björn thorsteinssonby the memory of past victims. But let us now pass on to the next
phase of our discussion, which will engage with a thinker with whom
Žižek has repeatedly taken issue in his writings.^10
Derrida on Inheriting — Hauntology and the Promise
In his Specters of Marx, Jacques Derrida proposes a new way of thinking
which, he claims, surpasses any type of ontology in its capacities and
scope. Not inappropriately, Derrida terms this new thinking “hauntol-
ogy,” playing, of course (in a quintessential Derridean way) on the
phonetic similarities at work here — for, after all, the French term han-
tologie sounds almost exactly like ontologie. What, then, is hauntology?
To answer that question, we will turn to the source itself, i.e., to Spect-
ers of Marx — but first, a very cursory glimpse at Derrida’s general
mindset may be helpful.
As is well known, Derrida’s thinking is defined, more or less, by a
relentless critique of so-called “metaphysics of presence” which, ac-
cording to Derrida, has dominated not only Western thought since
Plato (or even further back), but also, and more generally, the main-
stream of Western religion, culture, and history. To resume in the
extreme, Derrida’s critique of the metaphysical tradition seeks to un-
veil how it is always, in the final reckoning, defined by stubborn and
static oppositions (such as nature/culture, male/female, presence/ab-
sence) which, ultimately, fail to do justice to the dynamic multiplicity of
the world within which we really live. Alas, this does not mean that the
injustice implied by the tradition’s overly simplified (and binary) view
of reality has no effect on the world. It is quite important to realize
how Derrida’s mode of thinking is, in this respect, deeply phenomeno-
logical: his objective is, quite simply, to combat a certain crisis which
has befallen Western culture due to the imposition of a limited and
limiting, and thus false, world-view. Be that as it may, but where
exactly, then, does Derrida locate the problem with traditional meta-
physics and its concrete socio-historical effects?
- For revealing remarks about the relation here at stake, namely between Žižek
and Derrida, see the “Glossary” in Slavoj Žižek, Interrogating the Real, eds. Rex
Butler and Scott Stephens, London and New York: Continuum, 2005, 360.