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Midwest Modern Language Association

University of Dissensus / University of LaughterAuthor(s): Anca ParvulescuSource: The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, Vol. 37, No. 1, TheUniversity (Spring, 2004), pp. 47-58Published by: Midwest Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1315377

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University of Dissensus /

University of Laughter

Anca Parvulescu

Dialogism may well become the basis of our time'sintellectualstructure.

JuliaKristeva

The university is a space in which we engage in a series of dialogues.In trying to understand the history of the university, its controversial

present and especially its unsure future, we thus need-once again-tothink about the mechanism of dialogue. This is what Bill Readings does,for the most part, in his influential book, The University n Ruins. In order

to be able to envision an alternative to the post-Cold War, American-

Going-Global university in which we find ourselves today, to what he has

famously called the "University of Excellence," Readings struggles to

envision an alternative to the model of dialogue on which this universityis based. Crucial to this project is his proposal of a new word to be used

in this conversation. That word is dissensus. We will dwell on it here.

As we might expect, the contours of dissensus are shaped in a differen-

tial relation with the Habermasian consensus, with which it keeps its ties

even as it tries to completely disassociate itself from it. There is, amongother things, one characteristic of dissensus Readings wants to empha-size. Readings writes:

If my preference s for a thoughtof dissensus ver that of consensus ...it is because dissensus cannot be institutionalized.The precondition or

such institutionalizationwould be a second-orderconsensus that dis-sensus is a good thing, something, ndeed,with which Habermaswouldbe in accord.(167)

In other words, not only do we not want our dialogues in the Universityto lead to a consensus, we do not want consensus even over the fact that

there should be no consensus. Readings's dissensus is not in a dialectical

relation with consensus; it, in fact, constitutes a third term between con-

sensus and dissensus understood dialectically. Its radicalism lies in thefact that, ultimately, we cannot propose dissensus as a "solution" to our

frustration with the university. We cannot start a pedagogical reform onits basis, because that would necessitate a minimal agreement over at

least the fact that this is what we need to do. Dissensus would unnotice-

ably slip back into consensus.

Anca Parvulescu 47



On this very important point, symptomatic for the radicalism of his

call, Readings's engagement with the notion of dissensus as a way of

envisioning a different kind of dialogue becomes a critique of Gerald

Graff's proposal to "teachthe conflicts":

My call is for a more radicalanduncomfortable issensuseven than that

proposed by Gerald Graff's call to "teachthe conflicts." Forbehind

Graff'slaudable desire to displace the monologicauthorityof discipli-

nary discourse lies a desire for final consensus, the consensus that

would permitthe determinationand transmissionof "theconflict"as a

unifiedobjectof professorialdiscourse. 127)

If Graff's proposal emerges explicitly as a critique of the desire for a con-

sensus with regard to the curriculum (Beyond 58), in Readings's eyes,Graff is

guiltyof

ultimately fallingback into consensus

by givingin to the

pressures of the institution. Graff, Readings suggests, needs to make "the

conflicts" an object of teaching; he needs, within the context of his con-

cern with moving "beyond he culture wars," to still be able to write a syl-labus. Behind the understandable need to agree over a reform of the cur-

riculum, Readings sees the problematic packaging of "the conflicts" as

teachable and learnable material.

At stake here is a notion both Graff and Readings engage but over

which they cannot-and, as we shall see, maybe cannot necessarily-

agree. What becomes crucial to the discussion of the university as the sitewherein we engage in dialogue is the notion of dialogism. Graff intro-

duces the word "dialogism" in his essay titled "Other Voices, Other

Rooms: Organizing and Teaching the Humanities Conflict." Here, under

the suggestive heading "Towarda Dialogical Curriculum," he proposesthat we think of a "curriculum that is neither a cafeteria counter nor a

core, but something more like a conversation" (37). As Graff suggests, the

curriculum has been criticized on two fronts. Conservatives have worried

over a curriculum in danger of becoming a mere cafeteria counter

designed in such a way that it can be easily bypassed so that, over it, pro-fessorial research interests can be served to students. Leftists, on the

