Spectres that Cannot Not Spook: Work and Fear in Derrida

Author(s): Elizabeth Edwards

Source: Dalhousie French Studies , Spring 2008, Vol. 82 (Spring 2008), pp. 107-121
Published by: Dalhousie University

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40838451

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Spectres that Cannot Not Spook: Work and Fear in Derrida
Elizabeth Edwards

/J' her war crimes trial, Biljana Plavsic, geneticist, former Dean of the Faculty of
st Natural Science and Mathematics at the University in Sarajevo, former president of
the Serb Republic of Bosnia and Herzogovina, a woman who bore major responsibility
for 'ethnic cleansing,' both in its theorization and practical application, offered an
explanation for Serbian actions in the former Yugoslavia:
The obvious questions became, if this truth is now self-evident, why did I not
see it earlier? And how could our leaders and those who followed have
committed such acts? The answer to both questions is, I believe, fear, a
blinding fear that led to an obsession, especially for those of us for whom the
Second World War was a living memory, that Serbs would never again allow
themselves to become victims ("Transcript" 609).
Even in its entirety the statement is appallingly brief and unforthcoming, but because
Plavsic was the first defendant to plead guilty, take responsibility, and ask for
forgiveness, she would therefore seem to be an invaluable witness to the motivation of
the aggressors, even if her confession is in the circumstances of international tribunals,
plea bargaining, third parties and the like. In the spectral logic captured here the
panicked, fearful Serbs become the perpetrators of atrocities which are in turn
unforgivable-this is the logic of cold wars and pre-emptive strikes. The notion that the
perpetrators were really victims-in the past and in the future if not in the present-is no
doubt a commonplace of contemporary atrocity exhibits; yet it is only by giving credence
to it that the logic can be exhumed, done justice to. The Serbs were in the grip of a
collective phobic attack, in a state of terror wherein arose the ghost as a fear of a
recurrence, of the past recurring in the future, for, tellingly, the Serb agenda is referred by
Plavsic not to present Croat or Kosovar intentions but to vaguely defined past
humiliations, presented under the umbrella term "second world war." Moreover, while
Plavsic certainly did live through the war, she was only fourteen when it ended. While I
agree fourteen is old enough to be fully traumatized, I question whether it is fully her
memory which is living here, or whether she is not living someone else's memory, and
whether the phobic attack in itself is not a means of keeping that memory alive. Is this the
negative scene of the modern urge towards commemoration and preservation of trauma?
What would insure that trauma studies differentiates this kind of 'victim' and her
aggressive fears about spectral repetition, from others? Even these few lines display a
deep psychologism: a panic attack led to obsession, just as in the case of Little Hans.
Moreover, in spite of the attempt to account for what happened, at bottom the apologetic
Plavsic seems not to know what came over her and her compatriots; it no longer makes
any sense, now the "blinding fear" has cleared off like a vapour.
Plavsic's relevance for a discussion of Specters of Marx is as a stand-in for the
former Yugoslavia, with its stunning enactment of the phantom in Derrida' s sense-the
recurrence of historical spectres which decades of Communism either had not dissipated
or, more chillingly, which were resusicitated, brought back from extinction. Plavsic is
interesting not least because her case embodies, in her phobia, by her taking of
responsibility, in the 'gift' of her confession, and her appeal for pardon, so many
deconstructive aporias. In the larger consideration of the scenes and venues of political
trauma, including the former Yugoslavia, the work of mourning in something like the
classical psychoanalytic sense would seem to be urgently called for; many political
investments need to be de-cathected, divested, reordered. The trial documents for the

Dalhousie French Studies 82 (2008)

