The strange “logic” at work in any form of writing (leaving a mark, trace, inscription) is that it “spectralises” the inscribing agency. The time lag between “me” writing this and “you” reading it turns “me” into a ghost (some agent who must have been “present” once and who is now absent, but still somehow inscribed, an author haunting his, her or its inscription process). Inscription produces thus both – identity and alterity. Nowhere is this process more evident when we refer to “strangers”, the “strange” and “strangeness”…
Some work on xenography to date can be found here:
- “Xenography – The Stranger in The Merchant of Venice”, in Realigning Renaissance Culture: Intrusion and Adjustment on the Renaissance Stage, Stephan Laqué and Enno Ruge, eds, Trier: WVT, 2004 pp. 15-31. Pre-publication version available here.
- Experimenting Xenography (a chapter written for a forthcoming volume in the Experimenting Practices series).