Wow, comrades.
Doug
Doug Henwood [[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Left Business Observer
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 3 May 1994 00:07:33 -0600
From: CESAR AYALA CASAS <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Multiple recipients of list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Derrida
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I recently read a review of a new book by Jacques Derrida entitled THE
SPECTER OF MARX. The review appeared in a Basque journal entitled
HICSA, dated 1994. Derida's book is apparently still in French only.
(In Spanish EL ESPECTRO DE MARX, I assume in French it is called LE
SPECTRE DE MARX). The paper in which I read the review had the date in
Basque, so I was unable to tell precisely in what month it came out. I
read the Spanish version printed on opposite pages to the Basque. The
review is by Antonio Guerreiro and it is a reprint from the original in
Portuguese, which appeared in the journal MANIFESTO. The review is
entitled "Marx Regresa, est s Perdonado." (Marx, return, you are
forgiven".)
What struck me from the review is that according to the reviewer,
Derrida takes in this last book positions which are evidently opposed
to some of our current notions about post-modernism. Which brings me to
my point: From the little I have read, it seems post-modernism is
internally very heterogeneous. Who among the Marxists in the list would
say that the following quote from Derrida (from French to Portuguese to
Spanish, and now translated into English by myself) is in its essence
"anti-Marxist?". Which is surprising, both to ourselves and to the
"post-modernists".
QUOTE FROM DERRIDA (via several translations).
"Today, when some dare to neo-evangelize in the name of the ideal of
liberal democracy in which the ideal of human history has been
realized, it is necessary to shout: never have violence, inequality,
exclusion, hunger and therefore economic exclusion affected so many
human beings, in the history of the Earth and of Humanity."
"Instead of singing to ourselves the arrival of the ideal of liberal
democracy and of the capitalist market in the euphoria of the end of
history, instead of celebrating the end of ideology and the end of the
great emancipatory discourses, let us never forget this macroscopic
evidence, made up of countless individual sufferings: no progress
allows us to ignore the fact that so many men, women and children were
conquered, condemned to hunger, or exterminated on the Earth."
It appears that the book is an evaluation of the importance of Marx's
legacy for understanding the new world disorder. Back to the great
meta-narrative, uh?
I am including the Spanish version from which I translated in case I
made some mistake of translation.
"Hoy en dia, cuando algunos osan neo-evangelizar en nombre del ideal de
una democracia liberal en la que se habria alcanzado el ideal de la
historia humana, es preciso gritar: nunca la violencia, la desigualdad,
la exclusion, el hambre y, por consiguiente, la exlusion economica han
afectado a tantos seres humanos, en la historia de la Tierra, y de la
Humanidad."
"En vez de cantarnos el adviento del ideal de la democracia liberal y
del mercado capitalista en la euforia del fin de la historia, en vez de
celebrar el fin de las ideologias y el fin de los grandes discursos de
emancipaci"n, no olvidemos nunca esta evidencia macroscopica, hecha de
innumerables sufrimientos individuales: ningun progreso permite ignorar
el hecho de que tantos hombres, mujeres y ni$os fueron sojuzgados,
relegados al hambre, o exterminados en la Tierra."
Cesar Ayala, Lehman College-City University of New York
