本文剖析西方中國研究界在過去十年闖出現的當代“女作家"現象，並探討比現象與女性主義關於文學理論和政治行動的觀點的關係。本文認為，西方中國研究學者之所以罕用女性主義文學批評為基礎研究當代小說，部份原因在於中華人氏共和國文化部門所設定的框架有不衰的影響力。本文的一個主妥論點是，中國的女作家部門祝“婦女"為一個生物範疇而非政治範疇，結果完全剔除了性別的政治意義。女作家於是變成了一個特定的作家團體，溫柔馴服，不論實情如何均具有特殊的“女性\"意義。女作家被歸為一類之後，她們非但無法如表面所言有利於婦女，反而使女性戶才能獲得的發言位置史告縮小。本文主張對文學批評的方法重新的加以按討，伴使兩性的文學寫作中的性“無意識\"成為探討的對象。

This article examines the contemporary “womenwriters" phenomenon as it has emerged in Sinology over the past decade and examines its relationship to feminist notions of literary theory and political action. The paper argues that the dearth of Sinological work on contemporary fiction which takes femi· nist literary criticism as its foundation is understandable partly in terms of the resilience of the parameters set by the culture industry of the People's Republic of China. One of the paper's major points is that the women writers' industry of China has effectively depolitcised gender by ensuring that woman remains a biological and not a political category. This has produced women writers as a special group of tame “domesticated"writers giving them special“women's" significance whether appropriate or not. This isolation of female writers has thereby narrowed the base of speaking p08itions available to women rather than serving， as is obstensibly claimed， to promote women's interests. This paper calls for a reassessment of critical methods whereby writing from both sexes be examined for their sexual“unconscious" .