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Jaskiren Gill

CSCT 701

Professor David Clark

April 23, 2010

Asystasy: The Juridical University

In the first part of his work “The University: A Place to Think?” fittingly entitled “Alibis”1, Roger Simon

unpacks a question that can be traced from Lyotard to Readings: “What is called thinking? is never

simply a rhetorical question” (Readings, 161). Simon responds by carefully tracing the modus operandi

that must be considered in tandem with pedagogical practices in the university: “What this means is

that we cannot begin a grounded discussion of issues of pedagogy and the thought pursuant to its

various forms without acknowledging something of the ongoing contemporary (re)-structuring of the

institutional character of the university.” (3,4). Simon cracks open an entry point into the structural

edifice of the university, one that must be considered with the pedagogical edifices of the university.

The university, as presented by many of the rigorous thinkers on this course can be said to exist within

and between many aporias- between the University in Ruins as suggested by Readings, or the University

to Come as formulated by Jacques Derrida, a university rent into many parts by the Kantian “Conflict of

the Faculties”, or as a realm that ought to be “taken back” which is rallied for by Henry and Susan

Giroux.

I anxiously construct the university in the form of a Juridical University, that is, one superimposed and

saturated with a juridical framework that permeates every level of its operation. I construct it anxiously,

for I feel I cannot pin it down or name it as such, because it continually shifts from me. Moreover this

anxiety is spurred on in the Derridean way, as I acknowledge that the institution is at play here in my

very work. Still, I attempt an interruption or disruption, a rewriting that will hopefully address, as Simon

1 Given that I propose to present the nature of the university and this paper as steeped within a juridical framework

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has suggested, “a grounded discussion” that enables new avenues of thought on the “(re)-structuring of

the institutional character of the university”.

I argue that the University of Excellence -exemplified by increased corporatization and reordering of

University “priorities”- posited by Readings can alternatively be understood as the Juridical University,

predicated on the frameworks of the traditionally understood judicial system (as in, court of law) that

are thought to be separate and “outside” of the university, but instead prevail throughout it. My

examination shall take place in three movements. First, I shall meditate on how we can understand the

extent to which the juridical constructs and is constructed by the university. Second, I shall analyse how

performativity and speech acts operate in the Juridical University. Lastly, I will contemplate future

directions for the Juridical University. In my examination, I will discuss the symptoms and manifestations

of a Juridical University, as exemplified through speech-acts and performativity, understood through the

lens of Judith Butler as iterative and reiterative performances. I also attempt to figure the Juridical

University into the discussions on normative performances of education, teaching, and learning sparked

by Deborah Britzman, Bill Readings, and Henry and Susan Giroux to name a few. The Juridical University

cannot be considered a complete or finite entity, for it is fractured and disturbed by the continually

shifting purpose and instrumentalization, and as Readings and Rajan suggest, dereferentialization, of

Excellence, Cultural Studies, and the university itself. Rather, I am attempting to cast and reveal the

university in a juridical sense to grasp hold of it, and render it in a way that allows me to bring to light

pertinent and contentious issues that are informed by the university. In this sense, then, the Juridical

University is my Mochlos. One such pertinent and contentious issue is that of the open letter submitted

by sixteen professors to the President of the University of Regina in March of this year, which I shall

return to. Moreover, I hope through my discussion to disrupt the “knowability” of a university that is

superimposed with a juridical framework, to engage with the relentlessly asked question of what the

university’s reason is for being. I encounter the usual difficulty in an examination such as this- how is it

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possible to render the university within a framework and yet disrupt that framework- is my analysis not

of the same framework? I cannot disrupt it, and yet I must attempt, we must attempt, for I see

enormous transgressive potential in continually refiguring the university as necessary questions arise

from the university.

The Juridical in the University

How is the university legislated firstly, and secondly, legislated to those who flow within and outside of

its walls? I continually return to this notion of legality, law, and the juridical as a semblance of the

university. Legality forms a continuousness in the shape of multiple threads that can be traced from

juridical institutions as we know them, the gullies and rills of power as Foucault would suggest, to the

university, in effect superimposing on the university a juridical framework, (traceable through

performances, speech acts, and the operation of what Bill Readings calls the “University of Excellence”).