-107-

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 108 Elizabeth Edwards

International Tribunal are ful

for collective psycho-social t
from the South African post
of responsibility is held by tr
political work of mourning
process, through and through
project would seem to be fun
Yugoslavias, and of course
mourning.
At many places in his later work, Derrida speaks of the work of deconstruction (and
deconstruction itself) as a kind of suffering. More particularly what must be suffered or
endured, or undergone, are exactly the aporias he elaborates, of responsibility,
forgiveness, reconciliation, and the gift (Aporias 16), in what he has termed a non-passive
endurance. But some aporias are perhaps more easily suffered than others; and in any
case, should be fully realized in all their difficulty if "endure the aporias!" is not to be
simply deconstructive sloganeering. It is the argument of Specters of Marx that the
phantoms and ghosts which we inherit cannot be fully exorcised; the project of
démystification (part of Marx's project) can never be realized; that there will always be
"an essential contamination of spirit (geist) by specter (gespenst)" (Specters 113). But
will giving up this project mean that we will still be spooked? Can there be ghosts who
do not spook? In general, people do not react well when they are scared, at least not in the
way of administering or thinking justice; or perhaps even in the way of thinking at all.
Effects of fear include what the ancients recognized as panic and rout, "blinding fear,"
which is not to say that terror cannot be 'managed' in a variety of ways, but that it seems
some preliminary condition of calmness must prevail to even begin the discussion about a
work of mourning. Addressing the Freud who, in "The Uncanny," did not himself address
the ghost exactly because of its fearsome and terrifying nature, Derrida writes: "Now,
fear is not good for the serenity of research and the analytic distinction of concepts"
(Specters 173). In its context this is plainly deep irony, from the Derrida, speaking in a
certain spirit of Marx, who wishes to shake up the good conscience of the scholar's
serenity of research, the do-nothing approach of the 'armchair Marxist' (which has also
been the accusation against the deconstructive scholar). But I propose also to take this
ironic remark literally: fear really is not good for research, nor for political deliberations
which might aim at discharging some of the malignancies of collective traumas and their
spectres. Thus my naive question: will we still be scared? Can we really perform a work
of mourning seriously in the grip of fear, with its attendant physiology, as Nietzsche
might say? It is certainly possible that Derrida has some 'serenities' of his own, found for
example in the suggestion, towards the end of Specters of Marx, that we might approach
the ghosts, not as "revenants, but as other arrivants to whom a hospitable memory or
promise must offer welcome..."(175). This position, as much as that of political
theraputics, seems to require that the ghosts and phantoms stop spooking, or that the
spook effect at least must be confined, as Freud thought, to something other than outright
terror.1 We're scared, but not too scared to investigate. But the border between fear and
the uncanny must also be deconstructible; nothing holds off the manageable fear from
terror. For Derrida has, I think, rightly caught Freud in a contradiction whereby the ghost,
the best example of the uncanny, as Freud himself says, is excluded from the discussion
as too spooky ("Uncanny" 241). 'It spooks' ("es spukt"); it cannot not spook, and to ask it
to do so is to engage in the off-clearing, enlightened, project of despectralization. Fear is
part of the unnatural nature of the spectre, as Specters makes clear repeatedly. Moreover,

1 Julia Kristeva has also advanced the notion that our acknowledgement of the uncanny within ourselves will
offset our hostile dread of the alien.

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 Work and Fear in Derrida 1 09

the arrivant is by no means sure to b

perhaps the most insufferable of apo
hospitality to the worst" which is neces
(Adieu 35).2 In The Gift of Death, writte
preoccupations, Derrida writes of "a frig
(53).
In those passages, he goes someway
fear, the "irrepressible agitation of t
members" (55). "We are afraid of the fe
at an impasse: fear and mourning wo
eradicated, and they cannot not spook.
Derrida has repeatedly demonstrated th
the places where thinking stalls, and
undissolvable, problem that the impera
aporia is an "interminable experience" (
must work through the aporias again a
work is interminable. 'Work' is then ex
inquiry into what connects work with mo
that my primary text, Specters of Marx
theorist of the working class, of alienate
or work. In the spirit of the Contempora
written, and in his own claims that we h
I will trace some of the legacies that Der
Torok, and Marx.
What is a spectre? This has the structu
usually with some irony: What is a poem
may been claimed to centre on this que
entity, it exceeds the question Wh
(Grammatology 75). To say 'what is' i
question 'is' - it exists. But a spectre,
anything, it is an equivocation on whet
The spectre is an appearance, a quasi-ma
place, anachronic, untimely, a revenan
body, an apparition. The spectre is irred
the ghost is not helped by ignoring or
because insofar as it 'is' it 'is' an equivoc
helped by phenomenological reduction.
repeated "if there is one" in Derrida's wri
is one); the locution points not to an h
these things.
"Hauntology" deconstructs the ontological question of what kind of being non-
beings have. Included in the hauntological are, for Derrida, ideation in its motive power
(rather than the idea in the Platonic sense which is fully ontological), and ideology in the
Marxist sense, as a set of derealizing spectral abstractions, which, through alienation,
have become more real than we are, and which rob us of life. Existing in a certain realm
of autonomy and automatism, separate from that of the living, this is the quasi-
materialization of abstraction, which produces a body, but a body which does not feel,
sense, or have any generative or mortal functions. Nor does it work.

