The Humanities without condition: Derrida and the singular oeuvre
by D
erek Attridge
In an important lecture on the function of the Humanities, ‘The University without Condition’, Jacques Derrida asks what it means to ‘profess’ the truth and advocates a commitment to the oeuvre – the work that constitutes an event rather than just a contribution to knowledge. I examine a few phrases from the lecture, focusing on questions of the unconditional, the ‘as if’, singularity, the future, and the impossible.http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1474022213514795