Subject to Negotiation: Reading Feminist Criticism and American Women's Fictions

by Elaine Neil Orr

In Subject to Negotiation, Elaine Neil Orr proposes negotiation as both a state of consciousness and a significant movement for women writers as well as feminist critics. Challenging the "subversive" model of feminist criticism, she argues for the importance of negotiation for feminist practice within a plurality of critical positions and identities. Without claiming the final word- indeed calling for more words on the subject- Orr sketches an empirical method for a negotiating feminist critcism and then in successive chapters demonstrates the method at work.

152 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1997

About the author

After surviving end stage renal disease in my early forties with the gift of two transplants (kidney and pancreas), I took a right turn in my writing life: from scholarship to creative writing. Because I was born and grew up in Nigeria, my memoir and fiction are trans-Atlantic. I am keenly interested in place, not as a backdrop for stories but as a character. What I love most about writing is the practice of it. Writing, I am meditating. "How exactly do I describe the feeling of heartbreak? Does the heart really hurt?" "When my character enters this river, what is she thinking?" The normal world is lost to me; I am in a transcendent realm of creation. Being there is one of the greatest joys I know. I love being alone in nature: walking, catching a glimpse of the blue heron, feeling the wind on my neck. I try to live in the faith that all I really need is already with me.