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Determining the Undetermined: Derrida's "University Without Condition"
- Eighteenth-Century Studies
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 40, Number 3, Spring 2007
- pp. 425-441
- 10.1353/ecs.2007.0032
- Article
- Additional Information
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In "The University Without Condition" Derrida imagines a university-to-come. His projection repeats familiar Enlightenment theses concerning freedom of thought. But his insistence upon the university's exemption from conditions bleeds over into the way he conceptualizes his own argument. He renounces any account of determinations and interests in the formation both of the university and of those who would inhibit its freedom. This leaves him with no means to explain how the university-to-come could be freed from these constraints, and limits him to a technology of miracles as the only cognizable means for achieving the changes he so fervently wishes for.