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R E V I E W :
[INLINE] The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory:
Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future
by CYNTHIA ELLER (Beacon Press, Boston, 2000)

[Copyright 2000 Max Dashu]

In the past thirty years an academic uproar has grown over feminist
ideas that women once had power; that people traced their descent
through the mother; that ancient religions embraced Goddess
veneration. Academia rejected these interpretations of history in the
1960s. Their massive comeback as a result of the women's movement has
caused an alarmed reaction. The straw doll of "matriarchy" is again
thrown up, its impossibly narrow definition shot down, and the matter
is declared settled. Robert Schaeffer of can then proclaim that "The
feminist / New Age ÔIdyllic GoddessÕ theory is not an intellectually
respectable hypothesis."

All this polarization and oversimplification avoids the real issue,
which is not female domination in a reverse of historical female
oppression, but the existence of egalitarian human societies: cultures
that did not enforce a patriarchal double standard around sexuality,
property, public office and space; that did not make females legal
minors under the control of fathers, brothers, and husbands, without
protection from physical and sexual abuse by same. We know of many
societies that did not confine, seclude, veil, or bind female bodies,
nor amputate or deform parts of those bodies. We know, as well, that
there have been cultures that accorded women public leadership roles
and a range of arts and professions, as well as freedom of movement,
speech, and rights to make personal decisions. Many have embraced
female personifications of the Divine, neither subordinating them to a
masculine god, nor debarring masculine deities.

Evidence for such societies exists, though there's no agreement on
what to call them. "Matriarchy" connotes for many a system of
domination, with the "archy" meaning "rule over." Identified with
early anthropological theory and, more recently, slams against
African-American women, it has been overwhelmingly rejected.
"Matrilineal" is inadequate, focusing on the single criterion of
descent. "Matrifocal" is too ambiguous, since it could be argued (and
has been) that many patriarchal societies retain a strong emphasis on
the mother. My preferred term is "matrix society," which implies a
social network based on the life support system as well as
mother-right. Others refer to "matristic" or "gynocentric" societies,
or Riane EislerÕs "gylany."

Old-school academics as well as post-structuralist upstarts like to
scold refractory feminists about evidence and certainties. Their
pretense to disinterested objectivity reminds me of what Gandhi said
when asked what he thought about Western Civilization: "I think it
would be a very good idea."Covert agendas pass easily under the banner
of objectivity. Many still believe the fiction that mainstream
academia is somehow value-free, yet feminist perspectives are
necessarily ideological and agenda-driven.

The deliberately provocative title of Cynthia Eller's book spells out
her approach in a nutshell: it's not about history, but ideology. The
ideas under fire are feminist challenges to the assumption that
patriarchy has been the universal human condition. The author aims to
critique the views of what she calls "feminist matriarchalists," but
commits the very offense of which she accuses them. History --
detailed, in-depth analysis of historical evidence -- takes a back
seat to theory (in this case, of the post-structuralist gender studies
variety) salted with ethnographic remarks.

Eller's standpoint differs from that of the most ardent opponents of
matrix history in being avowedly feminist. But this does not get in
the way of a no-holds-barred polemic, beginning with the title itself.
Eller styles the matristic histories as a "myth" -- not a thesis or a
group of theories. She makes no distinction between scholarly studies
in a wide range of fields and expressions of the burgeoning Goddess
movement, including novels, guided tours and various market-driven
enterprises. All are conflated all into one monolithic "myth" devoid
of any historical foundation.

Though Eller acknowledges that the vast majority of feminist thinkers
in this area reject the word [1]"matriarchy," she has chosen this
loaded, hot-button label as a descriptor. Throughout the book she
refers to a diverse range of feminist researchers as "feminist
matriarchalists," tossing out broadbrush generalizations along the
way: "Feminist matriarchalists' interpretations of ancient myth are
rather transparently driven by ideology." Since Eller's label is more
polemical than descriptive, in this review I will abbreviate it as
"fms" where necessary.

