Derrida’s discussion of what he terms hauntology, in answer to his question: ‘[w]hat is a ghost?’ (Derrida, 1994, p.10), argues for a spectral dimension of identity. In Spectres of Marx, he discusses the spectrality of many areas of meaning, seeing ghostly hauntings as traces of possible meanings. His hauntology could be compared to the paradigmatic chains which hover (haunt) the linearity of the syntagmatic chain. But Derrida makes one important distinction, in that he sees spectrality and time as closely connected. He makes the point, speaking both of the ghost in Hamlet and the ghost that haunts Marx’s Communist Manifesto (where the first noun is ‘specter’), that: "[a]t bottom, the specter is the future, it is always to come, it presents itself only as that which could come, or come back." (Derrida: 1994; 39).

"A question of repetition: a spectre is always a revenant. One cannot control its comings and goings because it begins by coming back." (Derrida, 1994, p.11)

Derrida’s notion of hauntology involves acknowledging the other that haunts the self and which acts as a hovering, spectral presence that pluralises the certainties of ontology.