2 Ernesto Laclau has commented cuttingly on what he sees as the vacuous complacency of this welcome: "one
is forced to conclude that we have to accept the other as different because she is different, whatever the
content of that heterogeneity would be. This does not sound much like an ethical injunction but like ethical
nihilism" (93).

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110 Elizabeth Edwards

The spectre attests to the

recapitulate the psychoanalyt
slow withdrawal of libidinal i
shown that the loved object
shall be withdrawn from its
mourning is an act of incorpo
put a more Marxist way, it is
the energies invested in obje
then appears to mean someth
transfer of energy from one
it is exactly this possibilit
displacement, that makes th
Ricciardi has commented strik
of ontology, in his formulat
leads to a confrontation with
'real presence.' Indeed, in an
Freud suggestively consider
arrives again at the view that
directly contrasted (Beyond
But if the work of mourn
libidinal energy to the subjec
least because the investment
want to give up our grief; to
not wish to stop mourning, f
say, as Derrida does, that "w
itself (Specters 131). This pa
account, exactly what acco
withdrawing of libidinal ener
also sustains that object in an
or more accurately one and th
mind" and "loss of interest
maintains that this sympt
mourning" (244) and that tho
which the ego is absorbed" (2
its spectral continuations; the
and ruled by reality. A prof
mourning, leads to the main
defers the work-but neverthe
will nevertheless be accompli
freeing its libido from the lo
It is not only Freud's accoun
more importantly those of
Derrida has chosen to inheri
to resonate uncannily throu
language puns that the psych
have been adopted by him a
subtitle to "Fors" (his introd
here like to emphasize if onl
these therapists; the crypt,

3 Derrida's relation to Abraham and

and Kamuf.

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Work and Fear in Derrida 1 1 1

terms are vivid, original, striking, allu

doctrinaire psychoanalysts seem to consid
the pain of mourning is caused by the
which should be appropriated by the subje
between 'introjection' and ' incorpora
'introjection' over what she understood to
two terms. For Torok, nothing could be
work of expanding the terrain of the eg
the work of a life-time, and a work of he
work of mourning at all, but simply the
the Unconscious in the ego through objec
ego psychology of the first order, where
an ego that is all things to itself: sheer ap
the unconscious libido we have invested in
evidently related to mourning (Shell 125),
a kind of work. It is a working away at
entangled themselves in order, quite sim
In Torok's strong position on this, introje
does not preserve the other as other, for
just that, the property of the ego, and
properly Freudian. Torok cites Ferenczi:
onto an object, that is to say of all kinds
1 12). This is a proposition which can onl
And it is as monstrous in the Freud of
emendations.5 Ego psychology includes th
as other-we have merely invested in it, an
In this account, mourning is plainly term
at all after completing the work of m
anything, those apparent external object
his/her own psyche. The complacent e
another as 'really' its own, and preferring
of mourning. Contrasted to this is th
introjection is completed, rushes toward
swallowing the object whole: incorporati
so to speak; it leaves the subject now form
of mourning" as Torok describes it in a
moment of manic jubilation which is th
desires of the incorporation escape and its
the sudden urge to have sex just at th
Georges Bataille, masturbating over the co
joy, is usually followed by shame and re
chewed again. Incorporation precipita
repeatedly of the 'triumphal phase of m
example at Mémoires 38), though it is
Melancholy," who in fact says the opposi

4 See the thorough critique of their work by Chris

view, Freud already anticipates their most impor
mourning) while the introduction of their theses "a
violence..." (21).
5 Freud reflects a similar view that mourning is t
mourning is completed the ego becomes free and un

