At 04:34 10/12/98 +1100, Angela wrote: >in any case, i would have thought that the problem with 'spectres of marx' is >quite of a different order: namely, in an entire book on ghosts and haunting >(which is interesting in only the most banal of ways), not once does derrida >confront or think through marx's central critical concept: surplus value. at >least spivak had a go. but derrida can't even begin to think through this >stuff because he wants to avoid the materiality of marx's use of things like >'spectre' and haunting and reification and objectification, etc as related >concepts. so, he does marx a big disservice whilst pretending that he has in >fact dealt with marx. i also thought his stuff on deconstruction being the >equivalent to perestroika was one of the stoopidest and arrogant things i had >read for a long time. _____________ Once I asked Etienne Balibar why there is not much analysis of the question of "value" in *Reading Capital*. He very candidly told me that it is simply because neither he nor Althusser knew political economy well enough to deal with this subject properly. I think Derrida's reason for staying away from the concept of surplus value would be similar. These are serious scholars and thinkers and they don't wanna talk about things which they don't think they have a very good understanding of. Whatever little I have read of Spivak's discussion on value and surplus value, I have found it of poor quality--showing very little understanding of the problem. In my opinion, she should have kept away from it too. Whether you like Derrida's theme of ghosts and specters in his essay on Marx or not, you cannot deny that he succeeds in drawing out this theme in Marx's writings in a surprisingly consistent manner. I had never seen this aspect of Marx's writing before reading Derrida. I don't understand Derrida--I think one needs to know phenomenology inside out to understand him. But I think he is a character similar to Wittgenstein, a true genius-- as Althusser referred to him in his autobiography,*The Future Lasts a Long Time*, "that genius of a philosopher" (quoting from memory). Cheers, ajit sinha
