In a thought-provoking piece for Boston Review, Lindsay Turner discusses what she sees as the central question raised by I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women: “If conceptual writing aims to do away with the subject, why gather female writers?”  She goes on:

I’ll Drown My Book deepens a preexisting debate over women’s writing and anthologies, focusing on the apparent incompatibility between the traditional authorial “self” or subject and the type of language or procedure often claimed by conceptual writing. The anthology’s contributors occupy both sides of that debate: Juliana Spahr voices the expected position—“the terms that make up one’s own writing are, from the start, outside oneself, beyond oneself in a sociality that has no single author”—while Renee Gladman writes, “I really believe that my ‘I’ could not possibly be the same as yours.”

To read the rest of the review, visit the Boston Review website to purchase a copy of the November/December 2012 issue or read the article via Archive.org’s WayBack Machine.