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Klause tells us to > beware of people who think they can talk of a world that exists > outside language I agree But Klause later goes on to say: > all i did is chiming with teena saying (my paraphrase) that everything > written is written from a particular perspective, are colored by > ideological > lenses and vested interest in the subject matter, relying on a > vocabulary > and syntactical structures that cannot possibly accurately represent > what > actually happened. although people might believe reading non- > fiction gains > then access to what actually happened, this belief is illusionary. It seems to me that talk of 'what actually happened' is 'talk of a world that exists outside language' I have no difficulty accepting > that everything > written is written from a particular perspective, are colored by > ideological > lenses and vested interest in the subject matter, relying on a > vocabulary > and syntactical structures… That seems totally uncontroversial and a given, but the next bit about 'what actually happened' is where I get lost. This goes to the heart of what I find problematic about the assertion that all writing is fiction. The statement only achieves its rhetorical force if it is contrasted with the dismissed non-fiction. If non-fiction is not possible the assertion is hollow. In the end this is just playing with language. Perhaps we should be silent about the things we cannot talk about (or some such phrase). David --