ters of Marx,Derrida’s spectacular flights of doom-mongering
crowd out any possibility of actual political discussion. He
prefers to deliver vague prophetic fervor, instead of discussing
in concrete terms what criteria we might use for assigning so-
cial resources, redistributing economic power, or arguing about
just and unjust wars.
Derrida frequently interrupts Specters of Marxwith med-
itations on the ghost in Hamlet.At times, he seems to be at-
tempting a far-out deconstructionist equivalent of Hamlet’s
speculations: “The logic of haunting would not be merely
larger and more powerful than an ontology or a thinking of
Being (of the ‘to be,’ assuming that it is a matter of Being in the
‘to be or not to be,’ but nothing is less certain). It would har-
bor within itself, but like circumscribed places or particular
effects, eschatology and teleology themselves. It would compre-
hendthem, but incomprehensibly. How to comprehendin fact
the discourse of the end or the discourse about the end? Can
the extremity of the extreme ever be comprehended? And the
opposition between ‘to be’ and ‘not to be’?” ( 10 ). Thus Derrida,
king of infinite space, incomprehensibly comprehends the ex-
tremity of the extreme. A cold cosmic wind whistles through
Derrida’s sentences; in his book on Marx, one sees his inspira-
tion at low ebb.
Derrida continued to pursue his interest in justice. In
January and February 1997 , he gave a course in Paris (to be re-
peated at Irvine) on the theme of “Hostipitality.” The tongue-
twister title was meant to accommodate the sense of the Latin
word hostis:both host and guest—and enemy as well. To be
hospitable, Derrida announced in his course, “is to let oneself
be overtaken... to be surprised, in a fashion almost violent, to
be raped, stolen... precisely where one is not ready to receive”
(Acts 361 ).
Politics, Marx, Judaism 231