Deconstruction As Social Critique: Derrida on Marx and the New World Order

Jacques Denida's important theoretical and political intervention, Specters of Marx, attempts to formulate a social critique adequate to the post-1989 world.' Written in dark times when, as Derrida puts it, no ethics or politics, whether rev­ olutionary or not, seems possible and thinkable (xix), Specters of Marx delin­ eates the contours of a critique of the contemporary world which calls for a fun­ damental break with the present. In the face of the new world order following the collapse of the Soviet Union and European Communism, and the widespread claims that Marx and Marxism are finally dead, Derrida takes a strong stand against the triumphalism of economic and political neo-liberalism. He scathing­ ly criticizes capitalism, defiantly presents deconstruction as the heir of a certain spirit of Marx, and calls for a new International as a response to the new Holy Alliance of the outgoing twentieth century. Denida's theoretical strategy is complex: He argues that an adequate critique of the world today must positively appropriate Marx and yet fundamentally crit­ icize him. Den·ida seeks to contribute to such a social critique by separating out a certain "spirit of Marx" from what he regards as the ontologizing and dogmat­ ic aspects of Marxism. This strategy of appropriating and criticizing Marx in order to grasp the new world order implicitly suggests that an adequate social critique today must seri­ ously engage the problematic of global capitalism, and that the tendency to bracket political-economic considerations which characterized a variety of criti­ cal approaches in the past two decades no longer is tenable. Denida's strategy, then, implicitly requires developing and explicating the social-theoretical impli­ cations of deconstruction. And, as I will indicate, although his approach fruitful­ ly raises and helps clarify a number of important issues, its limits emerge most clearly precisely when it is considered as a social critique that can grasp the con­ temporary world. This raises more general questions about the ditierences between a critical social theory and a critical philosophical position, and illumi­ nates the limitations of the latter.