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casparb's review
5.0
Spooky hours! It's not hard to see why this one is so well-regarded. It's a really fantastic installation in the behemoth that is the Derridean oeuvre. I think Specters also features some of the most lucid deconstruction in practice, only it may be better to understand 'deconstruction' as 'hauntology' (superior name imo).
There's not a best intro to Derrida. One must start upon familiar ground- this is why I loved the Artaud essays in W&D so much. So make sure you've got some kind of familiarity with whatever primary text is at play. Here we have Marx, and, in the initial essay, Hamlet. Hamlet is a play I know better than any other and also possibly the most remarkable work of art in english from the last five centuries so I was as ecstatic as Artaud to see this come together. After this, we take a short dive into the kiddie pool to splash at Fukuyama. Appreciated D's look into Fukuyama's Kojèvian heritage. Then we have Stirner (es spukt!!), and a saucy lean towards Hegel. But I don't think one needs an encyclopædic knowledge of Marx for Specters. The Manifesto does well for most of it, and I'd recommend having read the first few chapters of Capital for the end. Also read Hamlet pls.
There's a rather covert (brilliant) use of Heideggerian temporality, so far as I can tell, in Derrida's concept of the specter/spirit/ghost/shadow. I was smug there. Was also wondering about D's treatment of Engels: he seems to nudge toward the idea of him as a shadow of Marx. I wonder.
It was only during the last essay that I realised 'hauntology/ie' is, in French, homophonic with 'ontology'. Derrida the beautiful madman. On that note, 'acceleration' appears, conspicuously, more than once. Sure there's scholarship there.
In all seriousness, I think there is something very philosophically special about Derrida's treatment of the ghost/specter (trace??). It'll take time for me, but I really love this book as an open door. Keep thinking keep thinking
There's not a best intro to Derrida. One must start upon familiar ground- this is why I loved the Artaud essays in W&D so much. So make sure you've got some kind of familiarity with whatever primary text is at play. Here we have Marx, and, in the initial essay, Hamlet. Hamlet is a play I know better than any other and also possibly the most remarkable work of art in english from the last five centuries so I was as ecstatic as Artaud to see this come together. After this, we take a short dive into the kiddie pool to splash at Fukuyama. Appreciated D's look into Fukuyama's Kojèvian heritage. Then we have Stirner (es spukt!!), and a saucy lean towards Hegel. But I don't think one needs an encyclopædic knowledge of Marx for Specters. The Manifesto does well for most of it, and I'd recommend having read the first few chapters of Capital for the end. Also read Hamlet pls.
There's a rather covert (brilliant) use of Heideggerian temporality, so far as I can tell, in Derrida's concept of the specter/spirit/ghost/shadow. I was smug there. Was also wondering about D's treatment of Engels: he seems to nudge toward the idea of him as a shadow of Marx. I wonder.
It was only during the last essay that I realised 'hauntology/ie' is, in French, homophonic with 'ontology'. Derrida the beautiful madman. On that note, 'acceleration' appears, conspicuously, more than once. Sure there's scholarship there.
In all seriousness, I think there is something very philosophically special about Derrida's treatment of the ghost/specter (trace??). It'll take time for me, but I really love this book as an open door. Keep thinking keep thinking
masterofmusix's review
slow-paced
I'm glad I can give this book 0 stars. It's incredibly dense and hard to follow. For someone who is writing about Marx and trying to reassess his writing after the fall of the Soviet Union and the capitalist turn of China in the 90s, he sure doesn't care for trying to make his writing accessible to working people as Marx prioritized. I do find the concept of hauntology intriguing, but I learned next to nothing about it from the very book that coined the term.
nick_jenkins's review
2.0
Derrida insists on highly tendentious translations from the German and generally does whatever the hell he feels like with Marx. This did not make me happy.
tempestades_y_belleza's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
4.0
madoko's review
4.0
the love/hate relationship with Derrida continues, entering his universe is both the most mesmerizing and intriguing thing together with being the most frustrating and drawn out task at the same time
isabelabaldini's review against another edition
5.0
"to this extent, the effectivity or actuality of the democratic promise, like that of the communist promise, will always keep within it, and it must do so, this absolutely undetermined mesianic hope at its heart, this eschatological relation to the to-come of an event and of a singularity, of an alterity that cannot be anticipated. awaiting wihout horizon of the weight, awaiting what one does not expect yet or any longe, hospitality without reserve [...] just opening which renounces any right to property, any right in general, messianic opening to what is coming, that is, to the event that cannot be awaited as such, or recognized in advance therefore, to the event as the foreigner itself, to her or to him for whom one must leave an empty place, always, in memory of the hope--and this is the very place of spectrality"