other side, have seen the curriculum reduced to a core-a nucleus or

heart of "universal"knowledge to be passed on to posterity. Rather than

dwell in this impasse, Graff proposes we take this very debate and others

like it as our curriculum. The curriculum would thus be a conflictual con-

versation in which professors as well as students actively participate.Graff concludes: "conflict,disagreement, and difference might themselves

become a source of educational and cultural coherence-indeed, the

appropriate source of coherence for a democratic society" (Beyond 143,emphasis added). In short, the coherence we supposedly need when

teaching and learning is to be found in conflict.

Readings agrees that what we should be doing in the university is

48 Universityof Dissensus I Universityof Laughter



engage in conflictual conversation. But it will be precisely over how we

understand this conversation, particularly over how we engage the notion

of dialogism, that he will disagree with Graff. Ultimately, despite Graff's

warning that coherence and consensus are not the same thing (Beyond

120), Readings sees in Graff's concession with regards to coherence aconcession with regards to consensus. A curriculum that teaches conflicts

coherently requires, at minimum, an agreement over this "coherence." In

his "Response to Bill Readings" in New Literary History, Graff refers to

another term he hopes will shed some light on his notion of "coherence."

Graff writes:

I like to think I have aboutas much desire for consensus as the nextper-son, but the questionseems to be somewhatbeside the point, since, as Isee

it, educatingmore

effectivelywould

requirenot a consensus but a

clarificationf the issues forstudents. .. I imagineBillwould retort hat

"clarification"s not a neutral or "transparent"erm:whose clarificationarewe talkingabout? 495)

Indeed, one can hear Readings ask, "Whose clarification?" But one can

also hear him ask more generally whether we actually should strive and

hope for things to be clear if what we want is some sort of conflictual

conversation.

The conversation proposed by Graff, modified by words like "coher-

ence" and "clarification," is thus not conflictual enough by Readings'sstandards. He has hopes for another kind of dialogue. What, then, is this

dialogue Readings has in mind for the University? Or, which is the same

thing, how does Readings read Bakhtin?

I am thus inclined to leave Saussure'smodel of communicationbehindin favor of what Bakhtinhas called dialogism.This s an oftenmisunder-stoodand misused erm.Bakhtin'sdialogism s not simplythe capacity orreversedor serialmonologue, he exchangeof rolesthat allowsinterlocu-tors to take turnsat being monologicsenders (as it is for Socrates).The

addressee'shead is full of languageso that the story of communicativetransmission cannot adequately describe what happens in linguisticinteraction .... What a sendersays takes its place amida crowd of idi-olects in the listener,and their conversationacquiresits sense in a dis-cursive act of which neither s the master. 155-156,emphasisadded)

If what we do in the University is engage in a series of dialogues, let us,

Readings calls, think again about the mechanism of dialogue. He is dissat-

isfied with the Saussurian model, which he describes as "the exchange ofroles between two persons, so that the first sender becomes in turn the

empty receiver, and so on" (155). Tom Stoppard's film Rosencrantz andGuildensternAre Dead seems to offer an ironic visualization of the Saus-

surian model critiqued by Readings. In the film, the "Questions" scene

(easily imagined as a classroom or conference scene) is staged as an

AncaParvulescu 49



exchange of questions over a tennis net. Players shout their questions,run to the right place to catch the reply, then vigorously send their own

replies across the net, and so on. Saussure's model of communication as

critiqued by Readings might be said to resemble such a tennis game in

which each player takes turns in hitting a ball that, if hit vigorously

enough and at the opportune moment, moves along "manageable"lines.

