International Journal of English Research

Authors
Niloufar Khosravi

Abstract
Lydia Davis is a short story writer whose personal form and structure of writing is well known for her short sentences and also for nameless characters. What is interesting in her stories, apart from the structure, is her idea of knowledge and the way it affects her characters. Helene Cixous, a feminist poststructuralist, tries to deconstruct the current definition of knowledge and introduces a new one; in addition, she claims to develop a new strategy of facing the old knowledge. Furthermore, she believes women can change the predefined ideas of knowledge and stand against them considerably better than men for the fact that, women have always been absent in the current definition of knowledge since it has always been defined by men historically. What is interesting about Cixous’ ideas is that they can be traced in works of women writers even when they do not admit their belief in “Ecriture Feminine”. Moreover, this new and feminine way of facing the masculine world is not a theory to be practiced, Cixous believes, but an innate adaptation within the works of some female writers. This study claims Lydia Davis’ selected stories can be read in the light of Cixous’ definition of knowledge and female characters of these stories are experiencing different stages of facing and redefining the current knowledge in the same way Cixous mentions.