"That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once."

Now, on an immense terrace of Elsinore ... Hamlet looks at thousands of specters. But he is an intellectual Hamlet. He meditates on the life and deaths of truths. His ghosts are all the objects of our controversies, his remorse is all the titles of our glory ... if he seizes a skull, it is an illustrious skull - "Whose was it?" - This one was Lionardo ... And this other skull is that of Liebniz who dreamed of universal peace. And this one was Kant qui genuit Hegel, qui genuit Marx, qui genuit ... Hamlet does not knw what to do with all these skulls. But if he abandons them! ... Will he cease to be himself?

            - Paul Valéry, "La politique de l'esprit", as quoted in Jacques Derrida,
              Spectres of Marx (tr. Peggy Kamuf)