Abstract

This study extends the contemporary critical orientation of Deconstruction beyond literary or philosophical written texts into texts of the cinema. Jacques Derrida is the core figure in the Deconstruction community, having brought Deconstruction to the United States at a Johns Hopkins University conference in 1966, and thus commands primary focus in this study. However, other individuals, especially American literary theorists, have embraced Deconstruction and altered its purview; the ideas of these thinkers receive attention in this study as well. ;The films chosen for this research are six reconstructed and restored silent documentaries and newsreels of the Film and Photo League. The League was a short-lived, politically controversial organization operating in the United States from 1930 to 1937. Its mission was social documentation of the economic, social and political collapse resulting from the Great Depression. These six films, representing less than five percent of all League productions, are the only extant texts of the League and are distributed by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. ;This study demonstrates the applicability of at least six Deconstructive tenents to cine-texts: Differance; Trace; Textuality; Lack of Textual Boundaries; Indeterminancy of Meanings; and Inversion of Hierarchies