Troy Southgate

Oct 01, 2024

“TODAY, how can we not speak of the university?” Derrida asks in The Principle of Reason (1983). “And how,” he continues in How to Avoid Speaking (1986),

“if one speaks of it, to avoid speaking of it? How not to speak of it? How is it necessary to speak of it? How to avoid speaking of it without rhyme or reason? What precaution must be taken to avoid errors, that is inadequate, insufficient, simplistic assertions?”

It was at this point that the long-suffering guests of this École Normale Supérieure, Harvard University and University of Paris alumni – justifiably alarmed at his apparent inability to stop speaking about the unspeakable, especially in light of his own unspeakably academic credentials – quietly vacated the Derrida residence at Ris-Orangis and allowed the Post-structuralist philosopher to disappear up his own backside.

The complex question of how not to speak of the university, therefore, had finally been solved and both France and the world entered into a much quieter state in which none but the most pretentious continued to speak his name.