I bear in mind throughout my examinations two key thoughts about our roles in the university- firstly,

that it is our right to be uncomfortable, and in tandem with that, it is also our responsibility to be

uncomfortable.

Illocutionary speech acts performed within the university - particularly the conferral of a degree - speak

to it as the echo of a juridical power and legal space where other illocutionary speech acts are

performed (weddings- the legal bond between two people, courtrooms where people are pronounced

guilty). The very language used within the university as we know it speaks to the infiltration of the

juridical, for example, one must “defend” one’s thesis. Even interpretations of how the university ought

to operate are presented in a “law” like fashion- take Stanley Fish for example. He offers three “rules”

that teachers ought to follow to conform with, certainly, the idea of the Juridical University, one that is

inflected to its core by legality: “[I'd like to] rehearse for your readers the three-part mantra which

organizes the book: Do your job, don't try to do someone else's job and don't let anyone else do your

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job. And I think that if we as instructors ... would adhere to that mantra, we would be more responsible

in the prosecution of our task […]” (Fish, Interview with Andy Guess). Firstly, there is the way in which

Fish rattles off these “rehearsed” mantras. His rote pronouncements recall the way one would, say,

remember laws, rights, or amendments (particularly in the U.S.- let us not forget Ann Coulter’s

reactionary invocation of the U.S.’s First Amendment after her visit to Canada this year). Secondly, the

content of Fish’s mantras excludes the possibility of multiple performances within the university which

does not account for the continually flexing shape and mode of the university. Thirdly and lastly, Fish’s

appeal to the “prosecution” of an instructor’s task is clearly steeped in juridical language- related

particularly to the relations to pedagogy within a classroom, and the teaching-learning relation amongst

students and educators. Moreover, in the introduction to the interview, Fish states that: [Professors]

can (legitimately) do two things: (1) introduce students to bodies of knowledge and traditions of inquiry

that had not previously been part of their experience; and (2) equip those same students with the

analytical skills -- of argument, statistical modeling, laboratory procedure -- that will enable them to

move confidently within those traditions and to engage in independent research after a course is over."

(Italics added). Although he gestures at a vision of the student-educator relationship, the fact that he

prefaces his considerations of the classroom with the word “legitimately” immediately brings to mind

that there are, then, ways of “illegitimately” doing and saying in the classroom. Fish creates a legalistic

binary that he ties directly to the classroom and what he supposes are “legitimate” (corresponding with

the law and therefore reason) ways of being in the university. This type of legitimizing discourse limits

the performative potentialities that could be found or interpreted in the university. To suggest that

there are only two “legitimate” ways for professors to operate or perform in classrooms also narrows

the scope of interpreting potential performances- it is a simple lens that does not account for the

multiplicities inevitable in performativity in the classroom, by both students and educators.

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Further, and in a more directly obvious sense, we cannot ignore the distinct bond between universities

and the “outside” judicial system, as highlighted by Henry and Susan Giroux in Take Back Higher

Education. Supreme Court Rulings such as Brown V. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954 speak to the

entrenchment of the educational system with the judicial system (197, 198). In this small section of their

book, the language the Girouxs use is inflected by juridical norms: “All of which is to say that there might

be no cause for a debate over alleged racial preferences now or in 25 years, as Justice O’Connor fancies

[...]” (197). The mode of discussion proffered by the Girouxs speaks to the pervasiveness of legal

rhetoric in discussions of the university, as they offer an archive of cases or “precedents” to support

their contentions on the failings of education and court systems when it comes to affirmative action. In

effect, there is a continual, nervous, return to judiciaries, laws, and the juridical within and in discussions

of the university. To be sure, some of these examples are necessary to convey the travesties of judicial

systems that exclude whole demographics of potential students, however, I wish simply to highlight the

pervasive presence of the judicial in academic work and institutions. While this presence can allow for a

great many advances in education (such as desegregation), its manifestation through the rhetoric of

people like Fish can curtail the potential of engaging political discourse enabled through counter-

normative (or counter-juridical) notions.

