Traces 5: Universities in Translation: The Mental Labour of Globalization

The University Without Wall: Jewish Studies, Holocaust Studies, Israel Studies

The University Without Wall T R A C E S : 5 229 The universiTy wiThouT wall: Jewish sTudies, holocausT sTudies, israel sTudies Gil anidJar and this is the problem, that of the breach in the university’s system, in the internal coherence of its concept. For there may be no inside possible for the university, and no internal coherence for its concept. — Jacques Derrida The tension between closure and openness thus characterizes the university both in its social function and its epistemic practice. But, although it is endemic to universities as institutions involved in the acquisition of knowledge, the degree and intensity it can attain varies with the particular situation of universities. — Samuel Weber Invoking the circumstances of a Cornell lecture he gave on the subject of the University, its pupils, and “the principle of reason,” Jacques Derrida recalled in a belated footnote one question among others, which he had raised and found neither possible nor desirable to erase. “Must barriers be built?” Derrida asked at the time.1 I fear it may be in bad taste, even disingenuous, to quote Derrida at once out of context and very much in context, in the very geographical and institutional context, in fact, in which he then spoke.2 Although today more than ever it should be a resounding question, “Must barriers be built?” was only one question among others accompanying Derrida’s query for that 1983 lecture: Gil Anidjar 230 T R A C E S : 5 “How not to speak today of the university?”3 At the time, and today more than ever, it is as if — Derrida treats it as if — both questions (the barrier and the university) had a similar import; as if the issue of the university in translation, the global and globalized university and its mission, had to begin (or to persist in its being) by invoking the matter of barriers, of fences, and of walls — three terms that have become increasingly euphemistic, and strangely synonymic. Not surprisingly, Derrida also situates these matters in the neighborhood of life and death — something that raises the stakes of what counts here as bad taste, and more relevantly, as bad political taste. These days, every day feels like bad taste day. There was tragedy, there was farce, and then there was “the American century.” This is hardly an apology — too many would be required — but it will have to do. Must barriers be built, then? Must walls?4 Are there, can, and should there be universities without walls? Such questions have already been answered, of course, in the affirmative and on numerous occasions, and the development of the World Wide Web, along with globalization, makes obvious the increasingly appealing nature of such virtual institutions within the world of higher education and beyond, within the State and beyond (the problem, Derrida explains, anticipating as he often does the context in which we cannot avoid reading him today, “cannot always — cannot any longer — be reduced to a political problematic centered on the State, but on multinational military-industrial complexes or techno-economic networks, indeed international techno-military networks that are apparently multi- or trans-national in form”).5 And yet, without being too facile, universities without walls also signal towards the walls of the university, external and internal walls, effective or ineffective, concealing or self-concealing walls. In translation, at any rate, in globalization, and in the university (in other words, within), we are left at best with reason to doubt that, real or alleged, the absence of walls — which is to say, all too often, their hidden presence and effects — promotes the flow of knowledge, or that such flow is more deserving of celebration than the flow of power as Zygmunt Bauman was recently describing it. Concerned with what he calls “liquid modernity,” Bauman asserts with some assurance that “for power to be free to flow, the world must be free of fences, barriers, fortified borders and checkpoints.”6 Let us agree that this remains to be seen. By the eyes of the university, perhaps.7 The University Without Wall T R A C E S : 5 231 The remarks I wish to offer here are however not meant as a judgment on the general validity of Bauman’s statement (written in 1999, it is still recent, but also terribly old), much less on the inherent value of walls, or of individual fields of study. Besides, things have...