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112 Elizabeth Edwards

for these belong to melan

transitory sensation of freedo
Abraham and Torok call t
who has so swallowed an ot
puts it "Abraham and Tor
intrapsychic topography w
secret tomb which houses
living dead other, for the cr
the subject is not in fact ac
libidinal energy from the b
which preserves the other, i
I will say right away that i
attractive here. There are t
intimately related; the firs
result of transgenerational
parent is a cryptophore, t
incorporated whole so as to
has a crypt, and certainly
dream, or dead person prese
the parent, something not b
in short a secret. As Peggy
ever having been revealed
legacy which silently but pe
father's secret" (42). While t
contrast "the phantom which
buried within the other" (Sh
It is in the activity of guar
preservation of some other t
the product of the guarded.
from outside aggressions, a
secret itself-it must be fea
suggests for "exorcising" the
that it is not his phantom,
understanding of what is pr
ghosts. But even in the u
transmission unless "shared
along the lines of staged wo
its "anasemic" language but
words giving sustenance to t
often the very words that ru
pitiable articulations" (Shell
Abraham and Torok provide
the time of the first Eng
suggesting the implications o
a phantom can help accoun
shameful with the military
published after Specters of
the suggestion of political t

6 The representative of the triumph

of history and secretly incorporatin
experiencing some remorse.

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 Work and Fear in Derrida 1 1 3

how the falsification, ignorance or disrega

phantomatic return" {Shell, 169). Rand, th
'work of mourning' for political traumas which is the sub-text of Specters.
Unsurprisingly, similar terms are found in the Plavsic trial documents, most evidently in
the words of the Common Witness, Dr. Boraine, himself a South African, if any more
examples of such a well-established phenomenon are needed; he speaks of the need for
"information and knowledge" (598), and says of the Commission's effect: "it became a
kind of national catharsis. It created debate and argument and difference and
acknowledgement and denial" (599) and so on. This reconciling work is framed, in other
words, by an implied condition which is the freedom from secrecy and crypts, a desire for
ventilation, clarification and bringing to light, and its result will be freedom from spectres
and from spooking. This is, as I have perhaps too repeatedly implied, a proposal of an
introjective mourning work; the spectre or phantom on the other hand attests to the
interminable consequences of failed mourning work. But can the spectre be brought to
light? Derrida' s position is that it cannot. Thus we are returned to the impasse. And
insofar as the collective work of mourning is an introjection-a recuperation of libidinal
investments-it cannot grasp the incorporated spectre at all, even to recognize it as 'not
mine.'
To Derrida at least, the tantalizing possiblity of the crypt is in its potential to
preserve the other, and to preserve the other as other, the repeated desiderata sketched out
in the eulogies, and stated as early as "Fors." As he writes in Mémoires: for Paul de Man,
what precedes and produces psyches who can remember the dead "is the other as other,
the non-totalizable trace which is in-adequate to itself and to the same. This trace is
interiorized in mourning as that which can no longer be interiorized..." (38). The very
division between introjection (good, normal) and incorporation (bad, pathological) is
plainly one that is open to deconstruction. Derrida writes in "Fors" that the question of
which process "preserves the object as other" blurs the line between the two (xvi). The
crypt suggests freedom from ego-psychology; in the impossibility of delimiting healthy
introjection from pathological incorporation, the irremediably haunted status of the ego
comes into view, free of the triumphal ideal of the ego Torok relies on. "Wherever there
is Ego, es spukt, it spooks" (Specters 133).
In the introjection/incorporation dyad neither side really has a better claim to the
preservation of the other as other. Derrida writes of incorporation in "Fors," "I pretend to
keep the dead alive, intact, safe (save) inside me, but it is only in order to refuse, in a
necessarily equivocal way, to love the dead as a living part of me, dead save in me,
through the process of introjection" (xvi-ii). The swallowed beloved, that which is
internalized, is paradoxically internally excluded "the most inward safe... becomes the
outcast (Hormis: except for, save, fors), the outside (Joris) with respect to the outer safe
(the Self) that includes it without comprehending it, in order to comprehend nothing in it"
(xix). Introjection, on the other hand, has to betray itself, to abandon its attempt to
preserve the "dead save in me," substituting instead the pallid and faded form of mere
memories, as the sympathy cards suggest we do. Internalized memories are my memories,
not the other at all.
But prior to the installation of the incorporation/introjection dyad, there is a common
task-the reappropriation of the other. Because these are two methods of attaining the
same goals, neither is satisfactory. So incorporation can only accomplish its magical task
by internally excluding just that which it included, by the very act of inclusion; and
introjection can abandon or shift the psychic energy as Reality (and 'reality testing')
demands, but in its digestive process, abolishes the otherness of the other. Introjection is
economical, and incorporation is topographical, in psychoanalytic terms; introjection
moves energy, and incorporation protects a place (which is paradoxically a no-place, u-