Let us delve deeper into the notion of a Juridical University, through the conceptual lens Shoshana

Felman offers us in The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century. Felman

focuses primarily on the O.J. Simpson trial in the mid 1990’s in the U.S, however her theoretical

framework applies to the Juridical University I have conjured up thus far. Felman describes the

courtroom as a place where the collective trauma of trials is enacted over and over again (reiterated)

and so the trauma is a continual echo of itself as it goes through time. More specifically, Felman asserts

that “Legal memory is constituted [...] not just by the “chain of law” and by the conscious repetition of

precendents but also by a forgotten chain of cultural wounds and by compulsive or unconscious legal

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repetitions of traumatic, wounding, legal cases.” (57). In this illuminating way, Felman brings to the fore

a vision of the “repressed of the juridical institution”. (57). How does the “repressed of the juridical

institution” manifest itself in the Juridical University? Felman’s argument operates by the Freudian

notion of “repression”, which consists of an anxious and continual return to that which has been

“forgotten”. The Juridical University, then, is one which continually returns to repressed traumas,

remembering in the mode of forgetting. These traumas are vicissitudes of teacher-student relations, the

collective trauma of a class gone “awry”, the struggle with the question of excellence, and so many

more. A specific trauma I shall explore to come is that of the letter sent to the President of the

University of Regina by a group of Professors earlier this year. Arguably, the trauma of the university

will be reiterated again and again until there is a disruption, a performance by

teacher/student/administrator that reckons the trauma. Britzman explores this trauma through James

Baldwin’s experience speaking to a group of teachers: “The trauma of education is its incapacity to

respond adequately to its own history of ‘bad faith and cruelty’ “(52). As Britzman states, this trauma is

due to “educational design” and not an “education gone wrong” (52). Through the scope of

psychoanalysis, Britzman gives us a language with which to grasp educational trauma as it is repeatedly

performed in the classroom and society more broadly. The Juridical University is one which ardently

regulates performance through statutes and allowable speech, and in doing so refuses to acknowledge

its educational design. Moreover, there is also the specific trauma that occurs year after year as

students and educators alike come into contact with difficult texts surrounded by “belatedness”, which

occurs when working through a text that induces mourning. Britzman insightfully comments that

“Perhaps this time of belatedness, when learning is made from loss, makes learning from difficult

knowledge so difficult” (118). How are we to learn from difficult knowledge and confront difficulty of

“learning from difficult knowledge”? I suggest one avenue of potential is performativity.

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Performativity

Let us begin our discussion of performativity in the Juridical University with a definition of the

performative offered by Judith Butler: “The performative is not only a ritual practice: it is one of the

influential rituals by which subjects are formed and reformulated.” (Butler, 160). As Butler points out,

we must immediately understand the performative beyond the rituals that implicate students,

educators and administrators as part of the blueprint for the Juridical University. Their performances

constitute and re-constitute them as subjects.

At the basic level, a university understood in juridical terms also speaks to the stratification of

administrative tasks, where professors who perform as educators also have to perform as

administrators, through the iteration and reiteration of specific modes of administrative or teaching

duties respectively. If we recall Stanley Fish’s “rules” for educators, and imagine professors who adhere

to such “legitimate” ways of being within and outside of a classroom, we can then imagine the damaging

performances that could curtail political pedagogy in higher education. The skeleton of performance

that Fish sketches out reads like law- it is expected that one should perform exactly and therefore

legitimately, the rules he suggests. If this process unfolds as Fish wishes, then to adhere to Butler’s idea,

the professor would constitute herself as a subject of the Juridical University- a university informed by

and complicit in the reproduction of normatively legalistic practices. The flux of performativity,

however, ensures that a performance is a liminal space for other, varied performances. The subject can

reconstitute herself, and thus enact performances that do address politico-pedagogical relations with

other educators and students. Ergo, even within the Juridical University, there is hope and potential for

the continuous evolvement and refiguring of subjects and rigorous and necessary political discourse.

We ought, however, to parse political discourse from politicizing discourse. The Girouxs make this

helpful distinction for us. According to them, political education “[...] situates education not within the

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imperatives of specialization and professionalization, but within a project designed to expand the

possibilities of democracy by linking education to modes of political agency that promote critical

citizenship and engage the ethical imperative to alleviate human suffering.” (118). Conversely,

politicizing education “silences in the name of orthodoxy and imposes itself on students while

undermining dialogue, deliberation and critical engagement. Politicizing education is often grounded in

a combination of selfrighteousness and ideological purity that silences students as it imposes ‘correct

positions.’ “(118). Thus, even though we can attempt to account for varying performances in the

general practices of performativity, there are still numerous distinctions between the different types of

political discourse that could be carried out by an educator. To follow Fish’s three “laws”, would be to

further and reiterate the Juridical University through the perpetration of “correct positions”. To

question Fish, to foster political education, and to consider what modes of being would be pursuant to

his notions of a good educator, would be to look toward the University to Come.