Graff indeed seems to have this model of communication in mind when

he writes: "Nobody wants to turn the curriculum into a shouting match,of course. But the curriculum is already a shouting match, and one that

will only become more angry and polarized if ways are not found to

exploit rather than avoid its philosophical differences" (12). It is not that

Readings would not want to exploit the possible fruit of this exchange; it

is simply that he does not believe dialogue functions in this way. In his

attempt to envision "a radical form of dialogue" (154), Readings thus

arrives at Bakhtin. If we are to think of the tennis game in the Bakhtinian

scenario, each player is already playing a game and the exchange of balls

(not the same ball!) on the tennis court merely intersects some of the tra-

jectories of these preexisting games. Let us, Readings calls, think of the

dialogue in the University in all its complexity. And this will mean: Let us

engage the notion of dialogism in all its radicalism.

We thus reach a point in the discussion of the university at which the

disjuncture between,on the one

hand,the

complexityof our intellectual

adventures in thinking about language, the subject, and community, and,on the other hand, the pragmatics of thinking about the curriculum, the

classroom, and students, is blurred. Maybe Readings's most importantachievement with The University in Ruins rests in the book's power to

make pedagogy indistinguishable from that which it purports to advance:

thinking. (This is a distinction that Graff, in his "Response," insists on

maintaining.) If what we like to see ourselves do in the university is

think, Readings suggests, then think we will about the university too, no

matter how complicated the discussion will become. Pedagogyand

thought will need to become indistinguishable. We will thus make the

University one of our "issues," something we "work on." And it will not

be the "institution" we will work on-for thinking about the institution

became a necessity quite a while ago-but the University (capitalized by

Readings), with its specific history and relation to "society" and global

capital.The discussion will indeed become quite complicated, once, as we

have seen, dissensus becomes a translation of Bakhtin's dialogism. I

believe one needs to repeatedly emphasize this pointin

readingThe Uni-

versity in Ruins. Most of Readings's critics have found the book to be a

brilliant, if harsh, critique of the contemporary university which, howev-

er, does not offer enough in terms of alternatives or solutions. Sympto-

50 Universityof Dissensus / Universityof Laughter



matic in this respect is Michael B6rubd's review of The University n Ruins

for American LiteraryHistory. While B6rube applauds what he calls Read-

ings's "utopianism" (and what I see in terms of a very "real"blurring of

the distinction between thought and pedagogy), he ends by admitting that

"I find myself wishing, at minimum, that Readings had written moreabout how we Thinkers can go about creating that dissensual consensus

to promote dissensus" (154). This is the frustration of being offered too

little-Is this it?-and of not being offered a "method." Ultimately, in

Dominick LaCapra's words, which are consonant on this point with

Berube's, Readings's alternative seems "particularlyweak or ineffective if

not hopeless" ("TheUniversity in Ruins?"41). In my reading, Readings is

aware of these problems. However, he needs to resist the temptation to

answer them and, I believe, is successful in his resistance because he has

lent his ear to Bakhtin's lesson on dialogism.What, then, is at stake in the notion of dialogism? Enter Paul de Man.

In a very typical move, in his essay titled "Dialogue and Dialogism," de

Man asks why the notion of dialogism is "so enthusiastically received bytheoreticians of very diverse persuasion and made to appear as a valid

way out of many quandaries that have plagued us for so long" (107). De

Man's answer, which will resonate with our discussion of dissensus, pro-

poses that dialogism meets our need for

a principleof radicalothernessor,to use againBakhtin'sown terminolo-gy, as a principleof exotopy,ar fromaspiring o the telos of a synthesisor a resolution,as couldbe said to be the case in dialecticalsystems,thefunction of dialogism s to sustainand thinkthrough he radicalexterior-

ity or heterogeneityof one voice with regard o anyother.(109)

Dialogism problematizes dialogue. It poses the question of "communica-

tion" with an other that is not a replica of the I, or, to put it in linguisticterms, with a "receiver" that is not a replica of a "sender."How does one

engage in a dialogue with an other that is not a non-I but a different-than-

I? What, in other words, are we left with if we leave Saussure's model ofcommunication, based on the interchangeability of the two tennis players

(Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) behind? Readings's dissensus is an

engagement with these questions, and, like Bakhtin, he can only turn to a

certain notion of ethics in order to posit the possibility of dialogism.

