These comprehensive notes provide an in-depth analysis of Jacques Derrida's key arguments in Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. The notes expand on the concepts discussed in the video with additional context, explanations, and connections to broader philosophical concepts. Structured thematically with expandable sections for detailed study, including extensive page references, related concepts, and critical analysis.
Jacques Derrida's concept of hauntology represents a radical departure from traditional ontology, the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of being. Where ontology examines what exists in a present, stable form, hauntology explores the paradoxical state of being that is neither fully present nor completely absent. Derrida coins this term through a deliberate pun on "ontology," shifting our philosophical attention from questions of stable being to questions of haunting and spectrality.
Derrida's central definition describes specters as:
"a paradoxical incorporation, the becoming-body, a certain phenomenal and carnal form of the spirit" (p5)This formulation captures Marxism's peculiar state after the fall of communist regimes in the late 20th century. The "paradoxical incorporation" refers to how attempts to destroy communism's material forms paradoxically preserve it as a spectral presence in political discourse (p160). When political powers try to exorcise communism, they inadvertently conjure it into being as a specter, making it haunt the political imagination more powerfully precisely through attempts to eliminate it.
This concept builds on but significantly departs from Heidegger's fundamental ontology, while also engaging with Hegel's phenomenology of spirit and Marx's own use of spectral metaphors in The Communist Manifesto.
The specter exists in a state that challenges binary oppositions fundamental to Western thought since Plato and Aristotle. Derrida's deconstructive approach reveals how the specter defies these traditional categories:
Neither soul nor body: The specter occupies an ambiguous space between material and immaterial existence. As Derrida writes:
"It becomes, rather, some 'thing' that remains difficult to name: neither soul nor body, and both one and the other" (p5)This challenges the Cartesian mind-body dualism that has dominated Western philosophy since Descartes.
Neither present nor absent: The specter's mode of existence disrupts traditional metaphysics of presence. Derrida notes:
"No one talks of anything else. But what else can you do, since it is not there, this ghost" (p124)This relates to his earlier critique of logocentrism in Western philosophy.
Neither living nor dead: Drawing on Hamlet's ghost which exists in this liminal state (p.xix), Derrida shows how spectrality troubles the clear distinction between life and death that structures our ontological categories.
Neither past nor future: The specter exists simultaneously as revenant (returning from the past) and arrivant (coming from the future) (p45). This temporal ambiguity connects to Husserl's phenomenology of time consciousness while radically extending it.
The "becoming-body" aspect refers to how specters manifest despite lacking material form. Derrida explains:
"It is flesh and phenomenality that give to the spirit its spectral apparition, but which disappear right away in the apparition, in the very coming of the revenant" (p5)
This describes communism's state after 1989 - its institutions were destroyed ("the body of communism is quite clearly destroyed" p2), yet it persists as what Derrida calls
"an impatient and nostalgic waiting" (p170), a potentiality that haunts the present moment. This concept of "becoming-body" engages with but transforms Deleuze's concept of becoming, while also resonating with Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of embodiment.
Hauntology disrupts linear temporality through what Derrida calls "disjointure" (from Hamlet's "the time is out of joint"). The spectral moment:
"no longer belongs to time... the apparition of the specter does not belong to that time, it does not give time, not that one: 'Enter the ghost, exit the ghost, re-enter the ghost'" (p.xix)
This cyclical haunting creates what Derrida terms "spectral temporality" that defies linear historical progress narratives (p27). It suggests that the past never truly passes away but returns to disrupt the present, a concept that engages with but extends Walter Benjamin's notion of historical time in "Theses on the Philosophy of History."
The disjointure of time creates an ethical imperative to "set right" what is out of joint, connecting hauntology to Derrida's later work on justice and responsibility. As he writes:
"Something in the present is not going well, it is not going as it ought to go" (p27)This ethical dimension distinguishes hauntology from mere description of spectral phenomena.
Derrida reveals how most readers fundamentally misread the famous opening of the Communist Manifesto. The standard interpretation sees the first sentence in isolation:
"A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism." (p13)However, Derrida shows how the second clause actually explains the first - the specter exists precisely because of attempts to exorcise it.
This reveals what Derrida calls "incorporating by destroying" (p160) - the more communism is attacked and its material forms dismantled, the more it gains spectral presence in discourse. He illustrates this with the striking metaphor:
"effective exorcism pretends to declare the death only in order to put to death. As a coroner might do, it certifies the death but here it is in order to inflict it" (p59)
This reading connects to Freud's concept of the return of the repressed, while also engaging with Hegel's master-slave dialectic, where attempts at domination paradoxically create dependence.
Derrida analyses how what he terms "the Powers of old Europe" (capitalists, religious authorities, imperialists) engage in a double movement he calls "conjuring (away)" - the bracketed "away" indicating the paradoxical nature of this operation. This process involves three simultaneous moments:
Conjuration as summoning: The very act of naming communism as a threat, of identifying it as a specter to be feared, brings it into political discourse. As in magical conjuration where spirits are summoned, the naming makes present what it attempts to control.
Conjuring away as attempted exorcism: Simultaneously, there is the effort to banish this summoned presence, to declare it dead or unreal. This mirrors religious exorcism rituals that first acknowledge then try to expel spirits.
The inevitable result: As Derrida writes:
"The alliance signifies: death to the specter. It is convolved to be revoked, everyone swears only on the specter, but in order to conjure it away" (p124)This creates a self-perpetuating cycle where the specter must constantly be re-conjured in order to be re-banished.
This analysis builds on but extends Althusser's theory of ideological state apparatuses, showing how even repressive apparatuses can generate the very resistance they seek to eliminate.
The conjuration paradox creates what Derrida poetically describes as:
"the impotent gesticulation, the restless dream, of an execution" (p60)This metaphor captures the endless, futile labor of trying to kill what is already spectral - like a dreamer trying to accomplish physical acts in a dream state.
In Chapter 5, Derrida provides an even more vivid description of this cyclical process:
"Come so that I may chase you!... I chase you. I pursue you. I run after you to chase you away from here... one chases after in order to chase away, one pursues, sets off in pursuit of someone to make him flee" (p175)
This passage recalls Kafka's parable "The Hunter Gracchus," where a dead hunter is condemned to eternally wander, unable to find rest. The structure also mirrors Sisyphean labor, where the task must be endlessly repeated.
After the apparent defeat of communism in 1989, Derrida notes how declarations of its death ironically reinforce its spectrality:
"communism is finished since the collapse of the totalitarianisms of the twentieth century and not only is it finished, but it did not take place, it was only a ghost" (p123)
This denial operates through several mechanisms:
Double negation: Claiming communism never truly existed while simultaneously declaring it dead creates a paradoxical formulation that keeps the concept alive in discourse.
The fantasy of execution: What Derrida calls
"the restless dream of an execution" (p60)- the imaginary satisfaction of having killed what was already spectral.
Repetition of conjuration: Each new declaration of communism's death repeats the original conjuration, making communism present in discourse through attempts to banish it.
This analysis connects to Sartre's concept of "bad faith" and Žižek's notion of ideological fantasy.
Derrida borrows from Hamlet to describe spectral time:
"the time is out of joint" (p27) and "Enter the ghost, exit the ghost, re-enter the ghost" (p.xix)
This represents a fundamental challenge to traditional conceptions of time in several ways:
Rupture in linear chronology: The specter's appearance disrupts the orderly progression from past to present to future, creating what Derrida calls "disjointure." This relates to but radicalizes Husserl's phenomenology of time consciousness.
Cyclical haunting: Unlike progressive history that moves forward, spectral time involves eternal return and repetition. This connects to Nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrence but with an ethical dimension.
