Turning Toward Irradiated Futures

This chapter establishes the view of inheritance that Jacques Derrida establishes following from his reading of both philosophies of communication and political philosophy. With special attention paid to Derrida’s Specters of Marx, we argue that a conception of inheritance worked out from Derrida’s work can be productively applied to generate both a critique of contemporary intergenerational environmental policy, especially as this relates to nuclear waste, and a framework for intergenerational responsibility that is not based on the presumption of resemblance or continuity between contemporary and future generations. We conclude the chapter by illustrating how a sense of responsibility and culpability are linked without relating to the future as a means for redeeming the present.