Yes, Yes, the University in Ruins

Abstract

his extremely measured and seemingly even-handed essay The University in Ruins? (Critical Inquiry 25 [Autumn 1998]: 32-55), Dominick LaCapra recalls Jacques Derrida's well-known (though still perhaps inconceivable) proposition that must begin where one (p. 50).1 He does not recall the more difficult and disconcerting supplement that accompanies it, that is to say Wherever we are: in a text already where we believe ourselves to (Quelque part ohi nous sommes: en un texte d6j~ oiu nous croyons etre).2 To be already in a text, that is to say, in a context, is to be in ruins.3 It is to have to reckon with a thinking and an affirmation of ruination at the origin. As Derrida has observed: In the beginning, at