ABSTRACT
The chapter presents a truncated argument about the limits, both substantively and functionally, of constitutions. It explores various attempts made by positivists and their critics to define 'law', as well as the common problem they encounter. The chapter explores Derrida's work on archives to further explicate the chimerical promises of authenticity in the pursuit of defining 'law' or its antithesis. Derrida's point, one that is at the centre of much of his writing, is exactly to argue that archives offer promises of authentic unity where no such cohesion exists. For Derrida there are no sovereign subjects and no sovereign archives, there are only ever traces and impressions. Museums are one such site that can help us interrupt steady and strong conceptions of community that orient the political imaginations and sovereign desires of Western legal regimes. Museums, like constitutions, are a place for the launching of imaginations of political community.
