Specters of Marx is the first published text by Jacques Derrida in which the expression “Life-Death [La-vie-la-mort]” reappears, twice (Derrida 1994, 67, 177), more than fifteen years after the seminar at the ENS in Paris entitled La vie la mort [Life Death] (1975–1976), published in French only in 2019, and thirteen years after the publication of La Carte Postale (1980), translated into English as The Post Card (1987), in which the expression “Life-Death” appears numerous times, particularly in the section “Speculate-On Freud,” a reworking of the last four sessions of the aforementioned seminar. Not only that, Specters of Marx is also the first published text in which explicit recourse to the “autoimmune” lexicon appears for the first time ever, then first Faith and Knowledge (1998), in which there is the famous note concerning the use of the “autoimmune lexicon.”1 As we shall see, this is no...
Spectral Survivals: Reading Specters of Marx on the Tracks of Biodeconstruction
Francesco Vitale is professor of aesthetics at the University of Salerno (Italy). His academic interests have focused on Derrida's work since his PhD dissertation in philosophy on Derrida's relation to Hegel (University Federico II of Napoli, Italy). Francesco Vitale is the author of many essays on Derrida, published in Italian, English, French, and Japanese. His main publications devoted to Jacques Derrida are: Biodeconstruction: Jacques Derrida and Life Sciences (SUNY University Press, 2018) and The Last Fortress of Metaphysics: Jacques Derrida and the Deconstruction of Architecture (SUNY University Press, 2018).
Francesco Vitale; Spectral Survivals: Reading Specters of Marx on the Tracks of Biodeconstruction. CR: The New Centennial Review 1 March 2023; 23 (1): 11–28. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/crnewcentrevi.23.1.0011
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