Re: [OPE-L] Derrida's ghosts

[Jerry Levy <Gerald_A_Levy@xxxxxxx>]

I was making an observation, which was neither critical of TSS,
SSS or Derrida for that matter.  I.e. I was simply noting that the
conception of  temporality in Derrida is inconsistent with that of
the SSS and TSS interpretations of Marx.  Whether they are using
period analysis or (as in the case of some TSS writings) non-
linear dynamics, both of these perspectives have what Derrida
might have referred to as "traditional conceptions of temporality"
(recall that temporalism _is_ a traditional conception of
temporality).    Of course, TSS and SSS focus on the _quantitative_
aspect of  Marx's theory which was clearly not Derrida's focus.
Nor, as I recall from an EEA conference, is it Antonio's focus:
indeed he was highly critical of the conceptions of _all_ Marxian
"value theorists."

If someone believes that TSS _is_ consistent with Derrida's
concept of temporality then I'd like to hear how.  While (former
member) Eduardo Maldonado-Filho called attention to Vol. 3,
Chapter 6, Section 2 of _Capital_,  I don't think that he analogized
the release and tying-up of capital to the release and tying-up of
ghosts.

In solidarity, Jerry

> The ghost as a cipher of iteration is particularly suggestive. At the
> beginning of Specters of Marx, Derrida talks about the way in
> which the anticipated return of the ghost may be mobilized on
> behalf of a deconstruction of all historicisms that are grounded in a
> rigid sense of chronology.
> 'Haunting is historical, to be sure', he writes, 'but it is not dated, it
> is never docilely given a date in the chain of presents, day after day,
> according to the instituted order of the calendar
> ' The question of the revenant neatly encapsulates deconstructive
> concerns about the  impossibility of conceptually solidifying the past.
> Ghosts arrive from the past and appear in the  present. However, the
> ghost cannot be properly said to belong to the past, even if the
> apparition represents someone who has been dead for many
> centuries, for the simple reason that a ghost is  clearly not the same
> thing as the person who shares its proper name. Does then the
> 'historical'  person who is identified with the ghost properly belong
> to the present?  Surely not, as the idea of  a return from death
> fractures all traditional conceptions of temporality.
> The temporality to which  the ghost is subject is therefore paradoxical,
> as at once they 'return' and make their  apparitional debut. Derrida has
> been pleased to term this dual movement of return and inauguration
> a 'hauntology', a coinage that suggests a spectrally deferred non- origin
> within grounding  metaphysical terms such as history and identity."
> (Buse & Scott, 1999, p.10-11)