Today,we associate this strain of ethics with the name of Emmanuel Lev-inas.1 Writes Readings, in a Levinasian tone:

My aim, then, is an anti-modernist ephrasingof teachingand learningas sites of

obligation,s loci of ethical

practices,ather han as means for

the transmissionof scientificknowledge.Teachinghusbecomesanswer-

able to thequestionofjustice, rather than to criteria of truth. We mustseek to dojusticeto teachingrather han to know what it is. (154)

Anca Parvulescu 51



The dialogue we enter in the University should be an "ethicalpractice." It

should have as its foundation, in Readings's words, a "respect for an

absolute Other" that is unknown and unknowable. This Other, whether

student or professor, should be a foreigner figure. One way of thinkingabout this foreigner figure is offered by Julia Musha's essay in this vol-

ume: within the American University in Bulgaria, most of the students

and faculty are literally foreigners to each other. Another way to think

about the foreigner figure in the University is to consider the figure of

the international student within the American university in the US as the

paradigmatic student figure rather than, as she is today, "theproblem" in

the (especially undergraduate) classroom. As in the case of the American

University in Bulgaria, the international student is literally "the foreign-er." "Respect" or this other as foreigner is, Readings emphasizes, the con-

versation's premise, its starting point. How this conversation will look

from this point on, or what issues it will engage, Readings does not tell

us, because he encounters a methodological problem.The concern with ethics as route to "dojustice to teaching rather than

know what it [teaching] is" is also an engagement with a more specific

question for the humanities: How does one read a text that one encoun-

ters as an other? How, in other words, does one conceive of what we

might paradoxically call one's "dialogical methodology"? Dialogismindeed

bringswith it a

big challenge.In de Man's words: "The

ideologiesof otherness and of hermeneutic understanding are not compatible" (112).

Reading understood as a hermeneutical practice is at odds with dialo-

gism, because rather than allow for the existence of the text as other, it

presupposes a certain substitutive symmetry (Rosencrantz and Guilden-

stern) in which, ultimately, interpretation vicariates the text. On the other

hand, if one takes the path of dialogism, there can be no interpretation.

Readings knows this well. He cannot answer B6irube'sfrustration if he is

to be faithful to his thought. He cannot interpret Bahktin in order to say

how we go about practicing dialogism as dissensusin

the university;he

can only tell us the precondition for dissensus: an ethical relationshipwith the other, whether we think about the other as our student, our pro-fessor or as Bakhtin. Here are de Man's last words on the matter: "To mi-

tate or to apply Bakhtin, to read him by engaging him in a dialogue,

betrays what is most valid in his work" (114). In keeping with the radical-

ism of dialogism, therefore, one cannot claim to have read Bakhtin in a

hermeneutical mode and then, as we indeed say of "theory,""apply"him

to a specific problem like that of the university. All one can do is accom-

pany Bakhtinin

his thought, or, indeed,"translate"him into a text that is

in a dialogical relation with its "original." Readings is aware of this

methodological problem, and this is why he resists answering B6rub6.

Methodologically, he refuses hermeneutics, and thus he also refuses to

52 Universityof DissensusI Universityof Laughter



literalize his thought in a prescriptive mode. In doing this, he is merely

keeping with the ethics--understood also as the ethics of reading-that he

asks for.

The University in Ruins resonates with the book that might be said to

have stirred in France the same kind of debate Readings's has in theUnited States-Jacques Ranciere's The Ignorant Schoolmaster. Ultimately,in very different vocabularies and taking dramatically different conceptu-al routes, the two books ask for the same thing: education should be

something that happens between two subjects, I and my radical other.2

Crucially, both explicitly articulate their understanding of dialogue by

opposing it to Socratic dialogue, to a maieutics through which the mas-

ter's ideas are midwived out of his (feminized) students' heads. But while

Readings talks about dissensus, Rancidre talks about equality. In light of

Habermas, apparently dissensus and equality belong to two different reg-isters of language. But Rancidre's equality is not the Enlightenment's

equality, the equality leading to Habermasian consensus. It is the equali-

ty-"good equality," Rancidre calls it (131)--associated with the name of

Joseph Jacotot.TheIgnorantSchoolmasterbegins: "In 1818, Joseph Jacotot, a lecturer in