Ethical demand: The disjointed time creates an obligation to "set right" what is out of joint (p23). Derrida connects this to justice:
"Something in the present is not going well, it is not going as it ought to go" (p27)
This temporal model challenges Enlightenment notions of progress while engaging with Benjamin's revolutionary conception of time.
Derrida distinguishes two temporal modes of spectrality that structure hauntology:
| Revenant (Returning) | Arrivant (Coming) |
|---|---|
| From French revenir (to come back) | From French arriver (to arrive) |
| Represents Marxism's historical manifestations and failures - the ghosts of past revolutions and their betrayals | Signifies communism's future potential and promise - the yet-to-come that haunts the present |
"There is something disappeared, departed in the apparition itself as reapparition of the departed" (p5) |
"Of a communism, to be sure, already namable, but still to come beyond its name" (p46) |
| Haunts as memory and repetition - the return of what was thought to be past | Haunts as promise and potentiality - the arrival of what has never yet been |
| Connects to Freud's concept of the uncanny and repressed memories returning | Relates to Ernst Bloch's principle of hope and not-yet-conscious |
Derrida's concept of avenir (future-to-come) must be distinguished from futur (predictable future). He writes:
"one can never distinguish between the future-to-come and the coming-back of a specter" (p46)
This creates an essential undecidability at the heart of hauntology:
Temporal ambiguity: Is communism returning from the past or arriving for the first time? As Derrida notes:
"One does not know if the expectation prepares the coming of the future-to-come or if it recalls the repetition of the same" (p44)
Promise beyond fulfillment: The messianic structure remains regardless of actualization:
"Whether the promise promises this or that, whether it be fulfilled or not, or whether it be unfulfillable, there is necessarily some promise and therefore some historicity as future-to-come" (p92)
This analysis builds on Levinas's ethics of the future while radicalizing its political implications.
This temporal structure creates what Derrida calls a "messianic without messiah" - an open-ended expectation without predetermined content, similar to Walter Benjamin's revolutionary time but stripped of any specific messianic figure.
Derrida describes this as:
"a communism... still to come beyond its name. Already promised but only promised. A specter all the more terrifying, some will say" (p46)
The terror comes precisely from this undecidability between return and arrival, making it impossible to definitively categorize or dismiss the spectral threat. This relates to but differs from traditional messianism in its refusal to specify the content of redemption.
Derrida's messianic without messiah also engages with but critiques Adorno's negative dialectics, maintaining hope while refusing to define its object.
Derrida identifies a self-perpetuating cycle in anti-communist discourse that resembles Sisyphean labor. The structure follows a paradoxical logic where the act of chasing the specter both summons and attempts to banish it simultaneously.
He describes this vividly:
"Come so that I may chase you!... I chase you. I pursue you. I run after you to chase you away from here... one chases after in order to chase away, one pursues, sets off in pursuit of someone to make him flee" (p175)
This paradox emerges because:
Conjuration precedes exorcism: The specter must first be conjured (made present in discourse) before it can be exorcised. This initial summoning gives the specter its discursive reality.
Reinforcement through opposition: Each attempt at exorcism paradoxically reinforces the specter's presence:
"The alliance signifies: death to the specter. It is convoked to be revoked, everyone swears only on the specter, but in order to conjure it away" (p124)
Perpetual vigilance: The very act of maintaining watch against communism's return keeps it alive in the political imagination, requiring constant renewal of the exorcism.
This structure mirrors what Foucault described as the perpetual spiral of power and resistance, where each generates the other.
The specter's power derives from its potentiality rather than actuality, creating what Derrida calls the "imminence effect":
"one can never distinguish between the future-to-come and the coming-back of a specter" (p46)
This undecidability produces profound anxiety because:
Dual fear: We fear both communism's first arrival (as something radically new) and its return from the past (as something familiar yet repressed). This duality prevents clear psychological resolution.
Perpetual anticipation: The promise creates a state of constant expectation:
"Of a communism, to be sure, already namable, but still to come beyond its name. Already promised but only promised" (p46)
Temporal inevitability: As with Heidegger's concept of "being-toward-death," the specter's inevitability haunts the present moment, making its potential arrival shape current consciousness.
This analysis connects to Bloch's principle of hope while emphasizing its anxious rather than utopian dimension.
Derrida explains why specters are "all the more terrifying" (p46) than material threats:
Immaterial resistance: Their ghostly nature makes them impossible to combat directly through conventional means. You cannot strike a specter with a sword or imprison it in a jail.
Return of the defeated: They represent the unexpected resurgence of what was thought vanquished:
"We do not know if it is living or if it is dead" (p10)
Temporal disruption: They undermine our sense of historical security:
"One does not know if the expectation prepares the coming of the future-to-come or if it recalls the repetition of the same" (p44)
Revelation of fragility: The specter exposes the instability of the present order's claims to final victory, showing how its dominance might be contingent and temporary.
This terror relates to what Kristeva called the abject - that which disturbs identity and borders.
The specter operates through what Derrida calls "paradoxical incorporation":
"a paradoxical incorporation, the becoming-body, a certain phenomenal and carnal form of the spirit" (p5)
This process works through several mechanisms:
Destruction leading to persistence: Material elimination generates spectral survival:
"incorporating by destroying" (p160)The more thoroughly communism is eradicated institutionally, the more powerfully it persists psychically.
Internalization of the feared: The specter becomes incorporated within the very psyche that fears it, creating an intimate haunting. This relates to Kleinian psychoanalysis and the concept of introjection.
Dialectical reversal: Attempts to eliminate communism preserve it in spectral form, following a dialectical logic where opposites transform into each other.
This analysis builds on but extends Hegel's master-slave dialectic and Fanon's psychology of colonialism.
Derrida reveals how the Communist Manifesto begins with what he calls "manifest spectrality":
"what was the most manifest thing about the Manifesto... is a specter" (p13)
This spectral foundation means:
Haunting as power: The text's revolutionary force comes not from concrete presence but from its ability to haunt the political imagination. Like a ghost, its power derives from its immaterial yet undeniable presence.
Conjuration through opposition: Its opening lines establish a logic where communism exists because it is opposed:
"A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism. All the Powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre." (p13)
Text as spectral entity: The Manifesto itself becomes what Derrida might call a "spectral text" - its material form less important than its haunting effects, its words continuing to resonate long after their original historical context has faded.
This reading connects to Barthes's concept of the death of the author while emphasizing the text's afterlife.
Post-1989 declarations of communism's death ironically reinforce its spectrality:
"communism is finished since the collapse of the totalitarianisms of the twentieth century and not only is it finished, but it did not take place, it was only a ghost" (p123)
This denial operates through several mechanisms:
Double negation: Claiming communism never truly existed while simultaneously declaring it dead creates a paradoxical formulation that keeps the concept alive in discourse. This relates to linguistic theories of how negation maintains what it denies.
Fantasy of execution: What Derrida calls
"the restless dream of an execution" (p60)- the imaginary satisfaction of having killed what was already spectral. This connects to Lacanian theories of desire and fulfillment.
Repetition of conjuration: Each new declaration of communism's death repeats the original conjuration, making communism present in discourse through attempts to banish it. This follows Freud's concept of repetition compulsion.
Contrary to claims of its demise, Derrida argues the specter persists:
"The specter is the future, it is always to come, it presents itself only as that which could come or come back" (p48)
This permanence stems from several factors:
Impossibility of killing specters: As Derrida notes:
"It is also the impatient and nostalgic waiting" (p170)You cannot destroy what is already immaterial.
Capitalism's crises: Each new crisis of capitalism inevitably invokes communism as imagined alternative, ensuring its spectral return during moments of systemic instability.
