This essay seeks to explore the tensions in the paradoxical location of ‘non-fiction’ — or the de-hyphenated ‘nonfiction’, as we prefer — as a literary/artistic category, one that is built upon a negation. The opposition set up in the term by the operation of the ‘non’ upon the ‘fiction’ suggests a steadfast binary. However the friction between the two sides of this binary, and the inherent resistance embodied in the close proximity and conjoining of the two parts, accounts for much of the energy and interest in contemporary nonfiction writing. Here we bring together etymologies and theoretical topographies to problematize the intriguing situation of ‘nonfiction now’.

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