Abstract

Contemporary literature by white men in the United States about the identity "white man" largely focuses on two themes: destabilized structures of identity and their reinforcement. This concern with the threat to identity structures of race and gender is an old one in American literature. However, it takes on a new meaning in the present postmodern climate that challenges master narratives and their reinscription by forces which sustain them. White Men Write Now repeatedly returns to the thesis that the rise of postmodernism and postcolonialism against the backdrop of the Cold War created a contemporary era which critiques the Cold War as a master narrative. The challenge to narratives of nation and civilization brings an analogous challenge to categories of national Selfhood. It is a challenge to the social structures of difference, the borders which inscribe difference, in turn complicating concepts that attempt to transcend those borders.