“The time is out of joint”
Grammatical constituents of “the time is out of joint”
“The time is out of joint”: says the time, but singularly to this time, to time of this world
Is it valid for all the time? “To be” vs. “then”
The grammatical present of the verb to be seems to offer a predestined hospitality to the return of any and all spirits — plurality is an extended welcome there to specters
To be = to inherit; to be questions are questions of inheritance
People trying to use time to structure the world
Structure of the world: exorcism against Marxism
Time is stabilizing the world by an unprecedented form of hegemony
Conjuration of Marxism: all mobilization to struggle against it provides a chance for the simulacrum to be represented, thus all attempts of exorcising are conjuration
Plurality, non-fixedness of specters
People are afraid that they will no longer recognize Marxism because of its metamorphosis — Marxism is never accustomed to a single identity
Conjuration vs. conjurement
Hauntology in politics
Performativity: is the engagement with the structure, where the frontier between the public and the private is constantly being displaced, remaining less assured, as the limit that would permit one to identify the political
E.g swearing: taking an oath, promising, deciding, taking a responsibility, ultimately performative
This frontier (public vs. private) is being displaced because the medium in which it is instituted — the medium of media themselves (techno-tele-discursivity) — constitutes the phenomenology of the political
All such simulacrum is neither living nor dead, present nor absent — not discourse of ontology, but exists as specters
Interpretation / performative interpretation: structuralized, intentional hermeneutical process, and constructs the structure
“An interpretation that transforms what it interprets”: a definition of the performative as unorthodox with regard to speech act theory; interpretation to change the subject; interpretation to build the intentional structure
Dogmatics: instillation of hegemony, of dominant discourse
Domination is Freud’s “triumphant phase of morning work”: incantation repeats and ritualizes itself, claiming, fetishizing Marxism and capitalism
The wrong timeline instilled for this dominance: “the end of history in capitalism”
The incontestable self-evidence: testimony is tautologically established by the domination
Commanding public manifestation, in three indissociable places or apparatuses of our culture:
Political culture, political rhetoric
Mass-media culture: having everyone put up a position, pre-suppose the structure
Scholarly or academic culture: e.g historians establishing a (fake) timeline
Intellectual and discursive hegemony were achieved; but in which the new apparition of the simulacrum arises
Dominated - dominant relationship
End of Marxism: the dominant discourse — of course, it’s not totally tautological or circular
In all situations, a hegemony force is always represented by a dominant rhetoric and ideology → suspicious about the opposition of the dominant and the dominated that
One must assume the inheritance of Marxism: existence as an inheritance (the field and horizon provided by Hegel’s non-materialist account of History, and indeed his theory of “struggle for recognition” is struggle for apparition of those ghosts-like non-presence among history or among intellectual history)
Inheritance is a task: the being of what we are is first of all inheritance — “we can only bear witness to it” (Holderlin), bearing inheritance
E.g language. Language is an inheritance to “be” and to be witnessed
Response to Fukuyama: “naive” because Marx is still haunting; reductionist
Also because of the presence of ghosts, it’s no longer possible to be limited by the general structure of a thesis
Gospel: figures of the Promised Land
(In Fukuyama’s theory, the Promised Land = liberal democracy)
The empirical reductionist: all the cataclysms, events, or facts would belong to empiricity, and remain empirical phenomena accredited by “empirical evidence” → telos of the orientation would have the form of ideal finality; everything contradictory would belong to historical empiricity (expulsion of the other)
A process of empirical reality → ideal finality
Both spatial and temporal/ ideal moving towards the finality
The second world war as the “appropriation of Jerusalem”, singular figure of its being “out of joint” — eschatology, finality, and the Promise
Eschatology realized and mobilized; in order to put eschatology into work, the old political concepts relating to death and annihilation were put into work, were haunting
All the violence happening during the Second World War, and in the founding of the State of Israel, the violence is in conformity with and in disregard of international law, the specter of international law both contradicted and conformed
The plurality of war; the plurality of all ideologies
Fukuyama’s end of history is a Christian eschatology if coming to the state is coming of God into this world
Twin pillar of a state: thymos and economic rationality
∴ All the beginning and the rejection of Marxism must carry and carry with it a messianic eschatology 【?】
This messianic eschatology: is not to be simply classified among ideologems or theologems to be demystified or criticized, but they must be deconstructed.