French literature at the University of Louvain, had an intellectual adven-

ture" (1). Jacotot's adventure was to discover that students could learn

"from" an ignorant schoolmaster, in his case, literally from a foreigner,a

teacher who did not speak the students' language. All that was needed-

and this was the unimaginable adventure-was the premise that students'

intelligences were equal to that of the teacher. Starting from this premise,not only could Flemish-speaking students learn French "from"a teacher

who did not speak their language, but a child could learn to read and

write "from" an illiterate parent. This is the Jacotot moment-and its

implications are overwhelming. The Enlightenment is that which steals

this moment, that which steals "good equality," and it does this precisely

throughits institutionalized

programof education. Far from

beingbased

on an equality of intelligence, the Enlightenment promotes inequality by

positing a discrepancy between those who know and those who do not.

The need for education, as a route to ("bad") quality, is thus established.

The problem is that the students, those who do not know, will always be

behind the master, who will perpetually create new (infinite in number)educational needs. Rancidre sees here a larger phenomenon-the "integral

pedagogization of society-the general infantilization of the individuals

that make it up. Later on this will be called continuing education, that is

tosay,

the coextension of theexplicatory

institution withsociety" (133).

Inequality becomes the rule and, paradoxically, it is education-now

coextensive with "society"--that brings it about.

Rancidre's call, like Readings's, is for a new, ethical starting point:

AncaParvulescu 53



"Equalitywas not an end to attain, but a point of departure, a suppositionto maintain in every circumstance" (138).3Important for our discussion of

Readings is the fact that for Ranciere, too, no "reform" can start here:

"The permanent pedagogical revolution becomes the normal regimeunder which the explicatory institution is rationalized and justified, assur-

ing at the same time the perpetuity of the old method's principles and

institutions" (122). This means that Rancidre's account is anti-institution-

al, for, in his words, "Every institution is an explication in social act, a

dramatization of inequality" (105). As in Readings, this does not mean

that we cannot find ways to dwell in the institutions we already have-

Rancidre concedes that learning also happens at the "stultifiers' school"

(102). It only means that if we find ways to practice dissensus or equalityin the ruined university we should not institutionalize them-and here

we have to think of Readings's controversial proposal to work on small

projects that should be disbanded after a period of time regardless of

their success.

Even more important for our discussion of Readings in his relation to

Bakhtinian dialogism is the practice of reading that Rancidre enacts. In

order to resist "explication,"the educational tool he sees as crucial to the

perpetuation of inequality, Rancidre replaces hermeneutics with story-

telling. The IgnorantSchoolmastersimply tells the story of Joseph Jacotot,

employingall the

techniquesof

storytellingthat

writingcan

hopeto

recuperate. Kristin Ross, in her introduction to the book, describes Ran-

ciere's reading exercise: "The reader, in other words, is not quite sure

where the voice of Jacotot ends and where Ranciere's begins. Ranciere

slips into Jacotot's text, winding around or worming in; his commentary

contextualizes, rehearses, reiterates, dramatizes, elaborates, continues

Jacotot" (xxii). My proposal is that, in his reading of Bakhtin, Readings is

striving towards such an ethics of reading, too. While using different

vocabularies and working within different contexts, Readings's work

unfolds alongside Bakhtin's; it accompanies it; it rewrites and continuesit without usurping it.

