Writing a Politics of Perception: Memory, Holography, and Women Writers in Canada (review)
theorized introductions to texts by novelists such as Joyce Elbrecht and Lydia Fakundiny (who write together as author/subject Jael B. Juba), Laird completes her study with another such illuminating pairing of pairings in "Rewriting America." Whereas Laird opens her text by recreating a model of "collaborative desire" informed by but not limited to a psychoanalytical perspective, the integrative pluralism of her approach permits her to conjoin subjects and modes of inquiry from autobiography to deconstruction. In the hands of a less skillful critic, such a methodology might seem cumbersome or erratic, but Laird's deft synthesis remains always specific in support, meticulously argued, and readable. Equally important, her project provides a model for further analyses of this kind. As Laird remarks, "The aim of this study is not to set forth one kind of collaboration as ideal or even as better in some sense than another, but to learn what can be gleaned from the juxtapositions of different kinds and degrees of collaboration." Indeed, Women Coauthors stands to inspire other such innovative critical juxtapositions.