Structural necessity: Every dominant system requires an "outside" to define itself against, making communism's spectral presence structurally necessary for capitalism's self-definition.
This analysis builds on Lévi-Strauss's structural anthropology while adding a temporal dimension.
The Manifesto's enduring power comes from its promissory nature:
"Whether the promise promises this or that, whether it be fulfilled or not, or whether it be unfulfillable, there is necessarily some promise and therefore some historicity as future-to-come" (p92)
This creates what Ernst Bloch would call a "utopian function":
Autonomous promise: The promissory structure operates independently of its fulfillment, maintaining its power even when specific historical attempts fail.
Horizon not program: It sustains communism as an ever-receding horizon of possibility rather than a concrete political program, making it immune to empirical refutation.
Crisis and return: It ensures the specter's inevitable return during capitalism's periodic crises, when systemic failures make alternatives imaginable.
This connects to Ricoeur's hermeneutics of hope while emphasizing its political rather than theological dimension.
Derrida outlines a tripartite process for engaging with Marx's legacy that constitutes proper mourning as opposed to melancholia or exorcism. The first task, mourning, is defined as
"the work which follows a trauma" (p121), requiring us to locate Marxism's "body" after its apparent defeat. This involves acknowledging the historical reality of Marxism's institutional collapse while resisting the temptation to declare Marx's thought completely dead. The second task, marking, involves consciously recognising the specter's presence, as when Hamlet's ghost demands
"Mark me". For Derrida, this means acknowledging how Marx's ideas continue to haunt contemporary thought despite the failure of communist states. The third task, inheriting, involves the active, critical claiming of Marx's legacy rather than being passively haunted by it, as Derrida writes:
"One never inherits without coming to terms with some specter" (p24). This process prevents what Derrida calls
"the impotent gesticulation... of an execution" (p60)- the futile attempt to kill what is already spectral through declarations of Marxism's death.
This framework builds on but transforms Freud's distinction between mourning and melancholia in his 1917 essay "Mourning and Melancholia," while adding a specifically political dimension. Where Freud focused on individual psychology, Derrida examines how collectives process intellectual and political loss. The work of mourning becomes particularly crucial after the traumatic events of 1989, when the collapse of communist regimes created a crisis for Marxist thought. Unlike Freud's model where mourning ideally reaches completion, Derrida suggests the work of mourning Marx may be interminable, as his specter continues to return in new forms.
Derrida contrasts proper mourning with attempts to exorcise Marx's specter, arguing that
"One never inherits without coming to terms with some specter" (p24). He identifies several problematic approaches to Marx's legacy that constitute failed mourning. First, there are attempts to declare Marxism definitively dead, which Derrida compares to a coroner's performative declaration:
"As a coroner might do, it certifies the death but here it is in order to inflict it" (p59). This resembles what Francis Fukuyama famously called "the end of history" after 1989. Second, there is what Freud would call melancholia - an inability to work through the loss that results in endless, unresolved grief that cannot move forward. Third, there is pathological mourning that cannot accept the specter's persistence and seeks to definitively lay it to rest through acts of symbolic violence.
Derrida's critique of exorcism builds on Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok's psychoanalytic theories of incorporation and cryptonymy. Where they examined how individuals internalise lost objects, Derrida shows how intellectual traditions deal with their foundational figures. The attempt to exorcise Marx represents a refusal to do the difficult work of critical inheritance, instead seeking magical solutions to complex historical and philosophical problems. This has particular resonance in post-Cold War intellectual life, where declarations of Marxism's death often served ideological functions rather than constituting genuine engagement.
Central to Derrida's concept of mourning is the need to locate Marxism's "proper body":
"Nothing could be worse, for the work of mourning, than confusion or doubt: one has to know who is buried where—and it is necessary (to know—to make certain) that, in what remains of him, he remain there. Let him stay there and move no more!" (p9). This difficult work involves several interrelated tasks. First, it requires disentangling Marx from Marxism - separating Marx's original thought from its subsequent interpretations and institutionalizations. Second, it demands identifying what remains living in Marx's thought versus what properly belongs to the past and can be laid to rest. Third, it necessitates giving respectful interment to aspects of Marxism that have genuinely died while preserving what continues to have vitality.
This process resembles what Hans-Georg Gadamer called the "fusion of horizons" in hermeneutics, applied to intellectual inheritance. The "body" of Marxism that must be located is not simply Marx's corporeal remains or texts, but the living core of his thought that continues to have contemporary relevance. The work of mourning thus becomes a form of critical interpretation that distinguishes between what Derrida calls the "spirit" and "letter" of Marx's work. This is particularly challenging because, as Derrida notes, Marx himself became a specter - his thought took on a life beyond his original intentions, becoming incorporated into various political projects and theoretical traditions.
For Derrida, proper mourning leads to active inheritance and responsibility:
"we no longer have any excuse, only alibis, for turning away from this responsibility. There will be no future without this. Not without Marx, no future without Marx, without the memory and the inheritance of Marx." (p14). This responsibility entails several specific obligations. First, it requires recognition of our constitutive inheritance:
"the being of what we are is first of all inheritance" (p68), meaning we are fundamentally shaped by Marx's thought whether we acknowledge it or not. Second, it demands what deconstruction calls "affirmative critique" - a form of criticism that transforms rather than simply negates its object. Third, it necessitates creative reinvention of Marx's ideas for contemporary conditions rather than either dogmatic repetition or outright rejection.
This conception of responsibility relates to Emmanuel Levinas's ethics of infinite responsibility to the Other, while giving it a specifically political and historical dimension. Where Levinas focused on interpersonal relations, Derrida examines our responsibility to historical figures and traditions. The Marxist responsibility is particularly pressing after 1989 because, as Derrida argues, the collapse of communist states actually makes Marx's critique more necessary, not less. With the "dogma machine" of orthodox Marxism dismantled, we are left without alibis for avoiding the difficult work of critically engaging with Marx's legacy. This responsibility is not about loyalty to Marx as an individual, but about recognising how his thought continues to shape our understanding of capitalism, crisis, and alternatives.
Derrida makes the provocative argument that the collapse of traditional Marxist institutions after 1989 actually intensifies rather than relieves our responsibility to Marx's legacy:
"When the dogma machine and the 'Marxist' ideological apparatuses (States, parties, cells, unions, and other places of doctrinal production) are in the process of disappearing, we no longer have any excuse, only alibis, for turning away from this responsibility. There will be no future without this. Not without Marx, no future without Marx, without the memory and the inheritance of Marx." (p14). This creates a paradoxical situation where the apparent "end" of Marxism makes its critical tools more necessary than ever. Without institutional orthodoxies dictating proper interpretation, we are forced to engage more directly and thoughtfully with Marx's original texts. This situation parallels what Theodor Adorno argued about philosophy after Auschwitz - that critical thought becomes more necessary after catastrophe, not less.
Derrida's position here critically engages with but departs from Jürgen Habermas's attempt to salvage the Enlightenment project after its catastrophes. Where Habermas sought to reconstruct reason through communicative action, Derrida insists on the need to inherit Marx's more radical critique. The disappearance of "actually existing socialism" removes the excuse that Marxist critique could be left to communist parties or states, throwing the responsibility back onto intellectuals and activists. This is what Derrida means by having "no alibis" - we can no longer defer to institutional authorities to do the work of Marxist critique for us.
Derrida makes the ontological claim that
"the being of what we are is first of all inheritance" (p68), fundamentally reshaping how we understand our relationship to Marx. This means our very conceptual frameworks for understanding society, economy, and history are already shaped by Marxist thought, whether we recognise it or not. Like Heidegger's concept of "thrownness," we find ourselves always already indebted to Marx regardless of our conscious attitudes. This inheritance is not voluntary - we cannot choose whether to inherit, only how to respond to our inheritance. As Derrida notes:
"There is no inheritance without a call to responsibility" (p114), meaning that inheritance is not passive reception but active interpretation and transformation.
