From performativity to Aporia: taking ‘tremendous responsibility’ towards feminism and the university

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper seeks to contribute to the thinking on feminism’s past and present entanglement with the university and strives to imagine its future. Through a close reading of the opening passage of Derrida’s essay ‘Mochlos, or The Conflict of the Faculties’, I trace ‘a university responsibility’ which does not lead to a subject conceived as self-identical. Drawing on the works of Hemmings, Scott and Wiegman, I argue that we must assume responsibility which will make us, feminism and the university tremble. This paper argues that envisioning feminist responsibilities as tremendous will allow us to conceive feminism as non-identical to itself and beyond the prerequisite of the sovereign (feminist) subject. Taking tremendous responsibilities will, as Hemmings proposes, help us create feminist narratives which will be potentially more politically transformative.