In “Saying ‘Yes” to Africa.” Wise critiques Derrida from an African perspective while critiquing the conference “Whither Marx?” at which he spoke. He speaks of the haunting of the conference by the absence of black African Marxist voices, at this “international” conference.According to Christopher Wise, Derrida deconstructs the form of the book itself with Spectres of Marx, because he is Judeo-African, and thus inherits a different logic that undermines the Western literacy of academia and of the book. He views Derrida’s position as a critique of “white European ethnocentrism”. However, he feels that his perspective is somehow too idiosyncratic for Africans and Jews alike.
Wise sees Derrida as a potential representative of alternative, more oral and aural modes of knowing and learning and, though very “literate” in the European, white sense of the word, de-stigmatizes illiteracy as it exists in Africa and elsewhere. He goes on to argue that Judeo-Muslims are skeptical of the written word, and find truth in the non-visually identifiable and non-reifiable God. The word of God or the prophets is heard not seen.
Wise compares the Judeo-Mulsims’ privilege of aurality paired with the misconception of slavish devotion to literacy to common misunderstandings of Derrida’s work which deconstructs Christian philosophical skepticism of the written word. Wise’s intention in this essay is to locate Derrida as a semitic thinker, an identity which brings with it its own ethnocentric imperialism, and an ideology to which he would never admit. He does this partially through a thorough investigation of the eye and visual knowing.
Ultimately, Wise appreciates Derrida’s more African-friendly critique of Marx and of writing, while also locating him within his own Judeo-Muslim ethnocentrism and recognizes his inability to stand in for black African voices at the conference, which Wise feels he wound up doing.