This conception builds on Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutics of tradition while radicalizing its historical dimensions. Where Gadamer emphasized our belonging to traditions of interpretation, Derrida stresses the haunted nature of this belonging - we are inhabited by specters as much as by living traditions. The Marxist inheritance is particularly fraught because it involves inheriting both a powerful critique of capitalism and the historical failures of attempts to realize alternatives. This makes the work of inheritance simultaneously more difficult and more urgent, as we must disentangle Marx's original insights from their problematic implementations.
Derrida insists that inheriting Marx responsibly requires not repetition but
"radical transformation" of Marxism to critique the "unheard-of powers" which include cyber-space and surveillance (p68). This transformation involves moving beyond several limitations of traditional Marxism. First, it requires overcoming state-centric models:
"the transformation, the appropriation then finally the destruction of the State" (p127), recognizing how state power often betrayed revolutionary ideals. Second, it demands moving beyond traditional party structures:
"State-Party politics which Derrida claims is reactionary and unadapted to new technological and media conditions" (p127), acknowledging how vanguard parties became bureaucratic obstacles rather than vehicles for emancipation. Third, it necessitates updating Marxist critique to address contemporary issues like digital capitalism, climate crisis, and biopolitics that Marx himself could not have anticipated.
This approach resonates with but differs from Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt's concept of the multitude in their Empire trilogy. Where they emphasize spontaneous self-organization, Derrida stresses the need for new forms of organization adapted to digital media and globalized capitalism. The radical transformation Derrida calls for is not abandonment of Marx but creative reinvention of his critique for new conditions. This involves what he calls elsewhere a "double gesture" - simultaneously preserving and transforming the inherited tradition, maintaining its critical force while jettisoning what has become obsolete or problematic.
Derrida compares the Marxist heir's position to Hamlet's burden:
"Hamlet is 'out of joint' because he curses his own mission, the punishment that consists in having to punish, avenge, exercise justice" (p23). This haunting manifests in several ways for contemporary inheritors of Marx. First, there is the weight of history:
"And whether we like it or not, whatever consciousness we have of it, we cannot not be its heirs" (p114)- the past's claims cannot be refused, only acknowledged and worked through. Second, there is the impossibility of perfect justice - like Hamlet, we face the paradox that justice remains always "to come" rather than fully present, making responsibility interminable. Third, there is the necessity of acting despite never having full certainty about historical meaning or consequences - what Derrida elsewhere calls the "madness of the decision."
This conception relates to Søren Kierkegaard's concept of anxiety and Jean-Paul Sartre's notion of radical freedom, but with a specifically historical and political dimension. The haunted heir is not just an individual facing existential choices but someone bearing the weight of historical failures while trying to imagine new possibilities. This creates what Derrida calls a "spectral moment" - a paradoxical temporality where past, present and future intersect in ways that both enable and constrain political action. The heir's responsibility is not to lay these ghosts to rest but to learn how to live with them productively, allowing them to inform but not determine present struggles.
Derrida enumerates ten fundamental crises of late capitalism that demonstrate the ongoing need for Marxist analysis, updating Marx's critique for the era of globalization. The first plague is chronic unemployment:
"A lack of work, social in-activity, and underemployment" (p100), creating what Guy Standing would later theorize as the precariat class. This represents not just cyclical unemployment but a structural feature of contemporary capitalism where growing numbers are permanently excluded from stable employment. The second plague is the exclusion of migrants:
"Frontiers of identity to the exclusion of the homeless and deportation of the stateless and migrant" (p100-101), showing how capitalism requires both mobile labor and fortified borders, creating permanent populations of rightless non-citizens. The third plague is economic warfare:
"Economic and war, which creates unequal international relations" (p101), resembling what Lenin called imperialism as highest stage of capitalism but now operating through neoliberal institutions like the IMF and World Bank.
The fourth plague is protectionism's contradictions:
"The contradiction of protectionism which creates international inequality but also tries to protect itself from cheap labour" (p101), revealing how capitalism simultaneously requires both free trade and national protections, creating irresolvable tensions. The fifth plague is the debt economy:
"The contradiction of a market which increases the debt of the poor, thus excluding them from the very market it wants them to participate in" (p102), showing how financialization undermines the consumption base capitalism needs. The sixth plague is arms trade normalization:
"The normalisation of the arms trade into regular industries, which means scaling it down will lead to unemployment" (p102), demonstrating capitalism's structural dependence on permanent war economy. The seventh plague is nuclear proliferation:
"Countries which want to protect themselves from nuclear weapons are responsible for its spread" (p102), revealing the security paradox where deterrence requires proliferation.
The eighth plague is ethnic conflicts:
"Inter-ethnic wars driven by nationalism, borders and displacement" (p103), showing how capitalism generates nationalism despite its cosmopolitan ideology. The ninth plague is mafia states:
"Phantom-states controlled by mafia and drug cartels with international influence" (p103), demonstrating the blurring of legal and illegal economies in global capitalism. The tenth plague concerns international law's limits, with two fundamental flaws: first,
"It is driven by historical European philosophical concepts" (p103), showing its colonial origins; and second,
"Dominant techno-economic military powers control its implementation" (p104), revealing its imperial character. Together, these plagues demonstrate that far from being triumphant after 1989, global capitalism is riven with contradictions that recall Marx's original critique while taking new forms.
Derrida emphasizes the unprecedented human cost of contemporary capitalism:
"never before, in absolute figures, never have so many men, women, and children been subjugated, starved, or exterminated on the earth" (p106). This represents both a quantitative and qualitative shift in capitalist exploitation. Quantitatively, it marks an expansion of what Hannah Arendt called "the social question" to global proportions, with billions now living in conditions of extreme precarity. Qualitatively, it shows how neoliberal globalization has created new forms of suffering that cross national borders, making traditional welfare state solutions inadequate. The scale of suffering under contemporary capitalism exceeds even Marx's grim descriptions of nineteenth-century industrialization, with global inequality reaching unprecedented levels despite technological advances that could theoretically provide for all.
This analysis connects to but extends Giorgio Agamben's concept of bare life by emphasizing economic dimensions. Where Agamben focused on the political production of rightless life through states of exception, Derrida shows how global capitalism systematically produces populations reduced to mere survival. The suffering Derrida documents is not accidental but structural - an inevitable consequence of financialized capitalism's operation. This makes traditional humanitarian responses inadequate, as they fail to address the systemic causes. The scale of suffering thus becomes not just an ethical scandal but a political imperative, demanding new forms of international solidarity that can challenge capitalism's global reach.
Several of Derrida's plagues reveal capitalism's inherent contradictions that Marx first identified but which take new forms in the contemporary era. The contradiction between protectionism and free trade shows how capitalism requires both the free movement of capital and goods across borders, and the protection of national economies from competition. This creates what economists call the "globalization paradox" where attempts to solve the problem through international agreements only displace it to new areas. Similarly, the debt economy represents a classic Marxist contradiction where capitalism's financialization undermines its own conditions of possibility - by indebting the very consumers whose spending it needs to sustain growth.
The normalization of the arms trade demonstrates another fundamental contradiction where capitalism becomes dependent on permanent war economy, making peace economically destabilizing. This recalls what Paul Virilio called the "original accident" of technological progress - that every invention contains its own catastrophic potential. In the case of military Keynesianism, the solution to economic crisis (arms production) becomes the permanent condition, with devastating human consequences. As Marx predicted, capitalism's solutions become its new problems in an endless spiral, with each attempted fix generating fresh contradictions.
