Marking the Space: Writing as Ethical, Imaginative and Rhetorical Praxis

Abstract

Is writing in the public domain inevitably about impersonality and detachment? Are writing subjects to be (always) absent as well as (sometimes) invisible when writing in a professional capacity? And if we aren’t able to talk to ourselves when writing as professionals, how do we manage to write to others meaningfully? The above questions challenge a common assumption about the conventions of professional writing. They also raise a series of broad questions concerning the writer’s agency and the roles of the text and of the reader(s) of documents in the public domain. I hope to address those questions in the course of the discussion below.