And: absolutely we don’t intend to claim to unpack this in a single conference paper :-) We are currently planning a couple of pieces, tackling slightly different aspects of this – but without claiming that those would be particularly more comprehensive than a single piece would be. :-)

Also not trying to suggest that the piece lives or dies on the argument about Marx – it’s clear that there are more general points being made, on Marx’s corpus, so to speak. I am, though, interested in trying to understand this as a reading of Marx, and as an intervention into the question of how we should deal with other appropriations of Marx and with the legacy of Soviet claims to Marx. There are elements of Derrida’s reading of Marx that highlight things that I think are very important, that are often overlooked (the whole issue of the supersensible, for example) – and the central question of how to deal with Marx, given the history of how his works have been appropriated: this is a question that shouldn’t be shuffled aside… (Not that you were suggesting this, just providing some coordinates, so to speak, for my orientation to the text.)

And I agree that Derrida is contesting what he sees as the boundaries Marx draws between and around production and exchange. My own reading sees Marx doing something much more… deconstructive with these categories than Derrida takes Marx to be – which means that, weirdly, I find Marx more compatible with some of where Derrida is trying to go, than Derrida might realise (which also makes me more sympathetic to Derrida than many Marxist critics of this text). But lots more work still to do (and my background is such that I’m necessarily approaching this via Marx and the intellectual history of Marxism, which will result in a sort of side-on confrontation with Derrida’s text, although I’m trying to work my into a more immanent view of the text as I go…).

Many thanks for this – nice to work a bit in tandem. :-)

Thanks for the questions – I’m certainly glad of the chance to discuss :)

The way I have read it thus far is that the general critique takes priority over the specific point about Marx. To me, this seems to fit with the limits of the gesture that Derrida is making towards Marx – the emphasis on inheritance etc.

But this is also because I am weak on Marx (how did I manage to do a history degree and not learn any Marx?), and playing catch-up somewhat. I’m beginning to see some patterns between the way Derrida reads Husserl, Heidegger, Austin, and now Marx, based around the temporal order (not sure if that is the best way to say it) of the founding of their arguments. This goes back to Derrida’s very first readings of Husserl. I’ll try and flesh these out this week.

Now, your account seems to chime with my reading pretty well. But the particular exorcism that is in view here, I think Derrida wants to question the limits that Marx puts on ‘production’ here; that is, I think Derrida is eroding the difference that the analogy presumes upon.

I’ll try and chase this up a bit more shortly.

A further comment; Derrida obviously wants to transform the meaning of the passage, as you say. Also, I think he wants us to notice the erasure. You don’t talk about the trace that erasure makes, and then innocently leave elipses in the middle of a text. I think you guys have located a significant moment, but unravelling it will prove a task far beyond one conference paper…