Specters of Mark: The Second Gospel’s Ending and Derrida’s Messianicity

Abstract

This article engages Mark 16:1–8 with Jacques Derrida’s concept of the messianic as elaborated, primarily, in his 1993 volume Specters of Marx. Working with the concept of a circular Markan narrative, the tomb is explored as a haunted space in which readers are invited to return to the beginning of the story with an eye toward its spectral bodies. Indeed, the absence of a raised body in the sepulcher, coupled with an injunction to return to Galilee introduces a temporal disjunction by invoking the narrative past and exploring the incalculability of a future. While the other three canonical Gospels privilege the presence of a material body in their resurrection scenes, a Derridean analysis of this passage allows for an even more expanded notion of what a body might look like and opens the possibility for the immanence of justice to-come: justice that comes for the marginalized in the Second Gospel.