Beyond ecriture feminine: desperately seeking a new literary paradigm

The starting point for this paper was a question directed to a panel of writers (all of them young women) at the Ubud Readers and Writers Festival in October 2004. A (male) Balinese writer asked them why they only ever write about sex, and why they do not engage with politics and contemporary social issues in their writing. I was reminded of Ann Rosalind Jones' observation (1981:328) that 'in many ...cultures, taboos against female speech are enforced: injunctions tosilence, mockery of women's chatter or 'women's books' abound.'