arts and humanities in higher education-2014-attridge-54-61

Arts & Humanities in Higher Education

2014, Vol. 13(1–2) 54–61

! The Author(s) 2013

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DOI: 10.1177/1474022213514795

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Article

The Humanities withoutcondition: Derrida andthe singular oeuvre

Derek AttridgeDepartment of English and Related Literature,

University of York, UK

Abstract

In an important lecture on the function of the Humanities, ‘The University without

Condition’, Jacques Derrida asks what it means to ‘profess’ the truth and advocates a

commitment to the oeuvre – the work that constitutes an event rather than just a

contribution to knowledge. I examine a few phrases from the lecture, focusing on

questions of the unconditional, the ‘as if ’, singularity, the future, and the impossible.

Keywords

affirmative, Derrida, event, impossible, performative, oeuvre, singularity, unconditional,

university

Jacques Derrida’s prose possesses a certain notoriety, and not without cause: con-stantly operating at the edge of what can be said in language, it strains andstretches its sentences, makes paradoxical assertions, invents lexical items, andinserts parentheses within parentheses. When these challenges to the reader aretransferred from French to English by a heroic translator, the problems areoften intensified. This, no doubt, is one reason why his thinking on the university– its state and status, its operations and responsibilities, its past and its future – hasnot had the wide dissemination it deserves. He addressed these and related ques-tions in many texts, some of which are collected in the volume Eyes of theUniversity (Derrida, 2004). My favourite in this group is ‘The Principle of Reason:TheUniversity in the Eyes of its Pupils’, first given in 1983 as the inaugural lecture onhis appointment to a visiting chair at Cornell University. But the work I want tofocus on here is ‘The University without Condition’, originally written for the

Corresponding author:

Derek Attridge, Department of English and Related Literature, University of York, Heslington, York Y010

5DD, UK.

Email: [email protected]

at Universite de Paris 1 on November 23, 2015ahh.sagepub.comDownloaded from

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Presidential Lecture Series at Stanford University in 1999. Rather than attempt asummary of this long essay (published in French as a book; Derrida, 2001), I want toexcerpt a few sentences for extended commentary. The rationale for this slightly oddway of proceeding will, I trust, become evident as we proceed.

Derrida begins with what sounds like a traditional view of the task of the uni-versity or what he refers to as the ‘modern university’, the university in states ‘of ademocratic type’ that has evolved over the last two centuries out of the medievalEuropean model:

This university demands and ought to be granted in principle, besides what is called

academic freedom, an unconditional freedom to question and to assert, or even, going

still further, the right to say publicly all that is required by research, knowledge, and

thought concerning the truth . . . . The university professes the truth, and that is its

profession. It declares and promises an unlimited commitment to the truth. (Derrida,

2002: 202)

From the start, Derrida implies that the university is engaged not only in the searchfor truth but also with the question of truth itself: what counts as truth?, where doour ideas of the true come from?, what power relations are sustained by differentconceptions of the truth?, and so on. And it quickly becomes clear that the placewhere these questions should be asked most urgently and consistently is theHumanities. (Derrida consistently gives the word an upper-case letter, and I shallfollow suit.) Derrida asserts:

Everything that concerns the question and the history of truth, in its relation to the

question of man, of what is proper to man, of human rights, of crimes against human-

ity, and so forth, all of this must in principle find its space of unconditional discussion

and, without presupposition, its legitimate space of research and reelaboration, in the

university and, within the university, above all in the Humanities. (2002: 203)

In both these comments, Derrida refers to the term also highlighted in his title: theunconditional nature of the university’s freedom to question; and on both occa-sions, he qualifies this notion with the phrase ‘in principle’. In practice, as he is wellaware, things are rather different:

This university without conditions does not, in fact, exist, as we know only too well.

