ABSTRACT
No book review without phantoms. It is difficult to conceive of trying to review Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx without engaging with the strangeness of the ‘re-’ (repetition, viewing again, return, revenance) inscribed in the word ‘review’ and thus with a questioning of the very institution of the book review. ‘What, has this thing appear’d again tonight?’ I have a feeling that perhaps corresponds in some way with the feeling Derrida claims to have about Marx and ghosts in Spectres of Marx: as he puts it, ‘everyone reads, acts, writes with his or her ghosts’ (p. 139). Impossible, at least for me, to review this book about apparitions, phantoms, spectres, without feeling a need to respond in kind. In what follows, then, I propose to consider not only what Spectres of Marx has to say about spectrality and phantoms (for example, in relation to the university, politics and religion), but also what it does not say, or says (perhaps) without saying. A phantom book calls for a phantom review.1