In D.M.R. Bentley’s “Research-Teaching: the Fundamental Business of Canadian Universities”, I found a

particularly striking passage which reveals the University of Western Ontario’s Conditions of

Appointment: "[t]he criteria for evaluating the candidate's record shall be: (a) Performance in teaching

and associated activities.... (b) Performance in research, performance in scholarly activity, and..., where

appropriate, performance in the fine and performing arts...[and] (c) Performance in general

contributions to the University, the academic profession, and the community... Each candidate for

promotion and/or tenure is expected to establish a record of performance in (a), and (b) and in (c).

Normally, the significance accorded to (a) and (b) relative to each other should be approximately equal

and individually greater than that for (c) (6).” 2(italics added). The iteration and reiteration of the word

“performance” here is striking. We can view this iteration as regulated, that is, an example of the

Juridical University, one that anxiously assigns roles and “performances” to its educators. This regulated

2 http://www.canadianpoetry.ca/research_training.htm#4

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iteration also holds an expectation of archived performances that can be mapped out to guarantee

tenure or promotion (progress is ensured if the correct procedure is followed). These assigned

“performances” are imbued with expectations according to precedents of performances of teaching.

The framework that holds these precedents accountable for their own replication is distinctly juridical in

its focus on precedent. Let us take this set of Conditions for Appointment and imbue it anew, with the

potential of varied, provocative, self-reflexive (without being privatizing) performances, nay,

performativity. Let us also extend these categories to students, to demand active performances in

research, scholarly “activity”3, contributions to the University, and the community. Moreover, we

cannot forget that the dynamic roles of students as educators- of themselves, each other, and at times,

undergraduates- includes them in the regulatory hold of the Juridical University.

One complication of multiple roles performed by those who inhabit the university is most readily

understood through the lens of Readings: “The administrator will have been a student and a professor in

his time, of course, but the challenge of the contemporary University is addressed to him as

administrator.” (Introduction, 9). Of course, in the university as we know it (or attempt to know it),

many individuals actively perform many roles simultaneously, depending on the context. Thus, we shall

have to consider not only what performances are enacted and occupied within the university, but that

concerns are addressed to those caught in certain performances at the time of the address. 4 In

particular, there is the concern of educability and learning addressed to the teacher-subject.

3 The responsibility of Scholarly activity, in fact, encompasses these categories itself.4 Let us also consider the performativity of even specific theorists and their texts. Tilottama Rajan alludes to this in her article “In the Wake of Cultural Studies”, in a dialogue about the changes in the way different theories have been represented over time in American philosophy departments: “[...]hence the survival of a Derrida very different from the one who made an impact in the seventies.” (p. 2) What does it mean to say that a “different” Derrida survives now, than before? This hints at the very crux of performative practices in interpreting and re-presenting texts from decade to decade- a temporal aspect of performativity that recalls Derrida’s “Double Bind” from “Mochlos: The Eyes of the University”.

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As each performance differs slightly from the last there must be space for reimagination and resignifying

practices. Deborah Britzman asks us to reimagine what the role of the student and the teacher are, and

to figure them as continually shifting. It is pertinent to such refigurings of both students and educators

to consider the civic and intellectual responsibility that performing “outside” of the legitimate/juridical

(and therefore speakable in the Juridical University) requires. This opens up a new avenue of discussion,

particularly in reference to the Professors at the University of Regina who voiced their concerns over the

inclusion of “Project Hero” scholarships in the university’s mandate. I have been in contact with three of

the sixteen professors5, Emily Eaton, Darlene Jushka, and Joyce Green. Each of these professors has

kindly sent me some of their reflections on their experience before, during, and after submitting the

open letter to University of Regina President, Vianne Timmons.

