ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book considers the plurality of definitions that exist concerning collaboration, feminism, queerness, and queer-feminist collaborations. It examines the varied partnerships and strategies of subjects, not to parse out "full" versus "partial" or "mutual" versus "unequal" coauthorship, but rather, using a framework informed by theories of performativity and queer theory, to highlight how the intersections between women's authorship, subjectivity, and sexuality has been regulated, iterated, and subverted. It also examines the performative, joined body(ies) of the collaborators, which takes shape sometimes as an unseamed, merged body, sometimes a hybrid, dialogic body. The book posits that women's literary partnerships, in today's terms, "queered" heteronormative conventions in order to critique late Victorian models of sex, gender, authorship, identity and sexuality. It also considers what bodies reveal through the performance of silence and what drama can reveal about the social body through refusals of representation.
