futureacademy

Notes on "University without Condition"

"This [the modern university in the European model] university claims and ought to be granted in principle, besides what is called academic freedom, the right to say publicly all that is required by research, knowledge and thought concerning the truth. However enigmatic it may be, the reference to truth remains fundamental enough to be found, along with light (lux), on the symbolic insignias of more than one university. The university professes the truth, and that is its profession.", p24.

Derrida talks of the profitability of certain departments over others (ie the humanities) in the fields of research, capital investment and the 'sponsoring' of by commercial and industrial interests. The question is how a kind of sovereignty is claimed without being taken over by these interests.

Derrida contends that the Humanities is, by its very nature, the place where these resistances must take place. The principle of unconditionality must be represented in the Humanities.

irredentist - a person who advocates the redeeming of territory from another state.

TO BE CONTINUED

posted by Chris @ 11:30 am