Literature has been part of the purview of SOCIAL TEXT since the journal’s inception, although the literary has never been presumed to be its paradigmatic or primary object of study. Moreover, from issue 4 (1981) through issue 39 (1994), the journal not only published scholarship on literature, but also sporadically published poetry and fiction. There are intriguing parallels between the experimentalism of the essays in the journal, especially in the rubric of short, theoretical pieces called “Unequal Developments” featured in early issues, and the experimentalism of the poetry and fiction.
