In Debt to Derrida: Deconstruction and Monetary Criticism

Derrida’s deconstructive approach offers a decisive intervention to the recent philosophical, ethical, and economic debates about the nature of money. In Given Time, Derrida explores the nature of debt by contrasting it with the idea of “the gift” as a non-present remainder of cycles of exchange. Since any gift worthy of the name is not (a) present, he argues, the gift introduces the question of non-synchronous time—“looking for noon at two o’clock,” referring to a short story by Baudelaire. In other words, it is the gift that exposes to questioning the retroactivity of debt, even while it constantly risks re-entry into the economic circle of exchange and payment. This chapter focuses on Derrida’s analysis of debt in order to respond to recent critiques of deconstructive thought. Those critiques are premised on the idea that deconstruction subscribes to an “ethics of the other” which is bound within a gift/debt relationship that limits political possibility. Meanwhile, recent contributions to the theory of debt, notably by David Graeber and Maurizio Lazzarato, intend to explain the global prevalence of debt economies in the twenty-first century. However, careful attention to Derrida’s analysis of the retroactivity of debt shows how these alternatives are themselves caught in a conceptual and political bind because they have overlooked something essential about debt which Derrida’s deconstructive approach brings into view.