Nevertheless, in principle and in conformity to 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. (2002: 204)

What could be ‘more than critical resistance’?, we might ask. Derrida explains:

When I say ‘more than critical’, I have in mind ‘deconstructive’. (Why not just say it

directly and without wasting time?) I am referring to the right to deconstruction as an

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unconditional right to ask critical questions not only about the history of the concept

of man, but about the history even of the notion of critique, about the form and the

authority of the question, about the interrogative form of thought. (2002: 204)

And here we move onto less well-trodden ground. Derrida is clearly aware that tobring the word ‘deconstruction’ into his lecture is to risk losing some of his listeners,those whose prejudices will interfere with their attention. But there is no need to feara lurch into inscrutable and indigestible philosophizing: Derrida immediatelyexplains what he means – a deconstructive approach is, fundamentally, a willingnessto interrogate even the modes of questioning that have characterized universityresearch, taking nothing for granted in the tools employed for analysis and critique.If this means questioning the protocols of rationality as we have inherited them fromthe Enlightenment, there should be no holding back. (The essay I mentioned earlier,‘The Principle of Reason’, is partly dedicated to just such questioning.)

The sentence that follows, expanding on the notion of a deconstructive spirit inenquiry, introduces some of the key terms in Derrida’s argument, and it will behelpful to spend a little time considering a number of these terms:

For this implies the right to do it affirmatively and performatively, that is, by produ-

cing events (for example, by writing) and by giving rise to singular oeuvres (which up

to now has not been the purview of either the classical or the modern Humanities).

(2002: 204)

I’ll take some of the important phrases in these sentences one by one.

1. ‘For this implies the right to do it affirmatively and performatively’: The resist-ance to ‘all the powers of dogmatic and unjust appropriation’ that Derrida ispromoting as central to the activity of the university is not purely negative, then,but an affirmation. It would be possible to draw on Derrida’s other writings toshow that what is being affirmed in this case is the unpredictability of the future,that which arrives without having been invited – affirmation, in other words,being a form of unconditional hospitality to the other. One resists not only bycritique but also by opening up new possibilities for thought, accepting that thisis always a risky business since one cannot be sure of the value or virtue of whatwill emerge. Throughout the essay, Derrida worries away at what it might meanto ‘profess’ a university discipline, an act which he takes to be something likemaking a profession of faith – including faith in the future arrival, itself a kindof affirmation. Linked with affirmation is performativity, the characteristic of‘discourses that produce the event of which they speak’, as Derrida defines it(2002: 209). Drawing on JL Austin’s famous distinction between constative andperformative uses of language, Derrida want to stress that the work he is speak-ing of is not only a matter of producing knowledge but also, and more import-antly, of making something happen (which may well include what we havelearned to call ‘impact’).1

56 Arts & Humanities in Higher Education 13(1–2)



2. ‘that is, by producing events’: The term event is another one that plays animportant part in the discussion of the university (and, indeed, in much ofDerrida’s work). An event, in the precise sense in which Derrida uses it, is anoccurrence that exceeds any prior calculation or prediction; it takes an individ-ual or a community or the world by surprise. If Humanities professors produceevents, they do so is not entirely by the accumulation of information or theoperation of logic; though these are essential, they do not themselves culminatein the kind of breakthrough that no one could have foreseen. Affirmation andperformativity are inseparable from the event: an event in thought happensbecause the new has been affirmed, and the process of affirming the new in anevent is a performative one.

3. ‘(for example, by writing)’: To write, in this sense, is not simply to record resultsbut to create a work that has to be read and re-read in order to be fully engagedwith, a work in which the unfolding of information, the shaping of sentences, thedance of the intellect as it brings together diverse sources, are all significantelements. Writing is only one example of the various modalities of the event;it can happen in speech – the best teaching is a performative event – or in visualart or music or dance.

4. ‘and by giving rise to singular oeuvres (which up to now has not been the pur-view of either the classical or the modern Humanities)’: Derrida claims that inresisting what he has called ‘the powers of dogmatic and unjust appropriation’ –and in pursuing truth and reason as questions – a deconstructive approach willgive rise to products that do not normally figure within the outputs of researchrecognized in the Humanities, and that these may be called ‘oeuvres’, a wordwhich strongly suggest artistic or literary productions. Peggy Kamuf has decidednot to translate oeuvre by the obvious English equivalent ‘work’, partly no doubtbecause the English term is less precise than the French and partly becauseDerrida is using the term in a somewhat technical sense, usually signalled inhis text by italics. (Derrida will later devote part of the discussion to travail,another word often translated as ‘work’.) Further on in the essay, Derrida takesup the phrase ‘as if’, and his comments here help explain his focus on the oeuvre:

Does not a certain ‘as if’ mark, in thousands of ways, the structure and the mode of

being of all objects belonging to the academic field called the Humanities, whether

they be the Humanities of yesterday or today or tomorrow? . . .Couldn’t one say that

the modality of the ‘as if’ appears appropriate to what are called oeuvres, singularly

oeuvres d’art, the fine arts . . . but also, to complex degrees and according to complex

stratifications, all the discursive idealities, all the symbolic or cultural productions that

define, in the general field of the university, the disciplines said to be in the

Humanities – and even the juridical disciplines and the production of laws, and

even a certain structure of scientific objects in general? (2002: 212)

The ‘as if’ is related to the ‘perhaps’ in Derrida’s thought: the task of theHumanities – and perhaps other parts of the university too – is to imagine

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alternative possibilities to those imposed on us, to search out the cracks in theedifices of power where a handhold might allow a different view of past andfuture, and to take the risk of uncertainty and speculation. Elaborating on hiscomment, Derrida says later:

The first examples of oeuvres that come to mind are oeuvres d’art (visual, musical, or

discursive, a painting, a concerto, a poem, a novel). But since we are interrogating the

enigma of the concept of oeuvre, we would have to extend this field as soon as we tried

to discern the type of work proper to the university and especially to the Humanities.

(2002: 217)

The traditional view of university research is that its products are not oeuvres,even though, Derrida remarks, the traditional notion of ‘professing’ implies ‘pro-mising to take a responsibility that is not exhausted in the act of knowing orteaching’ (2002: 217). To be a ‘professor’ is to acknowledge one’s responsibilityto the future and for the future – a future that is not simply a repetition of the past.

We should also note the word singular – ‘giving rise to singular oeuvres’ –since it is another important aspect of the kind of university work Derrida ispromoting. The work as event, as, for instance, the writing of an essay or a bookthat calls for re-reading, that effects a change in its readers, and that opens newground for other writers, is a singular work, a work that is unlike any other – notbecause it has a unique and unchanging substance but because it deploys theshared resources of thought and language to introduce the hitherto unknownand unimaginable into the field of the known and imaginable.2

The sentence I have been glossing is followed by another one that restatesDerrida’s central point:

With the event of thought constituted by such oeuvres, it would be a matter of making

something happen to, without necessarily betraying, this concept of truth or of

humanity that forms the charter and the profession of faith of all universities.

(2002: 204)3

As we saw in the first statement I quoted, Derrida is taking very seriously here thetraditional idea that to undertake university research is to profess the truth, topromise ‘an unlimited commitment to truth’. But such a commitment means notmerely seeking for the truth as it is recognized in one’s field but in questioning thevery concept of truth to which one is committed. And the notion of ‘humanity’ –that which is at the centre of the Humanities – is also not given but a question to beexplored. What Derrida is trying to do is detach the idea of university researchfrom the idea of the production of knowledge – not that he undervalues this activ-ity, but that he sees the task of the university as more than the accumulation offacts. And it is the Humanities that are able to give (and, implicitly, have for sometime given) the lead in this wider responsibility. An important part of what weproduce in Humanities departments has affinities to the work of art, in that it arises




not only out of the discovery of new knowledge but also from the emergence ofunpredictable, unforeseen insights, and in that it is embodied not in sets of facts butin writing or other modes of signification which exceed the communication of themerely factual.

That first quotation, like the title of the essay, stresses the unconditional natureof the university’s freedom to question every ‘truth’, to resist every power thatwould limit its field of operations; but, as we have seen, Derrida acknowledgesthat in practice many conditions are placed on actual institutions. It might seemthat the notion of unconditional freedom operates as an ideal to which universitiesshould aspire; however, if we turn to a number of other topics where Derrida hasdetected a similar contrast between the unconditional and the conditional or con-ditioned, we find a more intimate relation between the two, albeit a relation thattests the capacities of the language in which it has to be described. Unconditionalhospitality, for instance, enters into the conditional hospitality that takes place inthe real world; acts of giving and forgiving are informed by their unconditionaltwins; the operation of law is only just if it takes place in the context of uncondi-tional justice.

