‘As intellectuals and academics we are constantly engaging in projects of representation, but in the dominant epistemologies that guide our work, our role as representers is effaced’.

‘At the heart of the issue lies a fundamental insistence on the contextualised nature of all forms of knowledge, meaning and behaviour. There is a further recognition of the partial and partisan edge to inquiry, theory construction, and scholarly (re)presentation, as well as an explicit acknowledgement of the importance of the author's biography in this creative process’.

The assertions of two modern geographers, Katz and Merrifield, are symptomatic of an underlying, but persistent, debate within their field of study. To what degree should academic prose aim at impersonality? The discipline of modern geography, perhaps more than any other academic subject at pains constantly to justify and redefine itself, has taken on this problem, formulated its history, and posited some solutions.