Jacques Derrida's Ghostface

Abstract

Jacques Derrida's face appeared prominently on the covers of his books as well as inside them, on posters for his public lectures, on drawings and lithographs. Derrida was also a film star whose face appeared on screen, demonstrated by the fact that at least three films depict him in some depth and reveal his talents and charisma as a performer. In the first of these, in chronological order, Ghost Dance, directed by Ken McMullen in 1983, Derrida, playing himself, is asked whether he believes in ghosts and replies with a smile: “that's a hard question because you see I am a ghost.” “The cinema is the art of invoking ghosts,” he declares and then proceeds to explain that film is always a mise-en-scène of ghosts who send us to an invisible beyond. “A ghost is a trace that signals in advance the presence of its absence.” This is a structure the film borrows from Sioux attempts to establish a relation with ancestors, to let their history haunt them, to make the past a living future. For Derrida, the figure of the ghost was to resurface – perhaps we should say return – with Specters of Marx (1993). This essay will be a ghost dance that attempts to argue that Jacques Derrida is not only a revenant (a returner) but also an arrivant, one who arrives.