The Open Letter

The professors stated specifically in their open letter that: “In our view, support for "Project Hero"

represents a dangerous cultural turn. It associates "heroism" with the act of military intervention. It

erases the space for critical discussion of military policy and practices. In signing on to "Project Hero",

the university is implicated in the disturbing construction of the war in Afghanistan by Western military-

and state-elites as the "good war" of our epoch. We insist that our university not be connected with the

increasing militarization of Canadian society and politics.” 6 Britzman succinctly captures what these

professors aimed to do in speaking the unspeakable: “We might say that existential anxiety, or the

capacity for agony and concern, provides a possibility within which one attempts to do less harm in

uncertainty, to risk the love of learning.” (43). These professors exhibit the “capacity for agony and

5 Interestingly, none of these daring academics come directly from the Humanities- what does this say about the state of the Humanities and the questions Humanities faculty members are willing to address directly in such a manner, particularly in relation to the increased militarization of the academy?6 Taken from http://www.leaderpost.com/news/Letter+from+University+Regina+professors+opposed+Project+Hero+scholarships/2730833/story.html

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concern” and risked themselves, encountering persecution, for the “love of learning”. However, for

their efforts, these professors have encountered the following, in the words of Joyce Green and Darlene

Juschka:

“What followed was a media feeding frenzy that mostly misrepresented our position, and a week of the

worst sort of national attention for us and for the University. Despite several of us doing numerous

interviews, most media focussed on the erroneous notion that our opposition is to soldiers being

considered heros; and to parentless children being given education assistance. Those of us who signed

the letter have been subjected to virulent hate mail and argument by decibels and epithet. The language

of many of our critics would make a stevedore blush and a grammarian wince.” 7 As we can see, what

the professors said versus what they were accused of has been spliced in ways that adhere to what is

speakable according not only to the Juridical University, but a society founded on “laws” of speakability.

It is necessary to recount and work through the trauma of this experience as this essay itself is a mode

of learning. Can we accept the trauma of the professors’ experience? Can we come to terms with the

vicissitudes of hate in learning? Darlene Juschka informed me in an email that the Globe and Mail did

not wish to address their amendment to their original open letter, until: “[...]we included in the email

the Ontario Press Commission (who then responded)[and then] the G & M [Globe and Mail] grudgingly

published a 200 word rejoinder to their misrepresentation of us.” The fact that it took the inclusion of a

regulatory governmental body in the very email that they sent to the Globe and Mail for the newspaper

to pay attention shows the extent to which “legitimacy” (in a legal sense) pervades the public and media

psyche. Moreover, the vitriolic reactions of both the media and the individuals who sent “hate mail” to

the professors (as indicated by Darlene Jusckha in a radio interview with Alert Radio) speaks to what

happens when professors attempt to disrupt the intricately woven frameworks of legality in the

university and beyond by addressing policy and policy processes. The performances of these professors

7 Sent in an email to me from Emily Eaton, copied from the Leader Post.

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as concerned and engaged civic actors sparked massive debate, stemming from their speech-act, the

open letter. While the speech-act allows for enormous potential, there are imminent dangers

associated with it as well. Take for example what Butler states about speech and conduct: “The collapse

of speech into conduct, and the concomitant occlusion of the gap between them, tends to support the

case for state intervention, for if ‘speech’ in any of the above cases can be fully subsumed under

conduct, then the first Amendment is circumvented. To insist on the gap between speech and conduct,

however, is to lend support for the role of nonjuridical forms of opposition, ways of restaging and

resignifying speech in contexts that exceed those determined by the courts.” (23).

We must insist on the gap between speech and conduct to re-write the Juridical University, and the

metaphorical “courts” of society. As for the speech act itself, Judith Butler helps us to voice questions of

what can or cannot be said: “We might be tempted to understand the existence of injurious language as

posing an ethical question on the order of: what kind of language ought we to use? How does the

language we use affect others?” (26). I propose to specify these queries further, that is, what kind of

language ought we to use within and from the university? The professors at the University of Regina

encountered at best, a silencing from national media outlets about their letters denouncing the “Project

Hero” scholarship program for students of deceased military members. Moreover, if we return to

Butler’s text, we must make an appeal, we must insist upon “the gap between speech and conduct” in

order not to sell ourselves short as students and educators on the potential for the resignification of

speech, and to overcome the Juridical University.

