ABSTRACT
In collections of essays on topics of current theoretical interest it’s becoming quite common, if not yet a fully established part of the genre, to start off the piece with a little story about the final stages of its genesis. Such a story typically mentions the last-minute influence of a suggestion or critique by someone whose position, in terms of gender or race or sexual orientation, might give their opinion a legitimacy of a kind that the writer, by his or her own position, might be thought to lack. ‘I was discussing this article over breakfast with a lesbian friend, and she said ..., ’ writes someone who will thereby be identifying herself or himself as either a man, or straight, or both.