The Gospel of politico-economic liberalism needs the empirical event of the good news, and actual history and other realities have an empirical appearance that contradicts this advent of the perfect liberal democracy → thus the liberal democracy should only be an eschatological and ideal finality; the event now is the realization
[Fukuyama’s defend]: the ideal of the trend towards liberalism is the event — it’s already happened, infinite because it remains a tendency and distinguished from any determined empirical reality but finite because this ideal has already happened. Thus history is over — because history is not given, not a catalog, but a hermeneutical abstraction [Fukuyama’s justification]
→ [Derrida’s rebuttal]: Fukuyama’s justification is based on the idea that “man is man”, but man is not man
Marxism (or any messianic eschatology) is to be deconstructed, not to be demystified
Structural messianism, a messianism without religion, without normative significance
Emancipatory, anticipatory - not a structure with functional purposefulness — thus not a religion, not a messiah, but intentionality is emancipatory. It is anticipatory
It’s leading when it’s being interpreted when it goes through the messianic transformation (aforementioned)
The absolute non-presence: Derrida’s rebuttal at Fukuyama’s justification for his contradictions and defense
Thinking about the beginning of the logic of a ghost points towards the destruction of binary or dialectical logic: because specters have both effectivity/actuality and ideality. (this binary opposition is obsolete)
E.g the finality of history: a future present, a future modality of the living present; a promise
Awaiting without the horizon of wait; “arrivant” is a return
Condition of possibility along with condition of impossibility, just like this messianism without content
When people are hiding from the contradiction that Fukuyama made and the potentiality of these failures, the apparition of Marx comes in the spirit of Marxist critique (Marxism as ontology, the dialectical materialism), which is indispensable
☆ the coming of hautology from rebuttal to Fukuyama:
“If a discourse of the Fukuyama type is to work, it is because it performs a trick: 1) it accredits a logic of the empirical event which it needs whenever it is a question of certifying the finally final defeat of the so-called Marxist States and of everything that bars access to the Promised Land of economic and political liberalisms; yet 2) with the other hand, in the name of the trans-historic and natural ideal, it discredits this same logic of the so-called empirical event, it has to suspend it to avoid chalking up to the account of this ideal and its concept precisely whatever contradicts them in such a cruel fashion: in a word, all the evil, all that is not going well in the capitalist States and in liberalism, in a world dominated by other forces whose hegemony is linked to this supposedly trans-historical or natural…” (86)
History vs. nature, historical empiricism vs. teleological transcendentality, the supposed empirical reality vs. the absolute ideality of telos are all remaining unresolved in Fukuyama’s argument, therefore there must be something outside this binary structure, something that brings a new experience of the event, of another logic of its relation to the automatic (like hauntology)
New historicity beyond the metaphysical concept of history and the end of history, the combination of Kojevian postscript on post-history and post-historical animals
[Kojevian] Japan: post-historical, opposed to the “American path” — cultural formalism returns man into animality
[Kojevian] The U.S is in the final stage of the Marxist communism 【????????】
Postwar U.S: man’s return to animality
“End of history”: the end of history is when man stops to become man; ideal, transcendental finality being anticipated and realized through events, and when this anticipation happens, the finality of history comes (already happening)
Must insist on a specific point, otherwise the indetermination will turn future eternally into an epoche — it’s necessary (it already is)
Marking any opening to the event and to the future as such, it therefore conditions the interest in and not the indifference to anything, to all content in general. Without it, there would be no intentions, nor need… no center and thus no passion
Singular indifference → future becomes formalist
∴ with Marx and after Marx, we still have to take in consideration of their simulacrum into the actuality, and think of deconstructing the ontology, supplementarity, and etc. the disjunction does not deprive itself of the means with which to take into account of the effects of ghosts (of ideologems)
Deconstruction is necessary when approaching hauntology
Kind of see why phenomenology is a Euro-American thing: it has its roots in Christianity, in the plurality and the potential transcendentality of existence; and Christianity figures have already provided so many great metaphors for theory
Hauntology — specters haunt through language, simulacrum in language-based representations → illustrates the point that in the modern era, the transcendental signified and the center of the structure is no longer men but language; almost post-human
The haunting of ideologies that can’t be simply classified into ideogems/theologems are turning history into epoche, turning the future into epoche
Specters of messianic ideologies and their structures are not structuralized for a function, do not have a singular center with intentionality for usefulness, and are purposeful in being emancipatory but are not normative, thus it’s anticipatory. It cannot be demystified, but it can only be deconstructed; messianic eschatologies and ideal finalities
Q: P68 upper page — what does this inherent mean, because inheritance automatically implies a consequential relationship that which depends on a structure of established time, or at least sequences
Q: conjuration vs. conjuring, what’s the difference
Q: P69 “One may continue to speak of domination in a field of forces not only while suspending the reference to this ultimate support that would be the identity and the self-identity of a social class, but even while suspending the credit extended to what Marx calls the idea, the determination of the superstructure as idea, ideal or ideological representation, indeed even the discursive form of this representation”. ?
Q: P72, the gospel part / second half of the page: ?
My understanding: eschatology realized and mobilized; in order to put the eschatology into work, the old political concepts relating to death and annihilation were put into work. All the violence happening during the Second World War, and in the founding of the State of Israel, the violence is in conformity with and in disregard of international law, the specter of international law both contradicted and conformed
Q: P73 “This transformation and this opening up of Marxism are in conformity with what we were calling a moment ago the spirit of Marxism. If analysis of the Marxist type remains, then, indispensable, it appears to be radically insufficient there where the Marxist ontology grounding the project of Marxist science or critique also itself carries with it and must carry with it, necessarily, despite so many modern or post-modern denials, a messianic eschatology.” ?
Q: P78 and other pages talking about Fukuyama. Why is Derrida criticizing Fukuyama for being someone who reduces everything to “empiricity” when Fukuyama does imply the displacement of history and of the future & trans-historicality of the ideals as events? (Liberal democracy is only an ideal finality and all the events are for its realization, P78)
Q: P80. how is megalothymia distinguished from simple thymia (representation and being recognized)?
Q: P93, what is “anhistoricity”
Q: P94. why does Derrida say that deconstruction is never Marxist?
Prolly needs to go over Fukuyama vs. Derrida’s “debate” in class
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