The retaliation of the news media on the Professors at the University of Regina falls in line with Butler’s

reasoning: “By locating the cause of our injury in a speaking subject and the power of that injury in the

power of speech, we set ourselves free, as it were, to seek recourse to the law[...] This phantasmatic

production of the culpable speaking subject, spawned form the constraints of legal language, casts

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subjects as the only agents of power.” (80). Here, we are forced to admit that the professors themselves

do not constitute a threat to power as the media may believe, but their actions beg for a reconsideration

of the processes that allow us to link the glorification of the military and wars with higher education.

Even the professors, however, sought “recourse to the law” with the inclusion of the Ontario Press

Commission in the email to the Globe and Mail. In this sense, we are always-already entangled with the

juridical and legitimate processes. The professors’ “speakability” was risky, however their appeal to the

Ontario Press Commission recalls Butler’s point that: “To move outside of the domain of speakability is

to risk one’s status a subject. To embody the norms that govern speakability in one’s speech is to

consummate one’s status as a subject of speech.” (Italics in original, 133). Perhaps we can wedge open

Butler’s divide between risk and consummation slightly more. The professors’ actions do constitute a

risk, and yet also consummate their subjecthood. I suggest that their actions are part of a process of

continually drawing lines, zig-zagging between risk and consummation through ambivalent speech/acts.

Witnessing, Justice, Responsibility

In the juridical system, eyewitnesses are key players to assure justice. In the Juridical University, I

propose that eyewitnesses are those that witness but may not recognize the “wilful critical blindness” in

Toni Morrison’s words of themselves or others. Their sight is predicated on anti-intellectualism, making

them those who do not engage with others, with course material, or with themselves. The mistake of

such witnesses is in assuming that the act of witnessing is enough- that it is a finitude, as it would be in a

legal sense. To witness in a legal sense, in a court of law, would be to be able to recount what happened

as accurately as possible. The affective or rigorously analytical dimensions of witnessing are effaced in a

court of law- what matters are the permissible, legitimate “facts”. We cannot be reduced to such

passivity in the university. Giorgio Agamben helpfully comments on different types of passivity as a

form of subjectivity: “Passivity, as the form of subjectivity, is thus constitutively fractured into a purely

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receptive pole (the Muselmann) and an actively passive pole (the witness), but in such a way that this

fracture never leaves itself, fully separating the two poles. On the contrary, it always has the form of an

intimacy [...]” (111). Thus, although the “actively passive pole” of the witness could hold potential for

“seeing”, it is inextricably tied to the Muselmann, a “purely receptive pole”. To escape the state of the

passive witness, one must not witness but participate, spark or be sparked by action, speak, perform

and question their performance. The professors at the University of Regina represent witnesses who

have awoken to the dangers of being a passive witness- if they had become passive witnesses,

Muselmen, they would not have been able to contest the highly fraught problematic policies their

university was adopting. It is the distinctive performances and interruptive actions through such

performances that break the role of a witness constituted of an actively passive/purely receptive pole.

And yet, what of the university as a witness? Is it the “master of its own diaphragm”, as Derrida suggests

in Mochlos: The Eyes of the University? (132). It is my contention that the diaphragm of the university is

the juridical framework that I have spent so long circling around. It is this framework that is its

phragma, and yet, there are those that inhabit and shape the university through their interruptive

performances and speech acts. These performances and speech acts force the university to blink, re-

adjust, consider its reason for being or at least jolt the diaphragm and create a space for consideration

of justice and responsibility.

To some, who believe and support the corporatization of the university, justice means “getting what you

pay for”, or a good “return” on an “investment”. In a legal courtroom, justice does not always mean

fairness, or equity. Moreover, justice cannot always be mobilized in a legal courtroom to account for, as

Deborah Britzman says, the vicissitudes of learning. In the Juridical University, justice is similarly coming

to mean the “completion” of education, as if there were a finite limit to it. Justice in the Juridical

University has come to mean anomie- that is, a scrambled notion that is created by atomized individuals,

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seeking individual justice(s). Bill Readings helps us to redefine these notions of justice in a performative

way: “[...] to listen to Thought, to think beside each other and beside ourselves, is to explore an open

network of obligations that keeps the question of meaning open as a locus of debate. Doing justice to

Thought, listening to our interlocutors, means trying to hear that which cannot be said but that which

tries to make itself heard.” (165, Italics added). Readings brings us back full circle to Simon and his

question of what it means to think in the university. To do justice, then, is to be an active witness, one

that is not afraid of taking responsibility for a “walking through of education” (Britzman, 19).

