Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx

With the publication of Spectres of Marx in 1993, Jacques Derrida redeemed a longstanding pledge to confront Marx's texts directly and in detail. His characteristically bravura presentation provided a provocative re-reading of the classics in the Western tradition and posed a series of challenges to Marxism.

In a timely intervention in one of today's most vital theoretical debates, the contributors to Ghostly Demarcations respond to the distinctive program projected by Spectres of Marx. The volume features sympathetic meditations on the relationship between Marxism and deconstruction by Fredric Jameson, Werner Hamacher, Antonio Negri, Warren Montag, and Rastko Möcnik, brief polemical reviews by Terry Eagleton and Pierre Macherey, and sustained political critiques by Tom Lewis and Aijaz Ahmad. The volume concludes with Derrida's reply to his critics in which he sharpens his views about the vexed relationship between Marxism and deconstruction.

Fredric Jameson, Antonio Negri, Terry Eagleton, Pierre Macherey and others engage in a debate on Marx with Jacques Derrida.

Jacques Derrida, (1930–2004) was Director of Studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He was the author of numerous books on philosophy, politics, and literature, including Politics of Friendship from Verso.

Michael Sprinker was Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His Imaginary Relations: Aesthetics and Ideology in the History of Historical Materialism and History and Ideology in Proustare also published by Verso. Together with Mike Davis, he founded Verso's Haymarket Series and guided it until his death in 1999.