Derrida argues that capitalism's crises ensure communism's spectral persistence:
"the unleashing of racisms and xenophobias, ethnic conflicts, conflicts of culture and religion" (p100)demonstrate capitalism's inability to resolve fundamental issues of inequality, social disintegration, and geopolitical instability. Each crisis becomes what Fredric Jameson called a "vanishing mediator" for communism's return - the very attempts to solve capitalism's problems conjure the specter of alternatives. This is particularly evident in the way economic crises revive debates about capitalism's viability, while ecological crises make communist visions of planned economies newly relevant.
The specter returns not just as memory of past communist experiments but as anticipation of future possibilities - what Derrida calls the "future-to-come." This dual temporality makes the specter particularly resistant to exorcism, as it exists both as historical legacy and as open potential. The more capitalism tries to declare communism dead, the more it revives it through its own failures to provide security, equality, or ecological sustainability. Thus the specter's return is not just repetition but transformation, as each historical conjuncture produces new versions of communist possibility adapted to contemporary conditions.
Derrida calls for:
"a profound transformation, projected over a long term, of international law, of its concepts, and its field of intervention" (p105), proposing what he terms the New International. This represents a radical break with traditional leftist organizational forms in several ways. First, it moves beyond state-centric models:
"the transformation, the appropriation then finally the destruction of the State" (p127), recognizing how states often betray revolutionary ideals through bureaucracy, nationalism, and repression. Second, it abandons traditional party structures:
"State-Party politics which Derrida claims is reactionary and unadapted to new technological and media conditions" (p127), acknowledging how vanguard parties became ends in themselves rather than means for emancipation. Third, it supersedes the old Internationals (the First, Second, and Third) with their rigid bureaucracies and ideological splits.
This critique builds on but goes beyond Rosa Luxemburg's critique of Bolshevik centralism by addressing new historical conditions. Where Luxemburg opposed Lenin's democratic centralism from within the Marxist tradition, Derrida questions the very form of the party-state model. The New International thus represents not just organizational innovation but a fundamental rethinking of revolutionary politics for an era of globalization, digital media, and ecological crisis. It takes seriously Marx's original call for working-class internationalism while recognizing how traditional forms of internationalism failed to prevent nationalism, bureaucratization, and the reproduction of state power.
The New International would feature several innovative characteristics that distinguish it from traditional leftist organizations. First, it would utilize new organizational forms adapted to digital age:
"new tele-techno-media conditions" (p127), anticipating contemporary digital activism and networked social movements. This represents a significant departure from the centralized, hierarchical structures of traditional leftist parties, embracing instead the decentralized, rhizomatic possibilities of digital communication. Second, it would employ a deconstructive approach to international law that simultaneously exposes its exclusions (its colonial origins, imperial implementations) while reclaiming its universal aspirations (human rights, equality, justice).
Third, the New International would build alliances beyond traditional class categories to include ecological, feminist, anti-racist, and other struggles, anticipating what later theorists called "intersectional" politics. This reflects Derrida's understanding that contemporary capitalism operates through multiple forms of oppression that cannot be reduced to class alone. Fourth, it would resemble what Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt theorized as the "multitude" - a decentralized network of resistance that eschews traditional leadership structures. However, unlike Negri and Hardt, Derrida emphasizes the spectral dimension of this international - its connection to past struggles and future possibilities that cannot be fully present in any organizational form.
The New International's ultimate purpose is ethical rather than narrowly political:
"never before, in absolute figures, never have so many men, women, and children been subjugated, starved, or exterminated on the earth" (p106). This ethical imperative has several dimensions that distinguish it from traditional leftist politics. First, it grounds politics in actual human suffering rather than abstract ideological formulas, anticipating what later theorists called the "ethical turn" in critical theory. Second, it creates urgent connections across national borders to address globalized exploitation, recognizing that in an era of transnational capitalism, solidarity must likewise transcend national frameworks.
Third, it maintains Marxism's concern for human flourishing while jettisoning dogmatic elements that led to authoritarian implementations. This represents what Ernst Bloch called the "warm stream" of Marxism (its utopian, ethical dimension) as opposed to the "cold stream" (its scientific, deterministic aspects). The New International thus combines Marx's original ethical outrage at exploitation with contemporary understandings of oppression that go beyond traditional class analysis. This approach resonates with Emmanuel Levinas's ethics of infinite responsibility to the Other while giving it concrete political form through transnational solidarity networks.
The New International operates through several distinctive principles that Derrida describes as spectral solidarity. First, it emphasizes affinity over bureaucracy - voluntary association based on shared commitments rather than centralized control, resembling anarchist models of organization but without rejecting structure entirely. Second, it is oriented toward what Derrida elsewhere calls "democracy to come" - an always-deferred ideal that guides action without being fully present in any existing institution. This represents a radical democratic vision that avoids both the authoritarianism of actually existing socialism and the limitations of liberal democracy.
Third, it maintains a spectral orientation:
"the specter is the future, it is always to come" (p48), meaning the movement aligns itself with historical possibilities rather than fixed programs. This allows for flexibility and creativity in responding to changing conditions while maintaining core emancipatory values. Fourth, it forges haunted alliances - connections that acknowledge our shared inheritance of past struggles while working toward future justice. These alliances are "haunted" in the sense that they carry the memory of past failures and unrealized potentials, using this memory to inform but not determine present actions.
This conception anticipates contemporary theories of post-Marxist radical democracy developed by thinkers like Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, while maintaining a stronger connection to Marx's original critique of capitalism. The New International thus represents both continuity and rupture - preserving Marx's emancipatory impulse while transforming its organizational expressions for new historical conditions. It offers a vision of solidarity that is at once more modest than traditional revolutionary politics (rejecting claims to absolute knowledge or guaranteed success) and more ambitious in its global reach and ethical commitments.
Derrida argues that our relationship to Marx constitutes an unavoidable debt that structures contemporary thought:
"And whether we like it or not, whatever consciousness we have of it, we cannot not be its heirs. There is no inheritance without a call to responsibility. An inheritance is always the reaffirmation of a debt" (p114). This debt operates on multiple interconnected levels that make it inescapable. Ontologically, Derrida claims that
"the being of what we are is first of all inheritance" (p68), meaning our very conceptual frameworks for understanding society, economy, and history are already shaped by Marxist categories like class, ideology, and exploitation. Even attempts to refute Marx must use concepts he helped establish, making the debt constitutive rather than contingent.
Historically, we are constituted by the very critiques we might want to reject, as Marx's thought has fundamentally shaped all subsequent social theory, including those positions developed against Marxism. This creates what Harold Bloom called the "anxiety of influence" but on a collective, historical scale. Ethically, the debt calls us to responsibility rather than simple repayment - it demands active, critical engagement rather than passive acknowledgement or unthinking repetition. Like Freud's concept of psychic debt, it structures our political unconscious whether we recognize it or not, shaping our thought in ways we cannot fully control or escape.
Derrida draws parallels between Shakespeare's Hamlet and contemporary inheritors of Marx to illustrate this haunted inheritance:
"Hamlet is 'out of joint' because he curses his own mission, the punishment that consists in having to punish, avenge, exercise justice" (p23). This haunting manifests in several ways for those who inherit Marx's legacy today. First, there is the crushing weight of history:
"There will be no future without this. Not without Marx, no future without Marx" (p14)- the sense that the past's claims cannot be refused, only acknowledged and worked through. Like Hamlet, we are chosen by history to address its wrongs, without having chosen this responsibility ourselves.
