Commentary: poststructuralism and issues of music theory

the history of disciplines and subdisciplines in the hum anities or hum an sciences, (construed in the broadest sense of that rubric, as distinct from natural sciences) may be fruitfully investigated as a history of debates, conflicts, or controversies. W hat seems especially striking is that the recent history of each of these disciplines may be accurately depicted as separate enactments and restagings of a single conflict or struggle, between on one hand the dom inant Enlightenment intellectual traditions that exhibit one or another aspect or “residue” of a post-Kantian philosophical heritage, and on the other hand a series of challenges to that tradition’s working assumptions, commonly gathered under the name of “poststructuralism,” or “recent French philosophy.” While in some disciplines (most notably those involved with literature study) the character of the conflict is changing as poststructuralism evolves from an emergent critique to, in some respects, the dom inant participant in the debate, musicology and music theory in North America are just now experiencing a full-blown poststructuralist confrontation of its foundational patterns of thought.