The University With Conditions
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"This university without conditions does not, in fact, exist, as we know only too well. Nevertheless, in principle and in conformity with its declared vocation, its professed essence, it should remain an ultimate place of critical resistance - and more than critical - to all the powers of dogmatic and unjust appropriation" (Derrida 2002: 204).
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"This principle of unconditional resistance is a right that the university itself should at the same time reflect, invent, and pose, whether it does so through its law faculties or in the new Humanities capable of working on these questions of right and of law - in other words, and again why not say it without detour, the Humanities capable of taking on the tasks of deconstruction, beginning with the deconstruction of their own history and their own axioms" (Derrida 2002: 204).
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"The university should thus also be the place in which nothing is beyond question, not even the current and determined figure of democracy, not even the traditional idea of critique, meaning theoretical critique, and not even the authority of the 'question' form, of thinking as 'questioning'" (Derrida 2002: 205).
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"One must insist on this again: if this unconditionality, in principle and de jure, constitutes the invincible force of the university, it has never been in effect. By reason of this abstract and hyperbolic invincibility, by reason of its very impossibility, this unconditionality exposes as well the weakness or the vulnerability of the university. It exhibits its impotence, the fragility of its defenses against all the powers that command it, besiege it, and attempt to appropriate it. Because it is a stranger to power, because it is heterogeneous to the principle of power, the university is also without any power of its own" (Derrida 2002: 206).
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"That is why we are speaking here of the university without condition. I say 'the university' because I am distinguishing here, stricto sensu, the university from all research institutions that are in the service of economic goals and interests of all sorts, without being granted in principle the independence of the university; I also say 'without condition' to let one hear the connotation of 'without power' and 'without defense.' Because it is absolutely independent, the university is also an exposed, tendered citadel, to be taken, often destined to capitulate without condition, to surrender unconditionally.
Yes, it gives itself up, it sometimes puts itself up for sale, it risks being simply something to occupy, take over, buy; it risks becoming a branch office of conglomerates and corporations. This is today, in the United States and throughout the world, a major political stake: to what extent does the organization of research and teaching have to be supported, that is, directly or indirectly controlled, let us euphemistically say 'sponsored,' by commercial and industrial interests?" (Derrida 2002: 206).
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"I will not claim that, in the torment threatening the university today, and within it some disciplines more than others, this force of resistance, this assumed freedom to say everything in the public space, has its unique or privileged place in what is called the Humanities - a concept whose definition it will be advisable to refine, deconstruct, and adjust, beyond a tradition that must also be cultivated. However, this principle of unconditionality presents itself, originally and above all, in the Humanities. It has an originary and privileged place of presentation, of manifestation, of safekeeping in the Humanities. It has there its space of discussion and of reelaboration as well. All this passes as much by way of literature and languages (that is, the sciences called the sciences of man and culture) as by way of the nondiscursive arts, by way of law and philosophy, by way of critique, questioning, and, beyond critical philosophy and questioning, by way of deconstruction - where it is a matter of nothing less than rethinking the concept of man, the figure of humanity in general, and singularly the one presupposed by what we have called, in the university, for the last few centuries, the Humanities" (Derrida 2002: 207).
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