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114 Elizabeth Edwards

topic). Because they are parad

as other, they proceed unconsc
But Derrida's deconstruction
Their polarity is, in practice,
and this is particularly reve
opposite, it is not available to
which it has a "nostalgic voc
"the introjection it is incap
existence. This can no doubt b
bearing Wolf-man, for examp
'save' his analyst's honour, and
crypt, and a sign that the c
symptomology shows noth
incorporation is "worked thr
and this is apparently in the
resistance. Introjection, as th
which is not hiding or protec
but which is constituted as re
the deconstruction set out in
special relation to a language
and returns in these anasemic
possibility of a work-of-mou
they appear to mean, and
therapeutic. This deconstructi
Without leakage, nothing. On
be a false introjection, the wo
more securely-but at least the
In "Fors," Derrida wrote of
the impotence of the proce
effective), incorporation is
magical, sometimes hallucina
conjuring trick. It is apparent
failed is the 'work' itself; if
mourning, incorporation is in
be done at all - "incorporat
description of the work of in
description of deconstructive
least possibly effective-the
characterized it7; but perhaps
work, that of the scholar. The
that scholar of good conscie
scholar who, as such, does no
unreal, the actual and the i
Derrida suggests that Marcel
that deconstructive scholar
presence" would "know how t
enjoined to do so at the end o
is the anticipation, or welcom
This scholarly labour, or sch
one who must work in fear.

7 At the Mosaic "Following Derrida"

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Work and Fear in Derrida 1 1 5

work of leisure (of certain conditions, such

to thoughtfulness); moreover, the prop
interminable, and subject most evidently t
case the scholar's ideal condition of lab
disputations, anxieties. Deferral is the
scholarship that calls for the deferral of de
such 'serene researches' by no means excu
to Derrida; action must occur in spite o
British Library does not excuse Marx from
I have tried to show elsewhere that t
work among others. It is work itself
which one ought perhaps to reconsider
links it to trauma, to mourning, to th
thus to the spectral spiritualization tha
The 'elsewhere' is apparently in Glas;
glas. ..The glas is first of all. ..the signal
gather together... a class of the Roman
literature, but also in the class struggl
classes are pulled into their self-classifica
course primarily a relationship to the m
owners. It is 'anglish', splintering, a shibbo
I have thus far attempted to delineate
begins with a premise that separates wor
and showed that Derrida, in deconstru
incorporation, must be held to be letting
enough to do; but I want moreover to sugg
mourning means in Derrida's reading of th
doctrine of alienated labour. At the very l
of mourning would improve the work of
either pole of the spectral economy in d
so Specters remains comfortably limited
listeners or readers receive permission to i
(138)- the injunction is the opposite-o
Communist parties, "why should Derrida
be in a triumphant and jubilant mood?" (
critics from fantasizing their other of jubila
It is immediately after the remarks qu
Derrida turns his attention to Marx the sp
obviously admires Marx's work ethic; th
keep (rather at the expense of 'all the re
labour, of class, mode of production - w
the spirit of critique and especially of "i
the spirit of the Enlightenment" [88] and
and even more a certain "emancipatory and
the promise" (89).
Derrida's deconstruction of Marx proceed
the rhetorical texture of Marx's writing, a
hobgoblins, and taking it as the main text
in the Communist Manifesto and the spe
Louis Napoleon,"and those of Marx's anal
finally to the seance-like behaviour of the

