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In the lead article of this issue, Nedra Reynolds offers a trenchant critique of "Composition's Imagined Geographies," arguing that we need to look more closely at the metaphors of space-frontiers, cities, communities, webs, and networks-that shape much of our thinking about discourse and that can also divert our attention from the actual physical places where writing gets studied and taught. Reynolds' essay is a powerful example of a sort of writing I have especially called for in my editorship: a self-reflexive critique of our work as theorists and teachers, a study of the uses and limits of the terms and concepts we use to think with.
Such criticism usually seems to begin from a moment of insight or assurance: The critic sees something-a gap, a contradiction, a possibility-that we do not, and from that vantage...