Reflections on reading Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx (20)

The twentieth night

There is a false parade of solidarity marching past the Vatican. Lost in party politics the soul can eat itself, each member bodiless and craving other’s bodies as its own, creating hybrid monsters of totalitarian desire. These are the creatures of the night that come in dreams and vote the party line; their manifesto a manifest of mealy men in mannered moulds that make martyrs of the flesh. This cannibalistic credo is a manifleshto of the dead.

During the day Marx is being recreated by his makers; monarchists, imperialists, republicans and capitalist money launderers. They sculpt him from red clay and intend to raku fire his body in a sawdust pit. Left to cure at night, his body stirs, the spirit is within him. The secret name of God emblazoned on his brow, he rises with the morn, his inner fire glows white, his eyes now blaze with Heavenly light, he stands, opens his mouth and flames belch forth with his first words, “They know not what they do”, (36) in his heart he knows morality is the darkest of conspiracies, he steps out into the abyss of freedom, hoping that fantasy will fill the gap before he falls. He is terrified of what will come, frightened of the consequences of his actions and yet determined to see this day out to its conclusion.

36 a. For they know not what they do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor. A book by Slavoj Žižek, that attempts to grapple with the disintegration of state socialism, and the rise of hedonism. Like Derrida, Žižek often quotes Shakespeare, in this case he refers to Brutus and his anxiety before setting out to murder Caesar. In the popular radio four program, 'Desert Island Discs' participants are always given a copies of the Bible and Shakespeare to take with them. It is presumed that everyone would want to take these two texts. These texts it is presumed stand at the heart of Western English speaking culture.

Act 2 Scene 1 Julius Caesar: Brutus contemplates his immanent actions:

Since Cassius first did whet me against Caesar,
I have not slept.
Before the acting of a dreadful thing
And first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream
The Genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection.

36 b. Luke 23:34: Then Jesus said, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do".