ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the political context in which any public act of writing is embedded. As authors, we are not always in agreement on what, in the broader political sense, is in the best interests of the majority of people and what is said to be ‘in the national interest’. We have therefore found it impossible to present this chapter in a way that represents both our political stances. The chapter is written mainly by Romy, and represents her positions on some issues which are not always shared by Roz. The main points of disagreement are over whether a liberal democracy and free market economy are or are not in the interests of the majority of the people and over whether the Falklands/Malvinas War and the Gulf War were or were not in the ‘national interest’, and we have not committed ourselves to a shared position when discussing these issues. However, this does not affect our shared conviction that writing is at the centre of political struggle, and in making this point we have been comfortable to write ‘we’. The very fact that joint authorship is leading us into ideological struggles is part of the point we want to make about the place of writing in struggles over meaning.