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 1 1 6 Elizabeth Edwards

Capital. Marx, according to Derrid

them, but this is no easy matter, b
of ghosts, Marx follows the enli
miasma of superstition and mystic
he takes them is a kind of respect
Ideological constructions, for ex
power and real effects, real bodies
to the unreal real of the haunted w
with his critique ofthat world that
"pre-deconstructive." Like decons
means of address as 'work.' This i
Marx's quarrel with Stirner.
According to Derrida reading M
and its Own, has perfomed the co
act of prestidigitation, he has pu
proposing an incorporation, exact
etc.) can be taken whole into the eg
is also proposing a work of mour
Torok. An understanding of what
be seen for what they are. Only be
formidable spook effects, and whe
be in its proper place, and ther
conversion, which masquerades as
in fact an incorporation-magical a
account, is exactly because it is
ideological reality, without the p
phantom has built. "Marx seems t
enough, nor is the change of direc
one must work-practically, actu
necessary, as is an account of re
mourning without work" {Specte
Stirner is like Derrida' s treatm
exposure of the tricks of the trium
incorporates without examining, an
The notion that only the estrangem
and uncanny qualities is the propo
as much as Stirner, in order to d
Derrida the case of Stirner is not m
a jubilant incorporation which c
indicates the fundamental and unav
to restore the ego's own, to establi
a vault of unknown secrets.
For, according to Derrida, Marx also shares a project with Stirner, in that both seek
ultimately to drive off the spectres. In the end (and an end is supposed) the ghosts can be
dissipated, labour returned to the labourer, the phantastic capers of commodities ended,
or as Derrida puts it "Marx merely determines the difference or deferral as practical and
as a delay of reappropriation"(131). That is to say, while at present our labour confronts
us in distorted and phantasmatic forms, in the future (come the revolution) it will be ours
again, what is proper to us, under the noon-day sun. Derrida is here calling difference
itself the ghost - it is the not-present which haunts. Or, elsewhere, and put most clearly:

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Work and Fear in Derrida 1 1 7

On the one hand, Marx insists on re

efficacity, the autonomization and au
processes of difference (phantomatic
of the simulacrum which is not simp
technical body, and it takes labour to c
hand.. .Marx continues to want to gr
spectral simulacrum in an ontology.
That is, if addressing spectres is the wo
ultimately will end. In the theory of the
work without fear, a messianic or at leas
proper activity of man is returned to him
productive labour; it is only in estran
understanding is the central point, or one
Hegel "grasps the essence of labour" a
nevertheless, in his "one-sidedness," see
himself within alienation, or as alienate
alienated labour for labour itself; and wh
fear of death as the absolute master, that
labourer/worker/bondsman. It is given to
and it is paradoxically through that fear
of what he truly is" (Hegel 195). For Marx
work and cannot be recouped, gathered ba
course in sublated form. In Hegel's view, t
which manifest itself as work, as prod
revealing the existent as a for-himself, b
bondsman/slave's moment is that when fe
- confronts him in his own work. Moreo
one prefer life (and the appropriation by
worker/bondsman is, as Freud has said
narcissistic satisfactions it derives from
that life will be exactly what is returned t
longer alienated from them, at the end of
means to life" (1844 76); that is, when the
Derrida is reminding Marx not of H
production of commodities or uses, a non
work which works over the absence o
interminably to preserve the other (as oth
despectralize labour are attempts to remo
work and from work itself. Derrida is poi
the alien, within work, and it would seem
other in is fear. Or at the very least, that
be abolished. Derrida's work of mournin
work of a re-appropriation, which is wh
(energies reinvested and recalled to th
avoided, and its paradoxical opposite, t

8 Marx's u-iopy, so much commented on by Frede

Derrida wishes to retain, as against the "ontopology
9 In what follows I have perhaps foolishly neglect
"cannot be summarized without being mistreated
only to bring out the problematics of the connect
Derrida also has some relèvent points to make on He

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 118 Elizabeth Edwards

commitment to the other as

calls exappropriation, and the
because it binds up an imposs
the work of mourning is an e
an "aneconomic" ex-appropr
preserving the other as other.
What we have said here
contradiction of all "capital
concepts that depend on i
emancipation as ordered by these concepts) does not justify any
bondage... Servitude binds (itself) to appropriation. (Spectres 90).
Spooking, on the other hand, attests to a fundamental exappropriation which allows the
other to be improperly not-there, u-topic.
It is of course no accident that in this account of the proprieties, Derrida chooses
Marx, the thinker most readily identified with the critique of private property. For beyond
and below the critique of private property is a commitment to the proper itself, and such
commitments are the shadowy foundations of a politics that is the target of Spectres of
Marx. Against the claims of, for example, Gayatri Spivak, who considers Derrida' s Marx
"Silly Marx" it does seem obvious at least that for Marx there is more than one kind of
property, as where he writes of the (spectral) reproach against communists in the
Communist Manifesto: "the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property
as the fruit of a man's own labour... Hard- won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do
you mean the property of the petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property
that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that" (CM 484-85). This is
an example which does not even get to the underlying ways in which the theory of
alienated labour calls for a restoration of one's own and proper. How to distinguish good
property from bad, to fully decontaminate the fruits of one's labour? It is just such an
underlying commitment to the proper that Derrida repeatedly finds in Heidegger, and
which he uncovers here in Heidegger's account of justice: "the jointure of an accord"
which is an offering, where "offering consists in leaving: in leaving to the other what
properly belongs to him or her" (Specters 26-27).10 One is not afraid of one's own.
Derrida's improper, internally alienated, work of mourning nevertheless seems to
trace a path between (at least) two perils. The first is that of his own serene moment, the
moment wherein fear appears to convert to welcome. Fear, properly approached, or
perhaps as the result of a certain stance, is somehow transmuted or taken up into a
position which does away with fear.11 In Mémoires Derrida speaks of the faithful
friendship which has a life beyond death in "the sublimity of a mourning without
sublimation and without the obsessive triumph of which Freud speaks. Or still again,
'funereal monumentality' without 'paranoid fear'" (38) - can it be that he too falls back
on a model of fearless mourning? And yet it seems that the implicit deconstruction of the
opposition between work and fear which I have attempted to bring out here means that
fear, like the spectre itself, cannot be exorcised. It is, then, very unclear what causes a
revenant to become an arrivant. The second peril is that the abandonment of ghost-
busting and the acceptance of the interminable nature of the work of mourning leads only
to a queasy state of perpetual half-mourning (Glas passim). Using another subtext from

