Intellectual Responsibility: The Specter of Benda and the Phantom of Bakunin

In: Telos, Heft 110, S. 181-191

Abstract

A review essay on books by Jacques Derrida, (1) The Gift of Death (Wills, David [Tr] IL: Chicago U Press, 1995); & (2) Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International (Kamuf, Peggy [Tr], London: Routledge, 1994). Jacques Derrida's effort to account for responsibility is critiqued against the backdrop of the complicity of numerous intellectuals with totalitarian & other states. Derrida's inversion of responsibility & irresponsibility, sacrifice & murder, is juxtaposed with the philosophy & biography of Czech dissident Jan Patocka, to whom Derrida refers but misunderstands. In contrast to Patocka, who upheld & enacted individual freedom & the responsibility of self-sacrifice, Derrida uses linguistic gymnastics to confound responsibility & its opposite & to defend murder as the sacrifice of another person, who is given the "gift of death." It is argued that this stance legitimizes state-sponsored & terrorist atrocities & appeals to intellectuals who trade conviction for comfort. E. Blackwell