In this thesis I attempt to trace the origins of spectrality in Jacques Derrida’s philosophy. While it is true that the spectral is introduced properly in The Specters of Marx, published in 1993, Derrida indicates, in The Specters of Marx and elsewhere, an affinity between spectrality and deconstruction and explains that this affinity pertains to a form of disjointed temporality which is characteristic of haunting as well as the deconstructivistic understanding of a constitutive deferral and delay. The challenge is then, firstly, to show how concepts that are central to deconstruction such as difference, trace and the other, all of which arise in and through the deconstruction of Husserls concept of temporality, anticipate the appearance of the spectral in later texts by Derrida.

The affinity between the spectral and deconstruction is rarely recognized, much less elaborated upon. Even less recognition is given to the fact that his understanding of concepts such as responsibility, legacy, inheritance and the ethics of mourning is heavily influenced by his interpretations of the work of Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, published around the same time as La voix et le phènomene, L’écriture et la difference and De la grammatologie, published in 1967, in which deconstruction is first introduced.

The introduction of the spectral, in The Specters of Marx, is sometimes considered a turning point towards a more ethically oriented philosophy than in his earlier work. If deconstruction is haunted by the spectral from its moment of conception, then the notion of such a turn is jeopardized since the ethicality of mourning, responsibility, legacy and inheritance adhere to the spectral.

In this thesis I argue that deconstruction has always been haunted by the concept of spectrality. The question then is not if deconstruction has an ethical aspect but how we should understand the implication that deconstruction has always been an ethical endeavor.