Specters of Justice

According to Jacques Derrida in Specters of Marx, a specter, a ghost, is not simply nothing, and the urgency to address their existence—to address them—can be incited in the name of justice—thought as a certain kind of specter. Justice, for Derrida, is a specter insofar as justice as such is only present “where it is not yet, not yet there, where it is no longer, let us understand where it is no longer present, and where it will never be, no more than the law, reducible to laws or rights” (Derrida 1994, xviii; 1993, 15). What Derrida has in mind when he writes these lines is the paradox at the core of justice, an intrinsic contradiction and impotence expressed in the impossible universalization of justice. Justice, which in principle and by principle should serve all (otherwise, how could it be just?), can only enact its principle through rights and laws, the unavoidable generalization of which—a byproduct of its universalizing aim—makes them blind to the needs of each case, to the nuances of the singular.We often hear that justice is blind, meaning that it should apply equally in all cases, to all people. The blindness I have just referred to relates to and is even perhaps another way to talk about the spectrality of justice that, according to Derrida, defines it.At the core of justice's blindness there is a problem of recognition. One could think that the universal principle of justice is not universal enough to include “all.” However, the limitations to justice's capacity for recognition are endemic to the operation of universalization itself.Following Derrida's understanding of the spectral in justice; of justice as spectral, I resort to the notion of “symbolic justice” to think and imagine alternative ways through which justice can perform the basic act of recognition implied in its claims of universalization. In Nostalgia de la Luz, El botón de Nacar (Guzmán 2015), and Allende, the Chilean documentary maker Patricio Guzmán films the absence and erasure of the dictatorship's (1973–1989) disappearances from Chile's history. In these documentaries, Guzmán creates an object from what remains after the suppression that constitute Chile's official history, like the blurry aftermark that lingers on a piece of paper after you efface pencil writing. I read the specters these documentaries conjure up as a form of symbolic justice. The interpretation I unfold takes what I consider to be necessary steps to understand how deconstruction's elucidation of the spectrality of justice can inform an alternative notion of justice that—so I speculate—could inform reparation laws and rights. I write these words in Riverside, California, the same city where Derrida gave the lecture that would later become Specters of Marx (published by Galileé in 1993). The book's “Exordium” opens with the following scene: “someone, you or me, comes forward and says: I would like to learn to live finally” (Derrida 1994, xvi; 1993, 13). Derrida proceeds to muse on his own ideation and concludes that “learning to live” is not a lesson like any other: “To live, by definition, is something one learns. Not from oneself, it is not learned from life, taught by life. Only from the other and by death. In any case from the other and at the edge of life” (1994 xvii; 1993, 14). I take up Derrida's invitation from this point on, and I “translate” his words for the sake of my argument. To be alive does not necessarily prove we know anything about it. And, second: To the extent that learning to live implies knowledge of death, learning to live makes it necessary to become acquainted with spirits, with ghosts [fantôme].Specters of Marx begins with an invitation to “follow the ghost,” (1994, 10; 1993, 31), and I take up this challenge, yet, inevitably, and because Derrida's book is about the specters of Marxism and “the ghost that once haunted Europe,” I find myself greeting the ghosts of the “disappeared” during the Chilean dictatorship that destroyed the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende. After September 11, 1973, the day of the military coup, Augusto Pinochet unfolded what he called “a war against Marxism.”In Chile, in 1973, in the name of the threat of Marxism, or the threat of its ghost, thousands of people were detained, interrogated, tortured, killed, and disappeared.1 In a June 1986 speech, Pinochet proclaims: “No se han convencido de que esto es una guerra entre el marxismo y la democracia [Apparently you are not convinced yet that this is a war between Marxism and Democracy]” (Clarin 2000). Pinochet reiterates the target of the state violence he was responsible for and, most interestingly, establishes a false dichotomy between Marxism and Democracy, ignoring that the war he began in 1973 interrupted a democratically elected government of a socialist president who insisted to the very end on the democratic path toward socialism. It is not my intention to reason with Pinochet's claims, famous for his lack of wit, but to show to what extent the rhetoric that justified the dictatorship's state terrorism relied on the presence of the ghost of Marxism.If the Chilean disappeared were killed to eradicate Marxism and/or its