According to Jacques Derrida in Specters of Marx, a specter, a ghost, is not simply nothing, and the urgency to address their existence—to address them—can be incited in the name of justice—thought as a certain kind of specter. Justice, for Derrida, is a specter insofar as justice as such is only present “where it is not yet, not yet there, where it is no longer, let us understand where it is no longer present, and where it will never be, no more than the law, reducible to laws or rights” (Derrida 1994, xviii; 1993, 15). What Derrida has in mind when he writes these lines is the paradox at the core of justice, an intrinsic contradiction and impotence expressed in the impossible universalization of justice. Justice, which in principle and by principle should serve all (otherwise, how could it be just?), can only enact its principle...

You do not currently have access to this content.