Paid in full? Writing beyond the pale

This issue of ephemera is concerned with texts, discourse and organization; how discourse organizes and the organization of discourse. Without wanting to speak for the various contributors, what we, as the editors of ephemera 4(4), want to do is focus on the quotation above in relation to new forms of writing.

In short, the papers presented in this issue either discuss or are themselves new forms of writing. For us, new writing should not conform to established systems and canons and must therefore be free from them. Our intention is to open up a space for new writing that is arguably outside of the established academic domain. In so doing, and against Boje et al. (2004), we believe that new writing is neither recognised nor encouraged by academia. Thus, it is not an issue of how free we are to develop new writing in the academy but more that to have new writing we must be free of the academy.