The University Without Condition 5
Derrida’s Insights for Today’s World
Here is the fifth reading post on L’université sans condition (2001), translated into English in 2002 as The University Without Condition.
The previous ones have been gathered with my other Substack writings on Derrida, which you can find here: Derrida.
Derrida starts this new chapter with the following thought:
As if, we said at the beginning, the end of work were the origin of the world.
Let us say “as if”: as if the world began where work ended. As if the globalization of the world (…) had both as its horizon and its origin the disappearance of what we call “work.” (Derrida, 2001, p. 51)
Here, “work” refers to an effective and actual activity. The “as if” does not refer to science fiction or ancient memory. In both views, it is as if the beginning of the world excluded work from the beginning.
With his “as if,” Derrida proposes that the world and the work can coexist. However, this is not easy, since, as he notes, both words are charged with a signification and history that are morally and religiously influenced.
He pursues:
No, this “as if” should not refer to the utopia or improbable future of science fiction, nor to the mythological dream of an immemorial or mythological past in illo tempore. This “as if” takes into account, in the present, two commonplaces of today in order to test them: on the one hand, we often talk about the end of work, and on the other hand, we also often talk about the globalization of the world, about the world becoming global. And we always associate one with the other. (Derrida, 2001, p. 54)
According to Derrida, the idea of the “end of work,” borrowed from Jeremy Rifkin’s The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era, should warn us that something crucial is coming, regardless of one’s thoughts on Rifkin’s analysis and conclusions.
Derrida notes that this change stems from a techno-scientific transformation. The internet and related technologies — as well as AI in our time —, have transformative power over the world and work. We should be aware of and warn about this transformation.
Drawing on Rifkin’s explanations, Derrida writes:
In the past, when new technologies replaced workers in a particular sector, new spaces appeared to absorb the workers who lost their jobs. But today, as agriculture, industry, and services lay off millions of people due to technological progress, the only category spared would be that of “knowledge,” a “small elite of industrial innovators, scientists, technicians, computer scientists, intellectuals with various qualifications, teachers, and consultants.” But this remains a narrow space, incapable of absorbing the mass of unemployed people. Such is the dangerous singularity of our time. (Derrida, 2001, p. 57)
He is, of course, aware of the conceptual difficulties of expressions such as “the end of work” and of the concept of “work” itself. His point is to demonstrate that a significant event is occurring that is profoundly altering our world. (Even though Rifkin does not mention it, there is also a troubling precarization of work at universities, especially in the humanities.)
However, according to the French philosopher, such rhetoric obscures the populations, nations, groups, classes, and people around the world who are victims of this transformation. In other words, big words hide people’s suffering.
Some people are talking about the end of work. Yet, for many, the issue is finding work, preferably good, well-paid work.
Derrida continues with an extensive digression on historian Jacques Le Goff’s analysis of time and work in the Middle Ages. The point is to show that one of the tasks of the Humanities is to engage in endless discussion of their own history.
This deconstructive task of the Humanities is not only the responsibility of specialized university departments. Borders should be crossed.
This does not only mean doing interdisciplinary work. Often, people who discuss interdisciplinarity forget that having a core field of research and inquiry is essential.
It is about having a curiosity toward other fields, engaging in dialogue with others, and being concerned with what is to come. For Derrida, this is not only one of the major tasks of the Humanities, but also a way to address the challenges posed by changing work environments and work content, as well as the transformation of the world itself.
Next time, we will begin reading the fourth chapter of the text together. Consider becoming a paid subscriber to support such a reading.