Responding to a heritage: Justice, deconstruction and injunctions of Marx

D'Cruz, C. (1996) Responding to a heritage: Justice, deconstruction and injunctions of Marx. Social Semiotics, 6 (2). pp. 159-178.

Abstract

This paper examines the alliance that Derrida makes between his notion of justice as undeconstructible and a certain spirit of Marx's emancipatory promise. By following some of the precautions that Derrida undertakes in distinguishing the undeconstructibility of justice from the deconstructible justice should not be viewed as a contradiction in terms. I also argue that while the themes of justice, ethics, and politics can be rendered self‐present. Rather, Derrida's response to the injunctions of Marx suggests that it is precisely because justice and the emancipatory promise cannot be given over to the present that they are situated as undeconstructible. As such, taking responsibility for the heritage of Marxism involves working and sorting through the many spectres of Marx that inhabit the same injunction, where the promise remains as that yet to come.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Murdoch Affiliation(s):	School of Social Sciences and Humanities
Publisher:	Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group
URI:	http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/19113

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