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.