Psychoanalysis and academic freedom in the modern university: Thoughts on the inside and the outside

In ‘Mochlos, or, The Conflict of the Faculties’, Jacques Derrida critiques the topography of the inside and the outside of the modern university and proposes the margin as a possible locus of responsibility and truth from which an academic could speak. In States of Shock, Bernard Stiegler considers the shifts in economics, knowledge production and communication that the modern university must address. I discuss academic freedom by offering psychoanalytic reflections on both. I consider the collapse of communication central to Stiegler’s account in conjunction with the lack of attention and the failure of the holding environment as discussed by different psychoanalytic thinkers. I consider the different speaking positions the Derridean margin might encompass, with reference to the Foucauldian concept of fearless speech and the Lacanian concepts of atopia and aporia.

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society. The definitive publisher-authenticated version [in press] is available online at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41282-024-00512-x#citeas