From performativity to Aporia: taking ‘tremendous responsibility’ towards feminism and the university

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to contribute to the thinking on feminism’s past and present entanglement with the university and strives to imagine its future. Through a close reading of the opening passage of Derrida’s essay ‘Mochlos, or The Conflict of the Faculties’, I trace ‘a university responsibility’ which does not lead to a subject conceived as self-identical. Drawing on the works of Hemmings, Scott and Wiegman, I argue that we must assume responsibility which will make us, feminism and the university tremble. This paper argues that envisioning feminist responsibilities as tremendous will allow us to conceive feminism as non-identical to itself and beyond the prerequisite of the sovereign (feminist) subject. Taking tremendous responsibilities will, as Hemmings proposes, help us create feminist narratives which will be potentially more politically transformative.

KEYWORDS:

• Derrida
• feminist theory
• performativity
• responsibility
• the university

Acknowledgements

I wish to express my gratitude to Griselda Pollock, Eric Prenowitz, Angie Voela, the participants of the symposium ‘Feminist Readings’ held at The Centre of Women’s and Gender Studies, Paris VIII Vincennes-Saint-Denis in 2015, and the anonymous reviewers of the article for their helpful comments and assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. As Hélène Cixous famously wrote: ‘Let the priests tremble, we’re going to show them our sexts!’ (1976, 885).

2. Most of Derrida’s work on the question of the university and education, such as essays, interviews, talks and reports, are collected in a book entitled Du droit à la philosophie [Right to Philosophy] (1990) which has been translated to English as a 2 Volume work Who’s Afraid of Philosophy? Right to Philosophy 1 (2002b) and Eyes of The University: Right to Philosophy 2 (2004).

3. As Anne Emmanuelle Berger shows with her analysis (2014), gender has been theorised from the very beginning both in America since the 1950s (by John Money, Robert Stoller, Esther Newton and Erving Goffman) and in France (by Jacques Lacan who drew on Joan Riviere’s notion of feminine masquerade) as ‘performative’ or ‘performance’.

4. Its uniqueness is implied by the finitude of human beings, for in death no substitution is possible – no one can die in the place of the other (Derrida 1995, 42).