Messianic in Spectres of Marx by Jaques Derrida

In Spectres of Marx, Jaques Derrida expounds upon a major theme of his argument, the messianic, and is interested in outlining the issues surrounding messianism. These issues which work along side the critical characteristics of Marxist theory. According to Derrida, the “messianic” adopts the basic configuration of religious messianic thought, but there is also “a messianism without religion” (74). Derrida shares his opinion that a messiah is a promise, a hope, and an aspiration of something to come, but not that the messiah actually comes. If the messiah does come, and there is an end, where is the mystery once he is revealed? There lacks a definite horizon or final expectation in Derrida’s messianism. Of the many views of messianism he chooses to deconstruct, a vantage point he takes that the original messianic concept containing religious connotations is based on a definite end as well as an understanding of time. Along with topics of justice, disjointure, and especially understanding of the specter, Derrida’s messianism forms into an overarching idea of his belief about Marxism and it’s impact on politics and religion. He describes his understanding of the messianic further in this passage:

“The effectivity or actuality of the democratic promise, like that of the communist promise, will always keep within it, and it must do so, this absolutely undetermined messianic hope at its heart, this eschatological relation [for example, a relation to the final coming of Christ, or the final event] to the to-come of an event and of a singularity, of an alterity that cannot be anticipated” (81).

Derrida asserts that a deconstructed version of Marxist thought is still relevant to today's world despite its globalization. He makes both polit...

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... and the dead without coming into contact with that which exists in between. What is both present and absent looms like the messiah in every moment and yet no moment in particular. There is constantly something “out of joint” as well as constant human struggle to ameliorate the disjointure. Be it attempting to segment time or the allocation of rights and laws to achieve justice, that which exists in a disjointure cannot have a definite deconstruction. As such, the messianic cannot be constrained into something with definitive definitions of time or justice. The makeup of the messianic and of our existence allows for the coming of an untouchable and unknown other. The messianic signifies our existence as constant waiting. It is a waiting and never ending acceptance of a future that can never be confined by the meanings we bring to thrust upon that conceivable future.