Writing: Self and Reflexivity

Abstract

This book explores the apparent contradiction at the heart of the creative writing process: that writing is profoundly connected with the writer's self, yet it also entails a move away from the self towards the impersonal, shared or universal territory of the text. It argues that current and dominant thinking in the humanities about subjectivity is not sufficient to understand this contradiction and, drawing together and, where appropriate, reinterpreting this thinking, it reconsiders the connection between subjectivity and writing, bringing to bear new thinking on the self from neurophysiology and developmental psychology.