Date: Tue, 3 May 1994 12:41:40 -0700
Sender: pen-l@ecst.csuchico.edu
From: scullen@ucrac1.ucr.edu (Steve Cullenberg)
Subject: Derrida and Marx
 
Doug Henwood's comments about Derrida and Marx are basically correct.  A
year ago Derrida gave two pleanary addresses at a conference at
UC-Riverside, which Bernd Magnus (a philosophy professor here) and I
co-organized.  The conference was entitled "Whither Marxism? Global Crises
in International Dimension."  Its purpose was to bring into dialog people
from those countries where communism had collapsed with Marxists from the
West.  We wanted to find people who were not either totally rejecting
Marxism or simply holding fast to the old line, but instead were rethinking
Marxism.  The conference was interdisciplinary.
 
Derrida's book is a revised version of his plenaries at the conference.
The title of the book in English is "Specters of Marx:  The State of the
Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International."  It is translated
by Peggy Kamuf and edited with an introduction by Bernd Magnus and myself.
It will be published by Routledge this Fall simultaneously with its
companion volume entitled "Whither Marxism?", edited by Bernd Magnus and
myself.  The citations which Doug Henwood refers to are translations from
the French volume published late last fall by Edition Galilee (I haven't
cross-checked your translations with Peggy's, Doug).
 
As there was a discussion on this network not too long ago about
postmodernism, Derrida, etc., I don't want to open up it up again too much.
(but please, Derrida and postmodernism are not the same thing; there are
subtle differences and often get treated crudely as if they do not matter,
but they do.  Strangley, I've noticed the general respect that the debate
over the subtle differences about GE theory enjoys on this net, and
contrast that with the general dismissive air that the 'critics' of Derrida
and postmodernism often employ, and wonder why the difference in reaction
to these two esoteric debates).  Let me however make a few remarks about
Derrida's text.
 
Derrida's lecture and book are dedicated to Chris Hani, which tells you
something about Derrida's politics.  In the dedication he writes in part,
"...I recall that it is a "communist" as such, a "communist as communist,"
whom a Polish emigrant and accomplices, all the assassins of Chris Hani,
put to death a few days ago, April 10th.  The assassins themselves
proclaimed that they were out to get a communist.  They were trying to
interrupt negotiations and sabotage an ongoing democratization.  This
popular hero of the resistance against Apartheid became dangerous and
suddenly intolerable, it seems, at the moment in which, having decided to
devote himself once again to a minority Communist Party riddled with
contradictions, he gave up important responsibilities in the ANC and
perhaps any official political or even governmental role he might one day
have held in a country freed of Apartheid.  Allow me to salute the memory
of Chris Hani and to dedicate this lecture to him."
 
I can not attempt to summarize Derrida's text here - it is a complex,
difficult and rich text, as one might expect.  Derrida in part reads Marx
and Marxism through Shakespeare's Hamlet (hence the specters), who Marx, as
is well known, loved and referred to constantly, both openly and
metaphorically (remember only the famous opening line of the Communist
Manifesto).  Derrida and many of the others at the conference, however,
made the following points:  (1) the proper names "Marx" and/or "Marxism"
have always already been plural nouns, despite their grammatical form, and
despite the fact that they have been understood as if they were rigid
designators; (2) "communism" (in its own pluralities) is not the same as
"Marxism"; (3) both Marxism and communism are historically sited, situated,
inflected, mediated by particular traditions and histories; (4) the proper
name "Marx" is -- in a certain sense -- entirely uncircumventable.  There
is much, much more, of course, but I don't have the time to summarize it
all.
 
Regarding the issue of the different strands of postmodernism.  That is of
course true.  It is also true that Derrida is not deconstruction, there are
many positions of deconstruction.  I have to confess that I have never
understood the rather knee-jerk dismissal of postmodernism tout court that
sometimes appears on this network.  Postmodernism may or may not be used
politically.  I can only offer some prima facie circumstantial evidence
now.  The journal "Rethinking Marxism", of which I am an editor, could be
fairly described, I think, as generally supporting a postmodern Marxism (I
don't know what my co-editors think).  Unless we are either self-delusional
or entirely non-political, there must on the face of it then be something
Marxists can learn from postmodernism.  No?  Another forthcoming source;
an edited book by Antonio Callari, Carole Biewener and myself called
"Marxism in the Postmodern Age:  Confronting the New World Order,"
forthcoming by Guilford Press in the summer is a collection of 55 essays
(no all of which can be described as postmodern), addressing the issue of
postmodernism, feminism, Marxism, etc.  I know these are not "arguments,"
but I offer them as evidence nonetheless, that there is something for
Marxists in postmodernism, even if it is not transparently so.
 
 
Steve Cullenberg