Musicology as an Institutional Discourse: Deconstruction and the Future of Musicology

Abstract

This essay analyzes musicology as an institutional discourse, as a collective and social practice that is not only produced and transmitted within particular institutional networks, but is also profoundly shaped by those networks. By insisting on the paradoxical status of his own work vis-à-vis institutions, Derrida might provide an opening for musicologists to negotiate with the structures and traditions that simultaneously enable and constrain their work. The problematizing of musicological institutions, however, raises questions that go beyond the immediate purview of deconstruction to embrace fields as diverse as psychoanalysis, political philosophy, sociology, and the rhetoric of the human sciences, among others.