S.A. Chambers: “Ghostly Rights”

Discourse within modern day liberal democracies is increasingly imbued with rhetoric and discussion concerning rights. While the incentive for the acquisition of certain rights may be understood or interpreted in various ways from differing perspectives across the political spectrum, as demonstrated by Samuel A. Chambers in the early pages of his essay, “Ghostly Rights”, a [...]

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R. Benjamin, H. Chang: ‘Jacques Derrida, The Last European’

This article can be separated into two parts, the masculine argument about Europe and the components that define European, within the context of the last European, and the feminine argument about globalization and the new international. This doesn’t suppose one is superior or inferior, but it is an essentialist claim [...]

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G. Hull: ‘The Jewish question revisited- Marx, Derrida and ethnic nationalism.’

Hull begins his essay with Marx’s ‘Jewish Question’ in order to speak about nationalism. Hull asserts that Marx is not the first to speak of nationalism. Benedict Anderson finds evidence of what is called the ‘nation’ in the middle ages. Marx believes that to formulate a question properly is to answer it, which [...]

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L. Lawlor : ‘Looking for Noon at Two O’Clock: An Investigation of Specters of Marx’

Personally, I enjoyed this essay quite a bit. Obviously, anyone who is considering a final paper on Specters would find this essay helpful for their research. However, less obviously, it would be of interest to anyone who wants to know more about the thinkers that influence Derrida’s work (or, more precisely, the thinkers [...]

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tangents on foucault, history, identity politics, etc…

When reading Spectres of Marx and coming across the phrase “the time is out of joint” again and again, I recalled the explorations of Foucault in Society Must Be Defended.

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Regarding those who decide

Although Derrida devotes a great deal of attention to an urgent period of undecidability that precedes any decision and the coinciding sense of betrayal that follows such a decision he only hints at what characterizes the subjectivity of the decider(s).

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Did Marxism Die?

The central assumption of Derrida’s argument in Specters of Marx is that Marxism died with the collapse of “Soviet” Communism. (I put soviet in quotations for reasons that are central to my argument here.) For Derrida, it is the empirical fact that Marxism died with the USSR that allows Marx/ism to now occupy a [...]

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Derrida: Event-as-Herald or Event-as-Promise?

So on class Wednesday I tried to raise the point that Derrida is subject to his own criticism. I would like to develop that point in this post. First I will go over my argument in terms of the discussion in class, and then I will try to ground it more in the text (which [...]

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Spectres of Race at Hampshire

Posted on Cyree’s behalf (sorry for the mix-up):
Granted, I have only been at Hampshire College for 1 month, but in that time I have witnessed countless examples of racial bigotry and ignorance. Just as insidious as the instances themselves is the general unwillingness for the average Hampster to talk about these incidents, and race itself [...]

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Ghost Conjurer, Ghost Conqueror

I’m glad we’re talking about ghosts. I really am. I think the meaning and significance of ghosts might tell us nearly everything we need to know.
It is also an occasion for reopening a question about Derrida’s specific meditations in Specters of Marx: is the consideration largely, or even completely, Eurocentric?

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