What, then, do we do "afterReadings"?If we agree that Readings's call

is also for an ethics of reading, and that this call would concern the read-

ing of The University n Ruins, then we need to decide whether we want to

heed that ethical call or not. Once we decide to answer the call, to utter

an initial yes, the only thing we can do is, in our turn, accompany Read-

ings in his thought.4 Rather than attempt to "explicate" him so we can

"apply"him to our problems, rather than, in LaCapra'swords, "make him

an object of critical dialogic exchange" ("The University in Ruins?" 32,emphasis added), we can inhabit his thought. And that means continuing

his thought. Not in search of a resolution-dissensus has taken us a long

way from that-but, as Rancibre puts it, because "thereare many encoun-

54 Universityof Dissensus I Universityof Laughter



ters to be made along the way" (45). It is in this spirit that I arrive at the

promise of my title-laughter. My hope is that, to paraphrase Readings,the thought of laughter can take its place beside the thought of dissensus,much like friend beside friend.

How does one bring laughter into the discussion of the university,

given this institution's status as one of the landmarks of modern serious-

ness? We can take an historical observation as a starting point. For the

university has not always been this serious. In fact, German philosopherPeter Sloterdijk remarks that the university, alongside the carnival and

bohemia, are the three spaces that historically have fostered laughter

(117). All three spaces are, of course, lost in modernity, maybe the univer-

sity most of all. However, I believe we can see in Readings's engagementwith the notion of Bakhtinian dialogism an attempt to bring laughter back

into the university and, more importantly, to make it necessary to think-

ing about the university.If read in this way, Readings would not be alone in his attempt. This is

how the European Graduate School, located in Switzerland but mostlyinternet-based, which sets out to offer a "blend of the best features of

American and European educational systems," addresses its prospectivestudents:

Needless to say,we are lookingfor excellence,but perhapsmoreimpor-

tantly we are looking for something unique in the people studying inthis program.It helps if you are consideredprovocativeand are disen-chanted with an academic system more concerned with the past thanthe future.Withus, there areno "wrong" uestions,"loners" reappreci-ated and "surfers" ncouraged. But you should have a keen sense ofhumorand be able to laughaboutyourself.

Excellence notwithstanding, the prospective "goodstudent" ready to enter

a dialogue with luminaries such as Agamben, Baudrillard, Butler, Nancy,Zifek, or DJ Spooky is the student able to laugh at himself or herself.

Otherwise, the prospective students of the European Graduate School arealso expected to be artists of some sort. Here, then, we have the three

spaces of laughter mentioned by Sloterdijk coming together in this

(indeed, virtual) student who is an artist, a thinker and a laugher-with-out distinction between the parts. The presupposition is-although I

believe, pace Ranciare, it should not be taken for granted-that on the

professorial side this melange is already met so that laughter, understood

as a dialogism professor-student / student-professor via the already-dia-

logical internet, can begin. The vision is not foreign to Readings's.

Indeed, the mechanism of laughter, the subject-object choreographylaughter presupposes, is congruent with that of dissensus. Bringing laugh-ter into this conversation is not, of course, a means of envisioning the

university as an Emerald City "laughing the day away"-although this

AncaParvulescu 55



image has its appeal. It is simply to propose the mechanism of laughter as

our model of dialogue.

Ralph Ellison, in one of his engagements with laughter, talks about a

"vicious circle" in which, after a certain point, it is not clear who laughsat whom and for what reason (653). We have in laughter a specific sub-

ject-object relation: the subject doubles itself as object of laughter and the

other way around--infinitely. In a certain sense, to come back to the

European Graduate School description, laughter can serve as a basis for

our endeavors in the university because laughter "communicates" with

laughter; laughter is infectious, and yet the other can have her laugh.What the description is asking for is not so much a certain kind of stu-

dent, but a certain kind of dialogue, to which student and professor need

to beopen.

Thedialogue

oflaughter

makes another kind of "communica-

tion" possible-not by accident, we speak of laughter's "contagiousness."We could just as well, in Bakhtinian terms, speak of laughter's intertextu-

ality.The time of laughter is a certain "meanwhile"--in between the two

subjects involved and not in a causal relation to either. This is Samuel

Weber's argument in his reading of Freud's Jokes in "Laughter in the

Meanwhile." Weber, of course, has a lot to say about the institution of the

university, but, interestingly, in his critique of Readings he does not see

the Bakhtin inReadings

and thepotential laughter.