Derrida ends his essay with ‘seven theses, seven propositions, or seven profes-sions of faith’, six of which are designed to recapitulate his arguments and theseventh to ‘attempt a step beyond the six others towards a dimension of theevent and of the taking place that I have yet to speak of’ (2002: 230). The seventhpoint broaches the subject of the impossible, a subject Derrida treated in manyplaces. (‘Deconstruction is the experience of the impossible’ was one of his favour-ite maxims.) As long as it deals only with the possible, that is, the university islimited to the accumulation of knowledge and the elaboration of theories; to bringoeuvres into being, to encourage events to take place, it has to open itself to theimpossible, that which is not accessible or conceptualizable within the possible.This can only happen if its work is inspired by, underwritten by, impelled by – mylanguage begins to break down here, as Derrida’s does at similar moments – theforce of the unconditional, the power of thought that recognizes no bounds.

Derrida reveals a degree of optimism about the direction in which universitiesare going – ‘there are many signs that this work has already begun’, he says (2002:230). Yet the evidence all around us points in the opposite direction. Every year theHumanities are pressed more and more insistently into a shape borrowed from thesciences – and not the sciences as Derrida envisages them, fostering the emergenceof the oeuvre, but as the domain of the production of knowledge by the accumu-lation of information. To make matters worse, instead of a risky opening to thefuture, to what Derrida calls the ‘as if’ and the ‘perhaps’, research in theHumanities, as elsewhere, is understood as having value only if it is economicvalue. But perhaps there are grounds for some optimism: in spite of these unpro-pitious conditions, creativity continues to flourish, and academics in theHumanities – and not only in the Humanities – continue to write, in Derrida’ssense of the word, rather than merely report facts. Derrida himself was, of course,an outstanding example of such a writer, and this essay is surely an example of

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an oeuvre. Whether or not it is, Derrida would insist, whether or not it makessomething happen, is in the hands of its readers. At the very end of the lecture,he poses a series of questions:

I especially do not know the status, genre, or legitimacy of the discourse that I have

just addressed to you. Is it academic? Is it a discourse of knowledge in the Humanities

or on the subject of the Humanities? Is it knowledge only? Only a performative pro-

fession of faith? Does it belong to the inside of the university? Is it philosophy, or

literature, or theater? Is it a work, une oeuvre, or a course, or a kind of seminar?

(2002: 237)

By focusing on just a few of the many resonant sentences in this essay, I have triedto do justice to one or two strands in the weave, one or two moves in the dance,that contribute to what I certainly experience, each time I read it, as an event, anoeuvre, a welcoming of the future and the impossible.

Notes

1. A classic example of a performative utterance is the prince who says ‘I name this ship . . .’.

Later in the essay, Derrida scrutinizes the concept of the performative, detaching it froman association with an idea of ‘sovereignty’; that is, he finds that the accepted concept,with its picture of a sovereign subject in command of what he produces, fails to account

for the uncontrollability of the ‘event’ (for which see phrase (2)).2. I have attempted to elaborate on this point in The Singularity of Literature (Attridge,

2004). The work of art – and this need not be limited to works that fall under theconventional definition of ‘art’ – is created when the artist finds a way of articulating

what has until then been unarticulable because unthinkable and unimaginable, and doingso not as new knowledge but as a work that is open to a future of readings (or viewings orhearings). When a work lasts, it is because those who engage with it later experience it as

an event that introduces into their familiar world of thought and feeling an othernessthat, in some way, small or large, changes them. What Derrida in this essay is calling anoeuvre is a singular creation of this sort.

3. Translation slightly modified in the interests of clarity.

References

Attridge D (2004) The Singularity of Literature. London: Routledge.Derrida J (2001) L’Universite sans condition. Paris: Galilee.Derrida J (2002) The university without condition. In: Kamuf P (ed and transl) Without

Alibi. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp.202–237.Derrida J (2004) Eyes of the University: Right to Philosophy 2 (transl Plug J, et al.) Stanford:

Stanford University Press.




Author biography

Derek Attridge’s books include Peculiar Language: Literature as Difference fromthe Renaissance to James Joyce, The Singularity of Literature, J. M. Coetzee and theEthics of Reading: Literature in the Event, Reading and Responsibility:Deconstruction’s Traces, and, most recently, Moving Words: Forms of EnglishPoetry. Among his edited or co-edited volumes are Acts of Literature (a collectionof essays by Jacques Derrida), The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce, Theoryafter ‘Theory’, and The Cambridge History of South African Literature. He is aProfessor in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University ofYork and a Fellow of the British Academy.

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