ghost, then the specters of Marx can also be found among the specters left by the erasure of the traces of the disappeared, and in the memory of the people that witnessed and inherited this trauma. The traces—collected, produced, and found in Guzmán's documentaries—conjure up the ghost feared by Pinochet and his supporters, a ghost in the name of which thousands of people were killed, precisely in order to kill the ghost. Their ghost and the ghost in the name of whom they were killed haunt us today.In 1988, two years before Pinochet left the presidency, despite the international pressure to stop the violations to human rights and reestablish democratic elections in Chile, the dictator still considered his having cleansed [limpiar] the nation of Marxists as a crowning achievement (Clarin 2000). The literal statement in a speech given in February 1988 reads “Prácticamente limpiamos de marxistas la nación [We practically cleaned off the nation of Marxists].” “Limpiamos” or “cleaning off” here stands for assassination and torture that virtually left no traces of the crime, no bodies to account for it, or to count the magnitude of the systematic killings. A crime absent of evidence is still a crime, and despite Pinochet's effort to “clean off” its traces, the whole nation was witness to the crime. Nevertheless, with the institution of the law of amnesty for crimes committed during the State of Emergency imposed by the military dictatorship between 1973 and 1978 (La ley de Amnistía, o Decreto Ley no 2191) in 1978, state terrorism became no longer accountable. This law made no distinction between crimes committed for political reasons and any other crimes.In 1990, after the dictatorship, the new president Patricio Aylwin created the Comisión Nacional de Verdad y Reconciliación [National Committee for Truth and Reconciliation], which carried out the first investigation of the crimes committed during the dictatorship. The commission estimated 2,279 victims of political violence and made suggestions for symbolic reparations. In 2005, President Ricardo Lagos requested another investigation, which resulted in the Informe de la Comisión Nacional sobre Prisión Política y Tortura (The Report of the National Commission on Prison and Torture), more popularly known as Informe Valech. This report expanded the investigations and included the testimony of victims of torture, as well as information on the empirical effects that silencing these abuses has created in the victims’ lives and their families. The number of victims amounts to more than 30,000 people. Their wounds, the report indicates, nos obliga a reconocer algo que siempre debió ser reconocido como inaceptable . . . Las páginas del informe darán cuenta cabal de lo que procuramos resumir . . . deseamos que este esfuerzo compartido sea un aporte más al “nunca más” por todos deseado, y al anhelado apretón de manos con que Chile quisiera saldar en hermandad tanta deuda pendiente entre hermanos de un mismo pueblo [force us to acknowledge something that should have been always acknowledged as unacceptable . . . we hope that this shared effort is a contribution to the “never again” that we all hope for, and also a contribution to the handshake with which Chile would like to seal in brotherhood and sisterhood so many pending debts among siblings of a same people]. (Valech et al., 11)“Forcing to acknowledge,” “the unacceptable,” “pending debts” are the new terms the Valech report inscribes in Chile's official national narrative. Ten years before, in 1995, five years after the end of his rule, Pinochet defended that “La única solución que existe para el problema de los derechos humanos es el olvido [The only existing solution to the human rights problems is oblivion]” (Clarin 2000, September 1995). This statement is interesting to the extent that it acknowledges that—besides oblivion—any other “solution” to the human rights “problem” would require breaking with the instituted amnesty.While immunity through amnesty makes the dictatorship's crimes invisible to justice, interfering with the basic function of discernment and recognition that makes justice possible, symbolic justice depends on the recognition that legal justice could not perform.Against this pressure to “forget” the violations to human rights expressed explicitly in Pinochet's 1995 statement, and implicitly in the course of action taken by Chile after the dictatorship, we have the haunting of the their for by the imposed on which are not the specters of Marxism, but of the committed against a socialist government in Chile, haunt Chile's national la is a byproduct of and to its to death. The that this is that of a ghost that and perhaps precisely because it is an According to the from the or or of a or object in The meaning of the it with a a of a an The by the first meaning is a of an created for and to a or This of or to the of the is in the where the as the the from to to ghost. A ghost is not an but it with a form of presence and A an a a in the of something out to the presence that is not there or that was never The and the ghost the absence of a presence that conjure up Derrida the he was the for de his for the I was of all the of