by Melissa A. Goldthwaite et al., 14th ed., W. W. Norton,

2017, pp. 773-779.

2. Derrida, Jacques. “Declarations of Independence.” Negotiations. Translated by Tom

Keenan and Tom Pepper. pp.46-54.