Anticipation, critique and the problem of intervention: Understanding the messianic: Derrida through Ernst Bloch

Law and Critique

Volumn 13, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 29-50

  Kochi, Tarik ^a  

^a GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

'Not yet'; 'To come'; Bloch; Derrida; Ethical; Hauntology; Hope; Human dignity; Marx; Messianic; Natural law; Political; Spirit; Utopia

Indexed keywords

EID: 34248080277     PISSN: 09578536     EISSN: 15728617     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1014957727479     Document Type: Article

References (76)

1. E. Bloch, Natural Law and Human Dignity, Schmidt D.J., trans., 3rd ed. (Cambridge Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1996), 199.
2. M. Blanchot, 'Letter to Jacques Derrida on the Question of the Book', in E. Jabes, The Book of Margins R. Waldrop, trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993).
3. Cape Byron, Australia.
4. J. Derrida, Specters of Marx, The State of Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. P. Kamuf, trans. (New York: Rutledge, 1994).
5. J. Derrida, Specters of Marx, The State of Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. 1994). Ibid.
6. J. Derrida, Specters of Marx, The State of Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. Ibid., at 13.
7. J. Derrida, 'Marx and Sons' in M. Sprinkler, ed., Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium of Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx (London: Verso, 1998), 231.
8. J. Derrida, Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium of Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx Ibid., at 219.
9. Supra n. 4. at 16.
10. Ibid., at 19.
11. This ghost for Derrida relates to a ghost of Marx and/or a ghost of Heidegger.
12. Supra n. 4, at 54: The body that Derrida is willing to kill off is what he refers to as: 'defacto 'Marxism' or 'communism'', which he describes as: 'the Soviet Union, the International of Communist Parties, and everything that resulted from them, which is to say so many things'.
13. Ibid., at 54.
14. S. Critchley, Ethics, Politics and Subjectivity - Essays on Derrida, Levinas and Contemporary French Thought (London: Verso, 1999), 145-146.
15. S. Critchley, Ethics, Politics and Subjectivity - Essays on Derrida, Levinas and Contemporary French Thought Ibid., at 146.
16. S. Critchley, Ethics, Politics and Subjectivity - Essays on Derrida, Levinas and Contemporary French Thought 146. Ibid.
17. Ethics, Politics and Subjectivity - Essays on Derrida, Levinas and Contemporary French Thought Ibid., at 147.
18. Supra n. 4. at 89.
19. Ibid., at 90.
20. Ibid., at 59.
21. S. McVeigh et al., 'A Judgement Dwelling in Law: Violence and the Relations of Legal Thought', in A. Sarat, ed., Violence and the Possibility of Justice (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001), 29.
22. E. Laclau, "The Time Is Out of Joint", Diacritics 25/2 (1995), 91.
23. Supra n. 7. at 250-251.
24. Ibid., at 249.
25. W. Montag, "Spirits Armed and Unarmed: Derrida's Specters of Marx", in M. Sprinkler, ed., Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium of Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx (London: Verso, 1998), 77.
26. Supra n. 7, at 239.
27. Supra n. 4, at 90. Derrida only offers vague and scant politicisation of the 'spirit' of Marx in terms of what he describes as the 'New International'. His claim at 84 is that it: refers to a profound transformation projected over the long-term of international law, of its concepts and its field of intervention. Whereby just as the concept of human rights has slowly been determined over the course of centuries through socio-political upheavals, likewise international law should extend and diversify its field to include, if at least to be consistent with the idea of democracy and of human rights it proclaims, the worldwide economic and social field, beyond the sovereignty of States and of the phantom-States we mentioned a moment ago.
28. T. Eagleton, "Marxism without Marxism", in M. Sprinkler, ed., Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium of Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx (London: Verso, 1998), 85.
29. T. Eagleton, Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium of Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx Ibid., at 87.