a certain haunting that to to the on a when a new is to its and no has to of all of still the and the of a to the of (Derrida 1993, 1993, and that we ought to be haunted by what it a according to which Marxism is a of the This same to its own the of all in Pinochet's 1995 statement, where he and as the only solution to the human rights this ghost from more than a of state for Derrida, implies the to acknowledge by not here among something about the of their This lack always in kind of which can always be as the institution of kind of the of which to a a a a political considered to be and as to the invisible and is no justice, Derrida no justice can be principle of toward who are alive and who are or have not been justice is to be it is justice what we are this be is the of this before we any to justice or for whom there ought to be justice and what should be in its specter with which we when justice takes is not in the same way and in the same and as I for when these The between and what is than like the specter, is in the of justice as a to what is when we to take justice or when we acknowledge that is or should be we take not only the of a but a certain of the of the that, in makes a act This is to the universalization of the of an action of to the extent that it from us a of the principle of any action to all its effects and the principle of universalization in the at on this is not and it be reason its against the against the ghost. can reason the that us to the will not to the problems with the contradiction between the and of justice its to serve all not only about the problem by the of justice through laws and rights by Derrida in Specters of Marx and I also to the does not serve all even in in the by justice the same rights and laws, as it is the case among of a same for In justice's can that, as as justice its to the of each case should not to up justice to terms with the of justice, according to Derrida in the of spectral justice, I conjure up the found in the by Derrida in the are to a of justice with the that of that justice or a certain of justice can take the does not anything in the absence of justice, symbolic justice, symbolic and recognition be all we have in of justice, we for justice through the institution of rights and justice to one of the most basic for there to be any kind of recognition. the justice could not serve in justice can enact recognition even in where to be acknowledged can only through the traces left from their erasure and as is the case state for recognition also implies and is of justice; the of the of justice state terrorism be to justice's state terrorism justice but the of justice is never is more to this I to it. so will not only require in should be to the universal of justice, but also the that we have of so well to the of not the of justice. we take the paradox and of justice to and that there is never justice for only could to this and the that Chile has a for which the institution and on the during Pinochet's dictatorship. In this justice is from its this the crimes and the justice by for what life, one in this at the very core of Chile's legal In what I on how Patricio Guzmán's documentaries the spectrality of justice by the ghosts by the institution of the ghosts left by the violence of state state there is no justice, yet what can be of as other of justice recognition and are a for any of justice, Guzmán's these ghosts this basic Specters of Marx, Derrida that the of the specter in we could not talk about as we would have to about according to Derrida, because we also what we with The specter is there because it to and we it we be responsible for its However, this of be in terms of or The specter its own in and we it. not be of the order of the but it can and its can have according to Derrida, could be of in Nevertheless, in this paper I in the of the that this than in what the ghost, as in Specters of Marx, can about the ghosts that haunt in Patricio Guzmán's was in Chile, in during the Chilean dictatorship, to a I a political that political to the 1988 that democratic elections in In my my in a of the which was for when we certain like an like September not even my on to me, through a piece like the de and was no in my and imposed a on the Nevertheless, these that I have called were a that later I would in or of and the where a was on the I that when my us to and 1994, a and which was a for torture, and assassination during the dictatorship. I the we to and the we with us after and what these and a of what I consider the political I from my could very well be that an through a up of something where you not know yet what it could take years to its it also be the case that when it it will have to to to that which in is not This to when I began and later about Patricio Guzmán's In the films that de Chile (Guzmán to the absence of or of the dictatorship's which haunting the people as well as Chile's national In his documentaries, Guzmán the of a he traces the of a in the official of Chile, of these a form of a that stands out is more to haunt precisely because it the of what has been the the that its own erasure in the of what us in an is Guzmán's Guzmán's documentaries can