A consideration of Justice always brings to bear questions of responsibility. Derrida notes, in a

meditation on legally inflected definitions of responsibility: “Given a certain techno-political structure of

knowledge, the status, function, and destination of the university would no longer stem from the

juridical or ethico-political language of responsibility. No longer would a subject, individual or corporate,

be summoned in its responsibility.” (Italics in original, 89). Derrida urges us to consider the grounds

upon which we have inherited the tautological manner of associating responsibility to a “pure ethico-

juridical instance” (90). Let us make a move away from such responsibility which is formulated as a

juridical “summons” and instead as Derrida suggests, move toward a responsibility predicated on the

“academic theme” (89).

The juridical system perceived to be outside of the university and the “Juridical University” echo one

another through the notion of repetitive trauma. This trauma is framed by modes of “knowing” and

“knowability” in the university, particularly in relation to politics. Susan Searls Giroux calls for an

integration of an authentic politics in the university, one that is not understood through (and distanced

by) literatures that do not truly engage the realities they decry through metaphors and similes (17). She

asks us to engage with the “difficult knowledges” perceived to exist outside of the bricks and mortar of

the university. Though seemingly counter-intuitive, we can understand Stanley Fish’s arguments as a

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part of this schema. Fish admonished the inclusion of “politics” in the classroom through his three

“laws” of the university. Here we can turn Fish’s arguments on their head and admit that, yes, politics

should not be included in the classroom. Let us complicate this further- the brand and style of politics of

polemicism, politicizing education, and anti-intellectualism that have come to invade so many

classrooms ought not to have a place in the classroom- or at the very least, ought to be discussed and

debated rigorously to question the juridical framework of the University of Excellence. As David Clark

mentions in his essay on the “War on Thought” in Canadian universities, “what we need is a much more

robust, critical, heterogeneous and exploratory idea of universities and of democratic politics, a much

thicker notion of political participation and political action than merely congratulating ourselves for

"protecting" hateful speech and castigating the universities for somehow failing to do the same.” 8 This

requires the intentional performance of other roles, a knowing performance that enables us to question

not only our own implication but others’ implication in the ethical responsibility to education, to

philosophy, and to be uncomfortable. This requires prodding at the juridical diaphragm of the

university, provoking it to new levels of robustness and as Clark mentions, “a thicker notion of politics”.

Moving Past the Juridical University

How are we to overcome or reimagine the Juridical University? Implictly and explicitly, to reimagine the

Juridical University requires an acceptance and acknowledgement of responsibility as justice and

accountability within the university. Let there be no confusion- as Butler says, “The critical task is not

simply to speak ‘against’ the law, as if the law were external to speech, and speech the privileged venue

for freedom.” (140). Similarly, let us not speak “against” the Juridical University but question, prod,

analyze its very function and its far reaching web implicit even in our own work. Let us imagine the

arena within which speech-acts take place, the arena within which the university is open to being

constructed as one of Excellence, in a juridical framework, or as a ruins.

8 http://www.truthout.org/ann-coulter-and-blowhard-politics-canadian-universities-and-war-thought58167

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Moreover, how can we understand the Juridical University in an age where universities are increasingly

militarized? It is alarming enough that a juridical framework fits so easily into the university that we

have before us, but what about military law? The blend of the military and law speaks to a frightening

combination where the jurisdiction is beyond even the conventional conception of law that limits the

resignification of speech acts and much more. The professors at the University of Regina attempt to

strip away the militarization of the University with an appeal to what they feel it ought to be doing

instead, which is the “critical discussion of military policy and practices”, and this is a sign of hope that

can spur forth our considerations of responsibility in the University to Come.

The catch here is that we cannot teach one to take responsibility for their own education, but merely

question alongside them and hopefully foster an environment that is not caught on the rungs of the

Juridical University or the University of Excellence, but on the hope for, as Derrida says, a university to

come. Responsibility as it were, is an unteachable, and as was relayed to me earlier this year in a quote

by Thomas Dutoit in an email sent by David Clark: “without an unteachable, we cannot teach and are not

teachers." This quote directly signifies what Britzman reveals to us about education as: “learning that

can bear its own otherness.” (24). Britzman compellingly works her way through the twists and turns of

student-student, student-educator, and educator-educator relationships, all the while stripping bare the

shifting tensions we have within ourselves, both as students and educators, or both simultaneously.

