Abstract

This dissertation examines the relation between Derridean deconstruction and the law of disciplinary identity. It seeks to answer two interrelated questions: How are we to understand the critical turn in Jacques Derrida's notion of deconstruction? and What role does this move play in specifying the law which governs the formation and organization of such disciplines as composition, photography, and philosophy? ;Contrary to the widely held view of deconstruction, as that negative critical force which aims only to "undo" those disciplines claiming to have achieved institutional closure, this thesis argues that deconstruction also produces a "positive" effect in the act of delimiting certain disciplines. The same critical force that renders disciplinarity illusory in the natural and social sciences can grant us a glimpse of disciplinarity in the "arts," where identities are formed without strict adherence to any such lawful notion. The conclusion suggests that until we accept this doubleness as constituting the law of disciplinarity, until we broaden our understanding of the relation between deconstruction and the law of disciplinary identity, we can never claim with any certainty that we know just what a discipline is