the of the they can in of the what kind of would this form of and to the of an or order to which the and, to a certain in an A also to an or of that the of the and it as an of the its and its to an as well as the of that for the of constitute the The by the of what should be and what should which and should be taken account and as and of a and which should as such a to to something or to it. Guzmán's documentaries a that ignoring the of the Chilean dictatorship, the official the specters that haunt it. To this I to a of what I to the ghost in Guzmán's One of the first from the documentary a Chile's one of the there is a in The a where the is a of that the was to A begins to off the and the “La de la no es [The of memory is It always you and a to the like a and we are with an for the haunting of memory and its The The a to the who is the el de la que el el a de but the of that the The of the documentary the between government and the and in to the of what it to the political that presidency, were by the who name and all the city as a form of was a and amnesty their own which is in like this one where Guzmán films traces, that conjure up the ghost in the the ghost as a byproduct of no [The does not Guzmán in this a statement that, to the specters and his documentaries, the of the spectral for the a explicitly in the of Nostalgia de la In Nostalgia for the the first ghost is by of that the to the which as a of between and After of with and Guzmán the were left with after the dictatorship to the of the The proceeds to present the traces of state in the human the for in the by a of who have to the dictatorship's the remains of a in the the that this documentary up the of what is a I to in the between the of the dictatorship I Guzmán often what in principle has left no and to the and of the that for this This is a and I not it is to it be something in the specter that because this there would be no The be of and all its that or The is also its a it is haunted by erasure and In the between these two the to the of erasure and the to memory and Guzmán to the ghost of the dictatorship's and history. In Patricio Guzmán's I first the of my own notion of memory that Guzmán's to implies a understanding of The present as a of the This way of understanding the present, which in principle the of the present as something that is in the present, makes of the present something of a a that is never to the present is its own and This notion of explicitly in Nostalgia de la when an about the and to Guzmán of their However, the created by the of in the documentary more than one interpretation of the the we in the the is the the present I think that the only present that is what I have in my my I think this is the to an present, and not even that because when I the has a there is a certain this the as a of The present, according to the does not Derrida's specter, its would even the of a However, my is In Nostalgia de la Luz, these on to the of the which is to read in what existing alternative to the official and of the to be through and the for expressed and through in and other we to have any in own in Guzmán's documentaries, is a and what in Chile is called la can a films serve as an of However, like any other shared by a this memory can a that its a that can like a lack of memory or between memory and the that creates can find one of this lack of in Chile, This documentary films his to Chile after years in and the Chilean to de Chile, which could not be in the In Chile, a who has all during the dictatorship is de the the of a in is on the with a of is that, according to other people that years is the on the The on during presidency, and the the in the same so that to on the between the and the the for the who does not from The of the is in this of on and to The be by memory through This is something that, we on at certain in certain and there is no and there is no the absence of justice, the ghost of justice or spectral justice is at in of like to what has been and form of and their in to recognition as a basic for there to be justice, this of a its own in each then what we to we to in the we in the and we a in the of the To think that we have a in the of has the of us and us responsible for the of an taken a of memory and form of an and a of institution is no more or than any I not in the absence of bodies to the crime, we could not the evidence of the ghost of that absence to the to through where all the people amnesty acknowledge their and for at this after a of for his on this I was it could from to Specters of the the of its my is However, I to find something on this book that among could Not Derrida, I have also inherited Marxism, a of Marx in my one of the most interesting Derrida given its which is in Derrida's on his of to he can about Specters is a find a on Marxism in it, or a of what Marxism is and we are of its haunting ghost, and with the that this ghost will to haunt What this haunting for with inherited Marxism, be by at its which is always more than one (Derrida 1993, not to or a for a Marxism to the of Marxism be, it is only in of deconstruction's to justice that it but to it

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