10 In this, Derrida detects metaphysics still at work in Heidegger. Within the history of metaphysics beginning
with Plato, it is to the point to recall the very old definitions of justice in the Republic: "to return what is
owed is just" (332.a) which Socrates rejects, or, more to the point of Marx, what he proposes: "justice is
doing one's own work and not meddling with what isn't one's own" (433. a).
1 1 This is almost a cliché of current ghost-stones. In the film The Sixth Sense for example: you welcome the
revenant, fear subsides, justice can be done.

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Work and Fear in Derrida 1 1 9

Hamlet, we might call this the 'Claudius

complex," in reference to the Claudius wh
as 'twere with a defeated joy,
With an auspicious, and a dropping ey
With mirth in funeral, and with dirge i
In equal scale weighing delight and d
(Hamlet Hi 10-13)
The first peril is the unexplained natu
the attendant doubt that this conversio
triumphal or incorporating phase of t
hypocrisy -the ruse of an impossible
Claudius is obtaining). Derrida's answer i
way remains narrow" (175). If Hamlet h
principle of economic justice (returning
virtue of not having a good conscience-w
the differance, is work itself. For to De
therefore makes the arrivant possible:
Work: that which makes for a work,
and works to open: opus, and openin
of the oeuvre insofar as it engenders..
the pain of one who gives. ("Louis M
We are reminded, then, that work is su
suffering the aporias means working on an
The work of mourning is therefore
necessarily be so. It would seem indeed a m
and work in fear; that is to say that the 'w
no longer tenable as a philosophical ther
haste, with inadequate apparatuses such a
ordeal of undecideability. The very words
context of work; the phrase is taken by D
Paul's Epistle to Philippians 2:12 "work out
a passage which evokes the rich semanti
'saves' what is not one's own, a salvation n
the Ego and its Own, to name Stiraer'
Ferenzci's or Torok's account of mourning
It is perhaps late to ask 'what are we a
says 'birth or "reproduction of the traum
great signature over Derrida's thinkin
originary: original sin. The fearful effec
iterability itself. The mourning which s
absolute alterity, to "every other as eve
irreplaceability and non-repeatability of e
that absolutely singular repeat. This is wha
primary kind of work, first production of
over the absence of the other, a work wh
is not free spontaneous creativity as M

12 If the work of salvation is one work prior to pr

which, in a tantalizing suggestion in "Fors," becom
(xxvii).

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 120 Elizabeth Edwards

interminably, the fundamen

'own' labours. Iteration, insof
blots out the horizon of what
must repeat, or come back as
fear and trembling direct us
But fear is not attached on
condition of return at all, as t
{Gift of Death 55). Fear is an
persistent and even ubiquitou
fear into work, it follows fr
Fear and work are coinciden
serenity of research and the
seems both urgent and necess
fear, between the shiver of
'analytic distinction' of the k
Principle" (50) or in "Inhib
deconstructive account of how
or anguish" {Gift of Death 54)
I have traced the persistence
the opposite of real human
psychoanalytic sense (Abraha
work must imply the possibil
we must let them if we are ev

University o

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