Book excerpt: With the publication of Specters of Marx in 1993, Jacques Derrida redeemed a longstanding pledge to confront Marx's texts directly and in detail. His characteristically bravura presentation provided a provocative re-reading of the classics in the Western tradition and posed a series of challenges to Marxism. In a timely intervention in one of today's most vital theoretical debates, the contributors to Ghostly Demarcations respond to the distinctive program projected by Specters of Marx. The volume features sympathetic meditations on the relationship between Marxism and deconstruction by Fredric Jameson, Werner Hamacher, Antonio Negri, Warren Montag, and Rastko Mcnik, brief polemical reviews by Terry Eagleton and Pierre Macherey, and sustained political critiques by Tom Lewis and Aijaz Ahmad. The volume concludes with Derrida's reply to his critics in which he sharpens his views about the vexed relationship between Marxism and deconstruction.