EMAIL<\/a> | SYLLABUS<\/a> | POLICIES<\/a> | QUESTIONS<\/a> | PRESENTATIONS<\/a> | JOURNALS<\/a> | PAPER<\/a> | FINAL<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Assigned: Derrida, Jacques. From Specters of Marx<\/em> (1734-44 in Leitch, Vincent B. and William E. Cain, eds. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.<\/em> 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 2010. ISBN 978-0-393-93292-8.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. On 1734-36 top of our selections from Specters of Marx,<\/em> Derrida begins by reproaching himself for not paying sufficient attention to Marx for decades. He agrees that \u201cIt will always be a fault not to read and reread and discuss Marx\u201d (1735 lower middle). How does he justify that conclusion, and what value does he draw from his retroactive insight about the very first noun in The Communist Manifesto,<\/em> the singular form \u201cspecter\u201d (in German, ein Gespenst<\/em>). With its aid, how does he begin to recalibrate his thinking on this influential revolutionary author?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. On 1736-39 top paragraph of our selections from Specters of Marx,<\/em> Derrida addresses both the temper of the times (he\u2019s giving this address in 1993, a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union) and the complexities of rereading Marx at such an historical juncture. Firstly, how does Derrida characterize the affinities between the revolutionary era of Marx\u2019s time (the mid-nineteenth century), the period of his own youth as a French-Algerian intellectual (the 1950s) and the early 1990s? Secondly, how does he present the dilemma posed by rereading Marx in the latter period — that is, what temptation would a student of Marx\u2019s texts be liable to give in to, and why would that be a bad thing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. On 1740-42 of our selections from Specters of Marx,<\/em> Derrida says he wants to enumerate the factors that would \u201crisk making the euphoria of liberal democrat capitalism resemble the blindest and most delirious of hallucinations\u201d (1740 top). In other words, he will discuss some of the factors that could potentially take down the \u201cNew World Order\u201d optimistically alluded to by President George H.W. Bush. Choose a couple of these factors and draw them out to the best of your own insight — what threat do your chosen factors represent to the Western order as it\u2019s shaping up in the wake of the Soviet Union\u2019s dissolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4. With reference to the question immediately above regarding 1740-42 of our selections from Specters of Marx,<\/em>, what can you add to Derrida\u2019s list of threats to the supposed post-Soviet \u201cNew World Order\u201d? Are there, in other words, some new problems on the horizon, or do you think the ones Derrida mentioned would still be accurate (if of course you find them so for the time he\u2019s discussing)? Explain your rationale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5. On 1743-44 of our selections from Specters of Marx,<\/em> how does Derrida sum up the significance of engaging with Marx\u2019s works as of 1993? Why does he suggest that his way of doing so probably won\u2019t please people who still call themselves \u201cMarxists\u201d (1743 upper middle), but what great value and resourcefulness in Marx\u2019s work and in \u201ca certain spirit of Marxism\u201d (1743 bottom) does he nonetheless identify as being the payoff for such an endeavor? 6. General question: Derrida\u2019s usual way of proceeding with a text is to read it closely while paying attention to the binary oppositions that structure it and underwrite its claims (speech\/writing, or presence\/absence, just to name a few); he is also known for his propensity to choose seemingly marginal terms and sections of a given text and suggesting how those seldom considered parts are much more important and even destabilizing to the text\u2019s overall argument and coherence than anyone suspected. But that\u2019s a general description of deconstructive reading, so how would you describe what Derrida is up to here in our selections from Specters of Marx?<\/em> Try to respond both in terms of the text\u2019s stylistic qualities and in terms of its methodology — not that we need think of those as completely separate concerns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" JACQUES DERRIDA QUESTIONS FOR E492 MODERN CRITICAL THEORYCSU FULLERTON, FALL 2015 Assigned: Derrida, Jacques. From Specters of Marx (1734-44 in Leitch, Vincent B. and William E. Cain, eds. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 2010. ISBN 978-0-393-93292-8.) From Specters of Marx 1. On 1734-36 top of our selections from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"wf_page_folders":[47],"class_list":["post-957","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=957"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5161,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/957\/revisions\/5161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"wf_page_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_page_folders?post=957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}From Specters of Marx<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n