He thusgoes

on to

propose as an alternative to Readings's "solution" a notion of dramatiza-

tion'

la Kierkegaard,which, in view of his own work on laughter, is not

very far from what we have here identified in Readings:

... somethingmoreakin to a theatrical pectacle,and a very particularone at that. Neithertragic,nor even comic,but instead morelike a farce.The German and Danish word for farce is Posse. And posse, as

Kirkegaard eminds us, is also the Latin word for possibility. (Weber,Institution34)

Weber knows that laughter imposes itself here-"If we hadn't knownhow to dramatize, we wouldn't know how to laugh" (Bataille 11). The

university becomes once again a stage, and indeed a peculiar one at that.

We would do well to remember Bakhtin telling us that the structure of

the medieval stage is that of a mouth gaping out of laughter. The academ-

ic farce imagined by Weber happens on such a stage, within a laughingmouth wherein the players laugh with the laughter that laughs them.

We are far from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's swift exchange of

balls over the tennis net. Indeed, balls are flying over our heads. I and

other, student and professor, professor and student, exist separately yet in

relation; our dialogue, our exchange of laughs, is a contamination that

affects us both in the most unpredictable places. This takes us a long wayfrom any hope of consensus or, for that matter, "coherence"or "clarifica-

56 Universityof Dissensus / Universityof Laughter



tion." But it might not take us so far from the hope of democracy. Indeed,one of the justifiable worries over Readings's emphasis on dissensus is

that it might not work in a world in which we are trying to act politicallywithin a system that sees itself as a democracy. The affinities we have

found between Readings and Ranciere will legitimate an answer from the

latter. Democracy, Ranciere argues in Disagreement, coming etymological-

ly from the Greek demos, "those who have no part," is precisely not about

Habermasian consensus but about what Ranciere calls "disagreement"(lamesentente),which, not to be confused with "conflict,"occurs "wherever

contention over what speaking means constitutes the very rationality of

the speech situation" (xi). Democracy is, in other words, about a disputeover the status of those entering the conversation and over the verynature of the conversation itself.

Readings's proposalof a

universityof

dissensus / university of laughter, as an engagement with these issues,

might after all be an engagement with democracy.

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Notes

1. A readingof Bakhtin n ethicaltermsa la Levinas s offeredby TzvetanTodor-ov in his indispensableMikhailBakhtin:TheDialogicalPrinciple.

2. This is why the notion of dialogism is crucial to this discussion. ReadingBakhtin,JuliaKristevaarguesthatdialogism s aboutpositingtwo subjects: f phi-losophyhas been about the one (God,etc), dialogismworks on the interval0-2,where "0denotes and 1 is implicitlytransgressed"70).In the context of the uni-

versity,one couldsay thatif etymologically he universitys about"turning very-thinginto one," he alternativeuniversity s not, as ClarkKerrhadit, a multiversi-

ty but,paceReadings,a biversity,hatis, founded on the principleof the two.

3. The name of Paulo Freire imposes itself here. Indeed, Graff arrives at hisnotion of dialogismvia, amongothers, Paulo Freire'sPedagogy f the Oppressed.My argumenthere is that Readings'smodel of dialogue (especiallywhen seenfromwithin the encounterwith

Ranciere)s closerto Freire's han

Graff's,since

the latter's focus on the curriculumultimatelysoftens Freire'scall for a radicaland continuous dialogue that cannot be institutionalized est it be turned once

again ntoan instrumentof inequality.4. It is interestingto note that, while not explicitlyphrasingthe problematic nterms of answering a call, the repetition of the word "yes" s a motif in the

exchange between Dominick LaCapraand Nicholas Royle in CriticalInquiry.Royle's responseto LaCapra'snitial "TheUniversityin Ruins?"s "Yes,Yes,the

University n Ruins"and LaCapra'subsequentresponse s "Yes,Yes,Yes,Yes...Well,Maybe:Response o NicholasRoyle."

Anca Parvulescu 57



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58 University of Dissensus / University of Laughter

dissensus and the university

Documents