30. A. Ahmad, "Reconciling Derrida: 'Specters of Marx' and Deconstructive Politics", in M. Sprinkler, ed., Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium of Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx (London: Verso, 1998), 105.
31. G. Bennington, Interrupting Derrida (London: Routledge, 2000), 23-24.
32. G. Bennington, Interrupting Derrida Ibid., at 25.
33. S. Zizek, "Melancholy and the Act", Critical Inquiry 26 (2000), 665.
34. S. Zizek, Critical Inquiry Ibid., at 666.
35. S. Zizek, Critical Inquiry 666. Ibid.
36. Supra n. 7, at 254. Derrida maintains that the universal quasi-transcendental structure that he calls messianicity without messianism is not bound up with any particular moment of (political or general) history or culture (Abrahamic or any other).
37. Supra n. 21, at 31.
38. Supra n. 22, at 93.
39. Supra n. 33, at 675: This point is alluded to by Zizek through his contrast between the ethical commands of the Pope and the Delai Lama.
40. Supra n. 4, at 85. The flavour of Derrida's ethic is a response to the crises of international law whereby his 'New International' denounces the limits of human rights discourse, foreign debt, and the inequality of techno-scientific, military, and economic development which prevails today. The 'New International' also denounces the claims of triumph of the ideal of liberal democracy and the capitalist market noting that: No degree of progress allows one to ignore that never before, in absolute figures, never have so many men, women and children been subjugated, starved, or exterminated on the earth.
41. E. Bloch, "Principle of Hope", in W. Hudson, ed., The Marxist Philosophy of Ernst Bloch (London; Macmillan Press, 1982), 82.
42. Supra n. 41, at 81.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid., at 105.
45. Ibid., at 105-106.
46. D.J. Schmidt, in E. Bloch, Natural Law and Human Dignity, 3rd ed., D.J. Schmidt, trans. (Cambridge Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1996), xxiii.
47. Supra n. 1, at 316.
48. D. Kellner, "Ernst Bloch, Utopia and Ideology Critique", in T. Moylan and J.O. Daniel, eds., Not Yet Reconsidering Ernst Bloch (London: Verso, 1997), 81.
49. D. Kellner, Not Yet Reconsidering Ernst Bloch Ibid., at 81.
50. D. Kaufman, "Thanks for the Memory: Bloch, Benjamin, and the Philosophy of History", in T. Moylan and J.O. Daniel, eds., Not Yet Reconsidering Ernst Bloch (London: Verso, 1997), 40.
51. R. Levitas, "Educated Hope: Ernst Bloch on Abstract and Concrete Utopia", in T. Moylan and J.O. Daniel, supra n. 50, at 67.
52. Supra n. 50, at 36.
53. Supra n. 1, at xxix.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid., at 12-13.
56. It should be noted that Bloch's reading of the history of natural law may be regarded by some as unconventional and unorthodox.
57. Ibid., at 174.
58. K. Marx, "Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction (1844)", in G. Benton and R. Livingstone, trans., Karl Marx: Early Writings (Great Britain: Penguin, 1975), 251.
59. Supra n. 1, at 39.
60. Ibid., at xxix.
61. Ibid., at xxx.
62. Ibid., at 5.
63. C. Douzinas, The End of Human Rights (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2000), 379.
64. J. Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, P. Brault and M. Naas, trans. (California: Stanford Press, 1999), 87,
65. quoted in S. Zizek, "Melancholy and the Act", Critical Inquiry 26 (2000), 669.
66. E. Bloch, Principle of Hope, N. Plaice and S. Plaice, trans. (Cambridge Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1995), v.1, 65. Bloch states: The stomach is the first lamp into which oil must be poured. Its longing is precise, its drive is so unavoidable that it cannot even be repressed for long.
67. Supra n. 31, at 28.
68. Supra n. 7, at 242.
69. Ibid., at 245.
70. Ibid., at 249.
71. Supra n. 42, at 171.
72. T. Moylan, "Bloch against Bloch: The Theological Reception of Das Prinzip Hoffnung and the Liberation of the Utopian Function", in T. Moylan and J.O. Daniel, Not Yet Reconsidering Ernst Bloch (London: Verso, 1997), 111.
73. Supra n. 7, at 249.
74. J. Derrida, The Gift Of Death, D. Wills, trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 51.
75. J. Derrida, The Gift Of Death, Ibid., at 68.
76. J. Derrida, The Gift Of Death, 68. Ibid.