Reading the Sexual Economy of Academic Freedom with Sarah Kofman and Jacques Derrida: A Feminist Deconstruction of Kant's Concept of the University

ABSTRACT

This article revisits Sarah Kofman and Jacques Derrida's work on Immanuel Kant in order to contribute to the theorisations of the ethics and politics of sexuality at universities today. It asks: how does phallogocentrism operate in the discourse of the university which we have inherited from Kant? And how can an understanding of the sexual forces woven into this discourse help us unravel and complicate the paradoxes that currently define the concept and the practice of academic freedom? By interrogating academic freedom from within an analysis of the university's sexual economy, this article aims to contribute to feminist critique with a view to renewing university discourses and practices. It shows that the contract between the nation state and scholars upon which the university is founded is not only financial or sociopolitical but also sexual. It argues that academic freedom must be conceived not as a university subject's right to speak or act freely but as a continuous ethical relationship to others – where a critique of the university's alleged sexual indifference remains paramount.

KEYWORDS:

• Corporate university
• academic freedom
• feminist deconstruction
• Sarah Kofman
• sexual difference
• Immanuel Kant
• Jacques Derrida

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Acknowledgements

This article was written as a part of Australian Feminist Studies’ Mentoring Programme for New Academic Writers. I am grateful to Editors-in-Chief, Lisa Adkins and Maryanne Dever, Fiona Jenkins, the anonymous reviewers, and the participants of research seminars at the Institute for Gender Studies at the University of South Africa and the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds for their valuable comments and advice, and to Premesh Lalu for sharing his work on the (post)colonial university with me.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 For recent work on the university from within feminist deconstruction see also Pulkkinen (2015), Vráblíková (2016), Ziarek (2017).

2 For a deliberation on mistresses/master coupling that leaves open the question of the possibility of transformative power reversals in relation to feminist politics see Grosz (1990). Similarly to Grosz, my intention is not to decide on this matter but rather help open up a space to theorise how the ways in which phallogocentrism manifests in the current university can be contested.

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Lenka Vráblíková

Lenka Vráblíková works in feminist theory, critical university studies, European continental philosophy (mainly deconstruction), and visual studies. She is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of English Studies at the University of South Africa (UNISA) and a Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds. In 2016 she co-founded Sdružení Feministického Čtení/Feminist Readings Network and her work has been published in journals such as Gender and Education, parallax and Journal of Visual and Cultural Studies.