The commitment to face

Mieke Bal

pp. 120-136

in: Begüm Özden Fırat, Sarah De Mul, Sonja van Wichelen (eds), Commitment and complicity in cultural theory and practice, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009

Abstract

What does it mean to endorse the idea that commitment is part of academic work? In recent decades, commitment, from a swearword, has become an academic program. But inevitably, it can only become productive if it is accompanied by a specific complement (commitment to…) and an elaboration of how that commitment can be exercised to the benefit of society and the knowledge academics produce for it. For commitment within academic work cannot take the commitment to the production of knowledge, the academy's primary task, lightly at all.