Contemporary Women’s Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

by Susan Watkins

This book examines how contemporary women novelists have successfully transformed and rewritten the conventions of post-apocalyptic fiction. Since the dawn of the new millennium, there has been an outpouring of writing that depicts the end of the world as we know it, and women writers are no exception to this trend. However, the book argues that their fiction is distinctive. Contemporary women’s work in this genre avoids conservatism, a nostalgic mourning for the past, and the focus on restoring what has been lost, aspects key to much male authored apocalyptic fiction. Instead, contemporary women writers show readers the ways in which patriarchy and neo-colonialism are intrinsically implicated in the disasters they envision, and offer qualified hope for a new beginning for society, culture and literature after an imagined apocalyptic event. Exploring science, nature and matter, the posthuman body, the maternal imaginary, time, narrative and history, literature and the word, and the post-secular, the book covers a wide variety of writers and addresses issues of nationality, race and ethnicity, as well as gender and sexuality.

229 pages, Hardcover

Published March 1, 2020

About the author

Susan Watkins is Professor in the School of Cultural Studies and Humanities and Director of the Centre for Culture and the Arts. She is an expert in contemporary women's fiction and feminist theory. Susan's main research interests are in the field of contemporary women's fiction and feminist theory.

Reviews

[Rebeca F. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really interesting book in which Watkins reflects on how contemporary women writers of SF and speculative fiction have transformed and rewritten the conventions of the dominant male authored models of post apocalyptic books, focusing on new ways to go beyond the end to create a new tomorrow, past the nostalgic conservatism and longing for the old male dominated structures of power that caused the collapse of society as we know it with a lucid and dark approach that most of the time manages to retain hope.
There're several essays focusing on different topics, like the link between mother and daughter, sexuality, the cyborg, comic vs tragic post apocalyptic fiction, the relation with nature and science, matter and other species, ghosting and haunting, non linear time and the function of literature and the word, among many other subjects, from a gender studies perspective, but also focusing on post colonialism. Among the authors analyzed are Margaret Atwood, Doris Lessing, Maggie Gee, Jeanette Winterson, Octavia Butler, Jane Rogers and many many more. I missed more of Angela Carter, as she was just mentioned in the introduction, I think, which seems like a huge waste. Still, this is a really interesting and frighteningly contingent book to read during this time. Absolutely recommended.