Women's Fiction and Post-9/11 Contexts

9/11 is not simple a date on the calendar but marks a distinct historical threshold, ushering in the war on terror, various states of emergency, a supposed "e;clash of civilizations,"e; and the putative legitimation of counter-democratic procedures ranging from extraordinary renditions to enhanced interrogation. Perhaps no date, since Virginia Woolf declared that "e;on or about December 1910 human character changed,"e; has marked such a singular point in the perception of time, identity and nature. Women's writing has always been something of a counter-canon, offering modes of voice and point of view beyond that of the "e;man"e; of reason. This collection of essays explores the two problems of what it means to write as a woman and what it means to write in the twenty-first century.