Editorial: Writing change in feminist and gender studies: staging the political and the embodied

In the beginning, writing is always a matter of staging. You put your pen to the white surface of the paper or enter the document-page on your computer, and there you are. You have entered a room, started to invent and embody language and speech and image. What you are looking at is never just a sheet of paper, a gleaming screen, but a performative moment, where text becomes mirror and mirror becomes the gaze from the maelstrom of mainstream academic life and writing. Who's looking back? Is it you, is it her, your inner fear of becoming the face of failure or simply just losing it—and starting to behave … badly. Lo and behold—the author at work; thinking through the skin; materiality emerges.