Second, there is the impossibility of settling accounts - the debt to Marx can never be fully paid, as each engagement generates new obligations and interpretations. This creates what Paul de Man called the "unreadability" of influential texts - their resistance to final interpretation. Third, there is the necessity of acting despite never having full certainty about history's meaning or the consequences of our actions - what Derrida elsewhere calls the "madness of the decision." This resembles what Walter Benjamin called the "secret agreement between past generations and our own" in his "Theses on the Philosophy of History," where the present has a duty to redeem past sufferings.
The debt to Marx is no ordinary obligation but has several paradoxical characteristics that make it unique. First, it is unquantifiable - it cannot be calculated or repaid in simple terms but requires continual renegotiation and reinterpretation. Second, it is transformative rather than merely obligating:
"the being of what we are is first of all inheritance" (p68)- the debt constitutes our very identity rather than being external to it. Third, it is productive rather than merely restrictive - the engagement with Marx generates new possibilities for thought and action rather than simply imposing constraints.
Fourth, it is intergenerational - it connects us to past struggles and future possibilities in an endless chain of interpretation and reinvention. This conception builds on Marcel Mauss's anthropological theory of the gift while radicalizing its implications. Where Mauss showed how gifts create social bonds through the obligation to reciprocate, Derrida (in other works) emphasizes how true gifts escape this economy of exchange. Similarly, our debt to Marx exceeds any calculus of repayment - it gives by taking, takes by giving, in a paradoxical exchange that cannot be balanced. This makes it fundamentally different from financial debt or legal obligation, belonging instead to the order of spectrality and hauntology.
Derrida critiques attempts to declare the debt to Marx null and void after 1989:
"Capitalist societies can always heave a sigh of relief and say to themselves: communism is finished since the collapse of the totalitarianisms of the twentieth century and not only is it finished, but it did not take place, it was only a ghost" (p123). Such declarations fail for several reasons. First, they ignore how capitalism's ongoing crises - financial collapses, growing inequality, ecological disasters - continually revive Marxist critique in new forms. Each crisis becomes what Slavoj Žižek calls a "vanishing mediator" for Marx's return, as the system's failures make his analysis newly relevant.
Second, they underestimate the spectral persistence of Marx's ideas - how they continue to haunt contemporary thought even when explicitly repudiated. Third, they mistake the end of Marxist states for the exhaustion of Marxist theory, failing to distinguish between Marx's original critique and its authoritarian implementations. This analysis anticipates later post-Marxist developments that retain Marx's critical insights while transforming their political expressions. The debt to Marx thus persists not despite but because of attempts to repudiate it, as each crisis reveals new dimensions of his thought's relevance for understanding and challenging contemporary capitalism.
Following Martin Heidegger, Derrida cautions against conflating justice with revenge:
"He [Heidegger] would especially like to wrest it away from that experience of vengeance whose idea, he says, remains 'the opinion of those who equate the Just with the Avenged'" (p29). This distinction reveals several fundamental differences between justice and vengeance that are crucial for understanding Derrida's concept of spectral justice. First, vengeance operates within a closed economy of retaliation where violence begets violence in an endless cycle, while justice seeks to interrupt these cycles and open new possibilities. Second, vengeance is fundamentally mimetic - as René Girard showed in his theory of sacrificial violence, it follows a logic of doubling where each act demands another in return. Justice, by contrast, aims to break this pattern through what Derrida calls the "disjointure" of time - creating openings where something genuinely new might emerge.
Third, vengeance remains trapped within the logic of the original wrong, merely reversing positions rather than transforming the underlying structure. This is what Derrida means when he contrasts vengeance with the ghost's demand to "set right" what is out of joint. The spectral perspective allows us to see how vengeance, despite its claim to restore balance, actually perpetuates the violence it claims to redress. Heidegger's warning thus becomes crucial for Derrida's project of developing a concept of justice that would be more than just the negation of injustice - one that would open toward a future beyond the cycles of violence that have characterised so much of human history.
Derrida explores the ghost's complex demand for justice through a series of probing questions:
"Does it come along simply to compensate a wrong, restitute something due, to do right or do justice? Does it come along simply to repair injustice (adikia) or more precisely to rearticulate as must be the disjointure of the present time ('to set it right' as Hamlet said)?" (p29). These questions reveal the multidimensional nature of spectral justice. First, it involves addressing what Derrida calls the disjointure of time:
"Something in the present is not going well, it is not going as it ought to go" (p27)- a fundamental disharmony in the temporal order that manifests as social and political injustice.
Second, spectral justice requires more than simply punishing wrongdoers or compensating victims - it demands a reconfiguration of the very fabric of time and history to allow for genuine reconciliation. This connects to Walter Benjamin's concept of "divine violence" in his "Critique of Violence," which similarly sought a form of justice that would break the cycles of mythical violence. Third, Derrida's notion of "setting right" involves what Emmanuel Levinas would call an infinite responsibility to the Other - an ethical demand that exceeds any calculus of equivalence or retribution. The ghost's appearance creates an obligation that cannot be discharged through simple acts of vengeance but requires a more fundamental transformation of our relationship to time, history, and justice.
Spectral justice operates within a complex temporality that fundamentally differs from the linear time of vengeance. Where vengeance follows a straightforward chronology of crime and punishment, spectral justice disrupts this linearity through what Derrida calls "disjointure." This temporal complexity manifests in several ways. First, spectral justice engages with past wrongs without being trapped by them - it acknowledges historical injustice while refusing to be determined by it. This resembles what Paul Ricoeur called the "difficult forgiveness" between generations, where memory serves not to fuel new cycles of violence but to enable reconciliation.
Second, spectral justice is oriented toward the future - what Derrida elsewhere calls the "to come" (à venir) - rather than being fixated on balancing past accounts. This future orientation means justice is never fully present but always approaching, always demanding new responses to new situations. Third, spectral justice transforms our experience of the present by revealing how it is haunted by both past injustices and future possibilities. As Derrida notes:
"Something in the present is not going well, it is not going as it ought to go" (p27)- the disjointed present becomes the site where justice must intervene to reconnect what has been broken. This multidimensional temporality distinguishes spectral justice from traditional conceptions that view it either as restoring a past balance or realising an ideal future.
Shakespeare's Hamlet serves as Derrida's central example of the justice/vengeance tension:
"He swears against this misfortune, and this misfortune is unending because it is nothing other than himself, Hamlet" (p23). This passage reveals several key aspects of the spectral dilemma. First, Hamlet is trapped by the ghost's demand for vengeance - what appears as justice becomes a curse that binds him to repeat the violence he seeks to redress. This illustrates how vengeance, even when framed as justice, perpetuates the very disorder it claims to remedy. Second, Hamlet's identification with his mission ("it is nothing other than himself") shows how the call for justice can consume the one who answers it, leaving no space for critical distance or transformation.
Third, the play dramatises the paradox that justice comes from the ghost (an figure of the past) but ghosts demand vengeance (which binds us to the past). This creates what Derrida calls an aporia - an irresolvable contradiction at the heart of the justice/vengeance distinction. The spectral perspective allows us to see how Hamlet's tragedy stems from being caught between these two imperatives without being able to fully embrace either or find a third way. This reading engages with but differs from A.C. Bradley's Shakespearean tragedy interpretation by emphasising the temporal and ethical dimensions of Hamlet's predicament rather than its psychological aspects.
Derrida draws profound parallels between the ghost in Hamlet and Marx's spectral return:
"Enter the ghost, exit the ghost, re-enter the ghost" (p.xix). This cyclical haunting represents several key aspects of spectral inheritance. First, it demonstrates the insistent return of Marx's legacy despite repeated declarations of his irrelevance - just as old Hamlet's ghost refuses to stay buried, Marx's thought continues to haunt contemporary political discourse. Second, it shows how ghosts make ethical demands that cross temporal boundaries - the ghost's appearance creates obligations that connect past, present and future in ways that disrupt linear chronology.
