Crimes of Writing

Eight essays that examine particular issues in the relations between subjectivity, authenticity, writing, speech and the law.

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Crimes of Writings examines questions surrounding subjectivity, authenticity, and writing. First, Stewart examines cases of forgery, literary imposture, pornography and graffiti, and the development, from the early eighteenth century onward, of the laws articulating such crimes. Second, she uses `crimes of writing' to connote the ways in which such practices are in fact inversions or negations of cultural rules. Finally, she claims that crimes of writing are delineated by law because they specifically undermine the status of the Law itself.