“‘Ça' me regarde”

Abstract

This chapter suggests that an important dimension of what Jacques Derrida has called “spectrality” has to do with the look or gaze of the other. To explore the ramifications of the regard of and for the other in Derrida's writings, this chapter juxtaposes three texts: The Gift of Death, Specters of Marx, and Echographies of Television. What all three texts state is that responsibility and inheritance are brought about by and through an asymmetrical spectral regard beyond any exchange. The chapter then discusses that the entire reading of responsibility in Derrida be oriented by a phrase repeated in a number of Derrida's writings, a phrase that—although its complexity cannot be fully captured in translation—perfectly encapsulates the instance of the spectral look: “ça me regarde”.