Third, the ghost's demand reveals hidden truths about the present order - as in Shakespearean tragedy, the spectral apparition exposes the corruption and violence underlying the apparent stability of the status quo. Fourth, the ghost's appearance creates what Derrida calls a temporal crisis where
"the time is out of joint" (p27)- a fundamental disharmony that requires intervention. This reading builds on but transforms Jan Kott's existentialist interpretation of Shakespeare by emphasising the political and ethical dimensions of Hamlet's spectral encounter rather than its purely existential aspects.
Hamlet embodies the weight of spectral inheritance that Derrida sees as paradigmatic for Marx's contemporary heirs:
"Hamlet does not curse so much the corruption of the age. He curses first of all and instead this unjust effect of the disorder, namely, the fate that would have destined him, Hamlet, to put a dislocated time back on its hinges" (p23). This passage reveals several dimensions of the heir's predicament. First, there is the crushing burden of historical responsibility - being chosen by history to rectify its wrongs without having chosen this mission oneself. Second, there is the paradoxical position of being simultaneously privileged and cursed by one's inheritance - given special insight but also special burdens.
Third, there is the enormity of the task - "setting right" what is fundamentally "out of joint" in the temporal order. This mirrors the situation of Marx's heirs after 1989, who must reckon with both the failures of actually existing socialism and the ongoing crises of global capitalism. As Derrida notes:
"There will be no future without this. Not without Marx, no future without Marx" (p14)- the heir's responsibility is both impossible to fulfill and impossible to refuse. This relates to what Franz Kafka called the "task that has been assigned to you" in his parable "Before the Law," where the door exists just for the individual but cannot be entered.
Hamlet models Derrida's concept of spectral temporality through several key features of the play. First, the ghost's appearances rupture linear chronology, creating a time that is out of joint where past, present and future intersect unpredictably. As Derrida notes:
"Enter the ghost, exit the ghost, re-enter the ghost" (p.xix)- this cyclical haunting defies progressive narratives of history. Second, the play dramatises how past injustices (old Hamlet's murder) demand present redress, showing how historical crimes continue to shape contemporary politics. This resonates with Walter Benjamin's claim that history becomes "a pile of debris" that the present must sift through.
Third, Hamlet's famous phrase
"the time is out of joint" (p27)captures the temporal crisis that defines both the play and our political moment - a fundamental disharmony that requires intervention but resists simple solutions. This reading engages with Stephen Greenblatt's new historicism while emphasising the philosophical dimensions of Shakespeare's temporal imagination. The play becomes for Derrida not just a literary text but a theoretical resource for understanding how specters disrupt our conventional experience of time and history.
Hamlet's hesitation reflects the fundamental dilemma of spectral inheritance:
"one can never distinguish between the future-to-come and the coming-back of a specter" (p46). This undecidability creates several challenges for political action. First, there is the difficulty of acting decisively when haunted by past failures - the knowledge of Marxism's historical defeats makes new initiatives seem doomed to repeat old mistakes. Second, there is the need to decide without certainty about history's direction - whether we are facing the return of old specters or the arrival of something genuinely new.
Third, there is the paradox that spectral inheritance both enables and constrains action - providing resources for critique while burdening us with unresolved historical tensions. As Derrida shows, Hamlet's famous delay stems not from weakness but from the recognition that any action will have unpredictable spectral consequences. This relates to what Derrida elsewhere calls the "madness of the decision" - the moment when we must act without full knowledge or guarantee. The play thus becomes an allegory for contemporary political action in the shadow of Marx's legacy, where we must navigate between the dangers of premature certainty and paralyzing hesitation.
Derrida identifies how emerging technologies create new forms of haunting that demand a transformed Marxist critique:
"radical transformation" of Marxism to critique the "unheard-of powers" which include cyber-space and surveillance (p68). These technological hauntings manifest in several significant ways. First, digital ghosts proliferate online - the persistence of data, social media profiles, and algorithmic identities beyond physical death creates a new kind of spectral presence. This extends Derrida's concept of hauntology into the realm of what Shoshana Zuboff calls "surveillance capitalism," where our digital doubles continue to circulate and influence events after we've logged off.
Second, algorithmic specters operate invisibly to shape our digital experiences - recommendation systems, predictive analytics, and automated decision-making processes function as ghostly forces that guide our choices without our full awareness. Third, the very infrastructure of the internet creates conditions for what Derrida calls "new tele-techno-media conditions" (p127) that traditional Marxism must learn to navigate. These cyber-specters differ from traditional ghosts in being deliberately designed rather than spontaneous apparitions, yet they share the same paradoxical status of being neither fully present nor absent, neither living nor dead.
The digital age transforms how specters return and haunt contemporary life in several profound ways. First, social media enables instant hauntings from the past - old posts resurface, memories are algorithmically revived, and past selves return to trouble the present. This creates what Fredric Jameson might call a "digital nostalgia" where the past is constantly recycled rather than worked through. Second, big data analytics creates predictive specters of our future behavior - algorithmic profiles that anticipate our actions before we perform them, creating a strange temporality where the future seems to haunt the present.
Third, the virtualization of identity through avatars, profiles, and online personas creates a new kind of spectral doubling where users exist simultaneously in physical and digital spaces. This differs from traditional ghost stories where the specter is an exception to normal reality - in digital culture, spectrality becomes the norm. As Derrida notes, these transformations require
"the transformation, the appropriation then finally the destruction of the State" (p127)- a rethinking of political organization for an era where power operates through decentralized networks rather than centralized institutions.
Derrida insists that Marxism must evolve to address the challenges posed by new technologies:
"radical transformation" of Marxism to critique the "unheard-of powers" which include cyber-space and surveillance (p68). This updated critique would need to analyze several key developments. First, how digital platforms create new forms of alienation where users simultaneously produce and are produced by the platforms they inhabit - a kind of digital alienation that Marx could not have anticipated. Second, the spectral nature of cryptocurrency and virtual economies where value appears and disappears without material basis, creating financial specters that haunt the global economy.
Third, what Mark Fisher called "capitalist realism" in digital spaces - the widespread sense that no alternative to digital capitalism is possible, despite its obvious pathologies. Fourth, how "unheard-of powers" (p68) operate through technological means to create new forms of control that are decentralized, algorithmic, and often invisible. This requires updating Marx's critique of industrial capitalism to address an era where exploitation happens through data extraction, attention economies, and algorithmic management. The challenge is to develop a critique that grasps how spectrality has become a structural feature of digital capitalism rather than an exception to it.
The internet has become a new medium for spectral politics that requires innovative forms of organization:
"new tele-techno-media conditions" (p127). These haunted networks operate through several distinctive features. First, memes function as viral specters - ideas that spread uncontrollably, mutate unpredictably, and haunt public discourse long after their original context has faded. This creates what Richard Dawkins, who coined the term "meme," couldn't have anticipated - a perfect medium for spectral ideas that resist containment or control.
Second, bot networks create artificial "ghosts in the machine" - automated accounts that mimic human users, creating the illusion of consensus or popularity where none exists. Third, blockchain technologies create decentralized specters - cryptocurrencies and smart contracts that operate without central authority but exert real effects. The New International that Derrida calls for must learn to operate in these digital spaces, developing forms of solidarity and resistance that are as distributed and adaptable as the networks they oppose. This means reimagining political organization for an era where spectrality is not just a metaphor but a technical reality built into the infrastructure of communication itself.
