Colin wrote:
> >While Marx, etc. spoke of capitalism revolutionizing the means
> >of production, I haven't heard any feminist argue that
> >patriarchy revolutionizes the means of reproduction or
> >anything else for that matter. :)
>
>If you look at '70s-vintage radical feminism you'll find almost
>precisely that argument (though usually without the ":)") -- I'm
>thinking in particular of Mary Daly (who is still theorizing boldly) --
>look at _Gyn/Ecology_, her classic. This theory applies to
>reproduction in both the biological and material senses.
>
> >Patriarchy ain't the dynamic social relations in a way
> >that capitalist class relations are.
>
>It's not clear that we should think of "patriarchy" as a single thing.
>There are many different kinship systems and ideologies of gender. And
>I see no reason to deny such systems the capacity for dynamism.
>Feminist analysis has tended to move beyond seeing patriarchy as a
>single world-historical force with a beginning middle and end. The
>anthro literature has been particularly useful here.
In my opinion, the term patriarchy is best reserved for the days
before Robert Filmer (1588-1653), the author of _Patriarcha_: "as the
father over one family so the king, as the father over many families,
extends his care to preserve, feed, clothe, instruct and defend the
whole commonwealth" -- literally & metaphorically, the last words on
patriarchy. In the patriarchal world before capitalism, as Filmer's
words sum up nicely, subordination was universal, a duty of both men
& women (and in this world, women were considered lesser men, &
children lesser adults -- not different _kinds_ of being as in modern
thought). Defiance of the rule of gender subordination was then a
sedition, a crime against the state:
***** Creon: How can I, if I nurse sedition in my house,
not foster it outside?
No, if a man can keep his home in hand,
he proves his competence to keep the state.
(Sophocles, _Antigone_) *****
The rise of capitalism then began to revolutionize the mode of
reproduction (the "family" gradually lost its function as the
production unit through the process of the separation of direct
producers -- peasants -- from the means of production & became a
sphere of consumption & reproduction organized in separation from
sites of wage labor). Therefore, thoughts on gender, too, had to
change in response to the changing social relations: John Locke
(1632-1704), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), & other social
contract theorists created the foundations of modern sexism: the idea
of opposite sexes with separate spheres (men = public, women =
private; or men in the civil society, women in the family; or men in
_bellum omnium contra omnes_, women in _the haven in the heartless
world_), justified by appeal to nature & science, rather than to
custom & religion. Modern republicans made war on the ideology of
general subordination -- patriarchy -- like Filmer's, by arguing that
private & public powers & authorities were not analogous. Hence the
birth of sexism (whose general character is outlined above) -- an
ideology born to justify a _special case_ of unfreedom & inequality
_in the face of the revolutionary bourgeois theory of political
liberty & equality for all_. (Recall that the most famous early
feminist Mary Wollstonecraft [1759-1851] battled against Rousseau,
not Filmer.)
Since the emergence of capitalism has been a _gradual, uneven, &
combined_ development, even in our days, we hear echoes of modernized
patriarchy (reactionary in the true sense of the word, a modern
reaction against modernity) here and there (e.g., religious
fundamentalism in a theocratic state).
In short, the historical transition from patriarchy (an ideology of
general subordination) to sexism (an ideology of exceptional
subordination -- an exception to liberal & republican principles)
cannot be well understood without a causal explanation that analyzes
ideological changes as being _in the last instance_ determined by
changes in class relations (the emergence of capitalist class
relations in this case).
Yoshie
