This panel will examine how conflict characterizes modernity and post modernity, and how the response to crisis often takes a militarized tone. Even within literary discourse, the division resulting from Gender is one which suggests combat. Lucia Guerra-Cunningham, in her analysis of women writers, especially those from Latin America, exposes the fact that “literature has traditionally been a territory where men’s imagination has prevailed.” This metaphor of territorial conquest and mastery over the textual tract has forced women to “perform a concealed masquerade which allowed mimicry and the mischievous invasion into a foreign terrain.” Camouflaged with a masculine pseudonym, writers such as George Sand, George Eliot, and Fernán Cabellero crossed from the private into the public sphere with success. However, not all women have traversed the gender divide by masquerading as men. Some have and continue to opt for what some may consider to be a less covert approach. What are some of these explicit tactics that women writers resort to? Does seduction function as a stratagem or a ruse to confuse the enemy or is feminine guile another form of disguise? Is seduction a weapon that should be resisted because the feminist movement sees it as a “misappropriation of women’s true being” as Baudrillard has noted?
Paper topics may include but are not limited to women’s texts that explore revolutionary/militarized discourse, seductive narratives, characterizations of the femme fatale as transgressive rather than destructive. Papers addressing any of these themes with a comparative approach to Spanish language literature are especially welcome. Papers may be in English, French, or Spanish.