Derrida distinguishes between two conceptions of futurity: the predictable future (futur) and the radical openness of what he calls the "future-to-come" (avenir):
"one can never distinguish between the future-to-come and the coming-back of a specter" (p46). This messianic structure has several key characteristics. First, it maintains hope without specific doctrine - what Derrida describes as
"a communism... still to come beyond its name" (p46), keeping the content of emancipation open rather than predetermined. This resonates with Ernst Bloch's concept of the "not-yet-conscious" - the sense that the future contains possibilities beyond our current imagination.
Second, the messianic promise operates independently of its specific content or fulfillment - as Derrida notes:
"Whether the promise promises this or that... there is necessarily some promise and therefore some historicity as future-to-come" (p92). This means the structure of hope persists even when particular hopes are disappointed. Third, unlike traditional messianism with its expectation of a specific redeemer, Derrida's messianic is empty - it names an opening toward the future without specifying what will fill it. This creates what he calls a "weak messianic power" that is all the stronger for not claiming absolute knowledge or guaranteed results.
The messianic remains radically open in Derrida's formulation:
"Whether the promise promises this or that, whether it be fulfilled or not, or whether it be unfulfillable, there is necessarily some promise and therefore some historicity as future-to-come" (p92). This emptiness has several important implications. First, it rejects the notion of a guaranteed happy ending or inevitable revolution - the future remains genuinely undetermined and therefore requires our active engagement. Second, it resembles what Giorgio Agamben calls "the time that remains" - a suspended temporality where redemption is always approaching but never fully present.
Third, the promise's power comes precisely from its lack of specific content - as Derrida notes, this makes it
"A specter all the more terrifying, some will say" (p46)because it cannot be pinned down or dismissed as unrealistic. Fourth, this empty messianism creates responsibility without blueprints - we are called to work for justice without knowing exactly what justice will look like. This connects to Theodor Adorno's negative dialectics, which similarly refused to define utopia while maintaining critique of the present. The messianic without messiah thus becomes a way to sustain hope after the failures of both religious and political messianisms.
Derrida's messianic differs from traditional utopianism in several crucial ways. First, where utopias present complete pictures of ideal societies, the spectral maintains openness and incompleteness - it suggests possibilities rather than blueprints. As Derrida writes:
"a communism... still to come beyond its name" (p46)- the emphasis is on the "to come" rather than any specific institutional arrangement. Second, like Adorno's negative dialectics, it knows what's wrong with the present but refuses to define the perfect solution, recognising that such definitions often become oppressive.
Third, the spectral is more terrifying than utopia precisely because it's undefined - it cannot be dismissed as unrealistic because it makes no concrete claims. Fourth, the promise creates responsibility without providing answers - we must work toward justice without knowing exactly what it will look like. This differs from traditional Marxism's scientific pretensions while maintaining its critical impulse. The messianic thus becomes what Derrida elsewhere calls a "democracy to come" - always approaching but never fully present, always demanding more than any existing institution can deliver.
The messianic structure imposes radical ethical obligations:
"There is no inheritance without a call to responsibility" (p114). This creates what Emmanuel Levinas would call an infinite responsibility that can never be fully discharged. First, it requires remaining open to the unexpected - to possibilities that exceed our current frameworks of understanding. As Derrida notes, the messianic is not just about what we can anticipate but about what will necessarily surprise us. Second, it demands that we work for justice without guaranteed success - what Derrida calls the "perhaps" (peut-être) that makes action possible despite uncertainty.
Third, it requires inheriting Marx's critique while transforming it - neither simple repetition nor outright rejection but creative reinterpretation. Fourth, it means bearing the "spectral moment" (p.xix) of undecidability - living with the tension between memory and hope, between the ghosts of past failures and the possibilities of future redemption. This ethical demand is what distinguishes Derrida's messianic from mere wishful thinking - it calls us to action while reminding us that our actions will always fall short of the justice we seek. In this way, the messianic without messiah becomes both a resource for critique and a guard against dogmatism.
Specters impose ethical demands that cannot be ignored:
"One never inherits without coming to terms with some specter" (p24). This call to responsibility has several dimensions. First, it requires listening to ghosts rather than exorcising them - allowing the voices of past injustices to speak to the present. As Derrida notes elsewhere, this involves a kind of "hauntological" listening that attends to what is neither fully present nor absent. Second, it demands what Derrida calls "hospitality" to the other - an openness to being transformed by the encounter with spectral demands that exceed our existing frameworks.
Third, it requires acknowledging that
"the being of what we are is first of all inheritance" (p68)- that we are constituted by the very past we might wish to escape. Fourth, it means assuming responsibility for history's wrongs without claiming the arrogant position of being able to finally settle accounts. This ethical stance differs from both traditional morality and modern ethical systems by grounding obligation in our haunted condition rather than in abstract principles or utilitarian calculations. The spectral call thus creates an ethics of memory that is simultaneously an ethics of the future - one that recognizes how the ghosts of past injustices shape our responsibilities toward what is to come.
The spectral debt can never be fully discharged:
"There is no inheritance without a call to responsibility" (p114). This infinite responsibility manifests in several ways. First, there can be no final reconciliation with the past - the work of memory and justice is interminable, always requiring new engagements as new contexts emerge. As Kafka's parable suggests, the door of justice exists just for us but cannot be definitively entered. Second, we must answer Marx's specter while knowing our response will be inadequate - the call exceeds any possible response, creating an obligation that can never be fully met.
Third, the work of mourning is endless - each act of remembrance reveals new layers of loss and new responsibilities. This differs from Freud's model where mourning ideally reaches completion, suggesting instead that spectral inheritance creates permanent obligations. Fourth, the very attempt to fulfill our responsibility generates new responsibilities - there is no final settlement, only the ongoing work of critical engagement. This infinite responsibility is what distinguishes spectral ethics from conventional morality - it recognizes that our debts to the past can never be fully paid, only continually renegotiated in light of present needs and future possibilities.
Spectral ethics points toward what Derrida calls justice-to-come:
"to rearticulate as must be the disjointure of the present time ('to set it right' as Hamlet said)?" (p29). This future-oriented justice involves several key aspects. First, it seeks to rectify past wrongs without being trapped by them - addressing historical injustice while refusing to be determined by endless cycles of retaliation. This resembles what Paul Ricoeur called "difficult forgiveness" across generations, where memory serves reconciliation rather than vengeance. Second, it recognizes
"Something in the present is not going well, it is not going as it ought to go" (p27)- the present is always out of joint, always requiring intervention.
Third, it works for justice while knowing justice is always "to come" - never fully present but always approaching, always demanding more than the current order can deliver. This connects to John Rawls's concept of justice as fairness while radicalizing its temporal dimension. Fourth, it maintains openness to the future while being responsible to the past - what Derrida calls the "double injunction" of spectral ethics. This creates an ethics that is neither trapped in nostalgia nor fixated on utopia, but that navigates between memory and hope in ways that transform both.
Like Hamlet, the heir of Marx bears a spectral burden:
"the fate that would have destined him, Hamlet, to put a dislocated time back on its hinges" (p23). This task involves several challenges. First, accepting that
"There will be no future without this. Not without Marx, no future without Marx" (p14)- recognizing that Marx's thought remains indispensable despite its problems. Second, living with undecidability - acting without certainty about whether we're facing the return of old specters or the arrival of something new. Third, bearing witness to ghosts without claiming final understanding - acknowledging that spectral appearances always exceed our interpretations.
Fourth, what Walter Benjamin called "brushing history against the grain" - reading the past against its official narratives to recover lost possibilities. The heir's task is thus both impossible and necessary - impossible because it can never be completed, necessary because without it there is no future worth inheriting. This paradoxical position defines spectral ethics as both a burden and a gift - a responsibility we cannot refuse and a resource we cannot do without. In this way, Derrida shows how Marx's specter continues to haunt us not as a dead weight but as a living challenge to imagine and work toward a more just future.