Derrida Marxist?

Chuck Miller cmiller at Kemtah.com
Sat Dec 12 08:20:57 PST 1998


"christian a. gregory" <driver at nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu>


>>oh gawd. calling for a new international is all it takes these days,
eh?<<

I don't know about all it takes, but it sure leads one to suspect that he is serious about where his political sympathies lie. His analysis of neoliberalism in _Specters_ is also quite good I think at laying bare the idiocies of liberals and politicians who take the neoliberal line seriously. Perhaps it's the _pluralism_ of Derrida's call for a new International that has you spooked?


>>but "spectres"? gawd. i mean, calling for a new international with
basically no content or intention, and giving the top 9 reasons why the world is going badly and not mentioning capital <<

_Not_ mentioning capital? What about his analysis of surplus value and the value of things? This just carries through on the way that Marx saw capitalism as creating ersatz realities. Derrida's comments on this go some way towards creating a framework within which to criticize capitalism as both a political phenomenon as well as an information/PR machine. (He probably has Habermas in mind in making these comments.)

Also, his cryptic analysis of foreign debt/unemployment seems to be laying the basis for a broader analysis of the political vagaries of capitalism.

Besides, I don't have the book in front of me, but aren't there 10 reasons that the world is going to Hades?

chuck miller



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