She delves into the vicissitudes of learning, and it is this “digging” that we must do as well, particularly

while considering the nature of the relationship between the Professors at the University of Regina and

the media outlets that prevented them from publicly posting an addendum to their letter to clarify its

contents.

Britzman also propel us forward: “Not surprisingly, figures of consciousness – whether in the form of the

teacher, the student, or the text- loom large in discussions over critical issues in higher education such

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as power, authority and agency. But in centering consciousness and in critiquing the normative force of

institutional education, we have not yet left a notion of development as progress, nor have we entered

the primal scene of learning.” (3). An important distinction to make here is that of process versus

progress. What Britzman calls for is a type of continual process that directs us away from myths of

progress, as well as the dangers of confronting “the normative force of institutional education”.

Britzman appeals to us to reconstitute the very ground we walk upon, that is, the figure of the

University, the institution itself, and what it stands for. Unless and until we have done this conceptual

groundwork, there is no way we will be able to engage in “learning that can bear its own otherness”.

One way to interrupt the Juridical University is to engage in as distilled from Britzman’s text, cross-

identificatory moves between students, teachers, and administrators. As Derrida fears, and as I fear

sometimes, I do not wish to become the “guardian and trustee responsible for traditional responsibility”

by “posing my question[s]” in specific ways (91). Rather, imagine my minute contributions here, my

examinations of the Juridical University, as a lever in the crevice of education and knowledge that

demands to be wrenched open. Finally, in light of the increased militarization of our universities, let us

consider a quote by Dwight Eisenhower I found in a book written by Marian Wright Edelman, The

Measure of Our Success: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket that is fired

signifies a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world

in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its

scientists, the hope of its children.”

Works Cited

1. Agamben, Giorgio. Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. New York, Zone Books: 1999.

2. Bentley, D.M.R. “Research-Teaching: the Fundamental Business of Canadian Universities”. 1994. http://www.canadianpoetry.ca/research_training.htm. Web.

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3. Britzman, Deborah. Lost Subjects, Contested Objects: Toward a Psychoanalytic Inquiry of Learning.New York, State University of New York: 1998.

4. Butler, Judith. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York, Routledge: 1997.

5. Clark, David. "Ann Coulter and Blowhard Politics: Canadian Universities and the War on Thought." Truthout (30 March 2010): http://www.truthout.org/ann-coulter-and-blowhard-politics-canadian-universities-and-war-thought58167

6. Derrida, Jacques. “Mochlos, or The Conflict of the Faculties”. Eyes of the University: Right to Philosophy 2. Stanford, Stanford University Press: 2004.

7. Edelman, Marian Wright. The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours. Boston, Beacon Press: 1992.

8. Felman, Shoshana. The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Trauma in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, Harvard University Press: 2002.

9. Fish, Stanley. “Fish to Profs: Stick to Teaching”. Interview with Andy Guess, Inside Higher Ed. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/07/01/fish. Web.

10. Giroux, Henry A. And Susan Searls Giroux. Take Back Higher Education: Race, Youth and the Crisis of Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Era. New York, Palgrave: 2004.

11. Green, Joyce and Darlene Juschka. Op-Ed. The Leader Post. March 31, 2010. (Copied in an email).

12. Juscha, Darlene. Radio Interview with Alert Radio. April 15th, 2010. http://canadiandimension.com/alert/2909/ Web.

13. Readings, Bill. The University in Ruins. Cambridge, Harvard University Press: 1996.

14. Searls Giroux, Susan. Between Race and Reason: Violence, Intellectual Responsibility, and the University to Come. Manuscript.

15. Simon, Roger. “The University: A Place to Think?” [pdf].

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16. Rajan, Tilottama. “In the Wake of Cultural Studies: Globalization, Theory, and the University”. diacritics 31.3: 67–88.

17. University of Regina Professors. “Faculty of the University of Regina say No to "Project Hero" and Canadian Imperialism: An Open Letter to President Vianne Timmons”. The Leader Post. March 23, 2010. http://www.leaderpost.com/news/Letter+from+University+Regina+professors+opposed+Project+Hero+scholarships/2730833/story.html. Web.