08 Higher Education Reading Group
Notes: Derrida, J. (2001). The future of the profession or the university without condition (thanks to the “Humanities,” what could take place tomorrow). Jacques Derrida and the humanities: A critical reader, 24-57.
Derrida opens his discussion with what he calls a “profession of faith”: faith in the university and, within it, faith in the Humanities of tomorrow . The modern university, he insists, should be “without condition.” This means it must enjoy unconditional freedom to question, to assert, and above all to say everything required by research, knowledge, and thought—even what disturbs power or convention . The Humanities carry this responsibility most directly, for they have long been tied to truth, to light, and to the human itself.
But what does it mean to “profess”? Derrida recalls that professio originally meant to declare openly, often in the form of a vow or sworn faith . To profess is not simply to demonstrate expertise or knowledge; it is to pledge, to promise, and to assume responsibility before others. Thus, the professor does not merely transmit doctrine but commits himself or herself in a performative act. This links the profession of professor to the profession of faith. Every declaration in this sense exceeds the constative register of mere knowledge and belongs also to the performative, to the realm of the promise .
Derrida carefully distinguishes travail (work), craft, profession, and the role of the professor. Not all work is recognized as a profession: students, for example, work tirelessly but are not counted as “workers” unless their activity enters the market, usually through a wage. We also discussed the conflation between safety and comfortable within a university, by students. A profession, by contrast, implies a freely undertaken responsibility, a duty nearly sworn under oath. The physician, lawyer, or professor belongs to this category, where competence is bound up with a pledge of responsibility . The professor stands out again: not every professional is a professor, but the professor both professes doctrine and may also sign oeuvres, works that endure and transform .
This leads to the tension between constative and performative discourse. The classical university was defined as the place of constative knowledge: theoretical, descriptive, and explanatory . Yet professing is unavoidably performative; it is an act that produces events and shapes futures. The Humanities, then, are the privileged site where this tension is explored, for they engage not only in the study of literature, philosophy, law, and history, but also in the production of works that blur boundaries between knowledge and creation. So yes, maybe this could be dismissed as “navel-gazing”, but reformulated it is asking the constant question of what it means to be “human” and “free”.
Derrida insists that the university’s freedom—its “academic immunity”—must be affirmed and defended, though never as a closed or self-protective neutrality . Rather, the university must expose itself to the world, negotiating its place amidst political, economic, and cultural forces. Deconstruction here plays a role of resistance, a kind of civil disobedience in the name of justice, ensuring the Humanities remain a site of dissidence and transformation. Here, academic freedom, maybe not strictly speaking be the freedom to say everything, but to question every form of knowlegde.
