ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION Several years ago, in a paper for The American Scholar, Clifford Geertz reflected on tbe vast amount of wbat be called 'genre blurring' , or 'jumbling of discourse varieties', in recent academic life. As be sees it, there are a large number of writers and texts that escape any dear definition and location on the academic map. They have emerged not simply as a result of 'another redrawing' of the boundaries between one discipline and another; instead they reflect a radical 'alteration of tbe very principles of mapping' (Geertz 1983: 20).
