Introduction

Summary

A key dilemma for writers, be they poets, philosophers or researchers, is how to give meaning to the world when there are so many interpretative repertoires to articulate and learn from. To speak or to write is to participate in a symbolic economy where meaning is negotiated and mobilised through the availability of scattered discursive resources. Writing, in essence, is that dynamic, productive site where meaning is continually made, normalised and contested. A related dilemma for writers therefore concerns the why of said meaning. Taking a postmodernist perspective to its logical conclusion, meaning is arbitrary in the metaphysical sense that it lacks any ontological fixity to speak of. It has no essence or origin, or at least its origin has no status beyond the ‘exteriority of accidents’ (Foucault, 1998, p 146). Meaning at best reflects the interplay between spontaneous action and reproduced habits of culture. Postmodern cynicism aside, meaning is not entirely free-floating or symbolic. It represents pragmatic, engaged attempts at sensemaking. In other words, meaning making can be characterised as essential epistemic work, a form of ‘anchoring’ that is vital to human cognition and abstract thinking (Eagleton, 2003, p 59). Consider the importance of meaning to human efforts at coping with complexity or making social reality amenable to capture by unique and historically contingent systems of signification and belonging.

The dilemma here, then, concerns the symbolic and material consequences that result from deploying certain discursive resources (words, imagery, tropes, arguments) over and against others in our productions and representations of the world. If we accept the view that there is no such thing as neutral writing, and that writing only makes sense through the provision of shared meaning, it is incumbent on writers to take responsibility for the habits and choices that shape their constructions of reality. This includes recognising what is at stake when we write. After all, writing is about taking positions. Why do we write? For whom do we write? What is to be gained or lost from writing in a particular way? What kinds of disagreements must be struggled over, negotiated, held apart or brought together to achieve particular kinds of writing? As Bacchi (1999) reminds us, problems and solutions are not arrived at indiscriminately through the identification of some pre-existent, transcendental nature.