There are feminist scholars who use the term Òmatriarchy.Ó
Anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday is quite conscious of Òthe disdain
that the term matriarchy evokes in the minds of many anthropologists,Ó
but notes that the Minangkabau people of Sumatra have adopted the
European term matriarchaat to describe their own social order. [See
her [2]article "Matriarchy as a Sociocultural Formula: An Old Debate
in a New LightÓ] Heide Gottner-Abendroth chooses to confront the
frenzied reaction the term generates, exposing the sexist bias still
engrained in academia and the media. Both writers reframe the
etymology of matriarchy. Instead of using the standard derivation of
the -archy stem from ÒrulershipÓ (as in hierarchy), they look to an
earlier Greek usage of -arche, meaning Òbeginning, origin, first
principle.Ó

The introduction acknowledges "substantial dissension" within the
"matriarchal myth," but the body of the book paints a different
picture, one of a monolithic ideology. Views that contradict this
stereotype are for the most part relegated to the footnotes. Eller
goes for the easy targets and steps well around those that look like
they'll sit up and bite back. She relies heavily on [INLINE] poems and
interviews, quoting from scholarly writers only in brief snippets.
Gimbutas is identified as a major influence, but not heard from
directly on her historical analysis (only on interpretation of
iconography). Gerda Lerner is barely alluded to, which is strange
given her prominence; evidently she would interfere with the desired
impression of a wacko fringe. And where are Miriam Robbins Dexter,
Mary Condren, Asphodel Long, Paula Gunn Allen, Patricia Monaghan,
Pupul Jayakar, Aurora Levins-Morales, Joanna Hubbs, Gloria Anzaldúa,
Ruby Rohrlich, N.N. Bhattacharya, or the Africanists Sheikh Anta Diop
and Theophile Obenga?

Jomon culture, ancient Japan >>>

Cynthia Eller has taken feminist spirituality as her anthropological
subject. Her earlier book, Living in the Lap of the Goddess: The
Feminist Spirituality Movement in America (1993), contains a chapter
on the same material ("The Rise and Fall of Women's Power"). In both
books, Eller believes her informants define women "quite narrowly" as
mothers, as bodies, sex, nature -- embracing, she says, the
preconceptions of the patriarchy they are trying to escape. Her
critique of what she sees as "essentialism" is a major theme of The
Myth. The author has no problem positing that all societies have been
male-dominated, but considers any and all proposals of sex-egalitarian
matrilineages "essentialist." This is the "invented past" of her
title.

Eller recounts her first encounter with these ideas in an academic
setting, when a male archaeologist suggested that Crete had been a
matriarchal society. She reports an overwhelmingly negative response
that seems to have impressed her deeply: "If a lot of mockery was all
that prehistoric matriarchies could get me, who needed them?"A lack of
historical evidence does not appear as a consideration here, rather it
is an emotional reaction. Instead, Eller author has chosen to join the
camp of the mockers: "For those with ears to hear it, the noise the
theory of matriarchal prehistory makes as we move into a new
millennium is deafening." A lack of historical evidence does not
appear .

The author does her best to portray this theory (and for her there is
only one) as extremist, unfounded, and blithely unconcerned about
historical veracity. She insists that "fms" want the theory to be true
so badly that they will believe it in spite of all evidence. Eller
says she is "appalled by the sheer credulousness they demonstrated
toward their very dubious version of what happened in Western
prehistory." Eller implies that the evidence preponderates on the side
of neolithic patriarchy, but as she gets into the meat of her argument
later in the book, it turns out to be inconclusive, unproven and even
unprovable. She admits that "... there is simply no evidence that can
definitively prove the matriarchal hypothesis wrong."

Eller's account of how the "matriarchal myth" originated follows the
interpretation of non-feminists such as Ronald Hutton: feminists are
copying ideas that originated with Johan Jakob Bachofen in 1861. The
Swiss philologist proposed an era of "unregulated hetaerism" in which
women were sexually degraded and defenseless, followed by an Amazonian
revolt that inaugurated an era of matriarchy. In this stage, women
created marriage to tame the male. This supposedly still-animalistic
and "backward" era was superceded by a "higher" stage of human
development: patriarchy. But, as Peggy Reeves Sanday points out,
Bachofen never used the word ÒmatriarchyÓ; it was American translators
who plugged in this term in the mid-20th century. Bachofen's own
favored word was Mother-Right, the very name of his book. He used a
different term, gynecocracy, for Òrule by women.Ó

Nonetheless, since Bachofen and other elite white male theorists of
the 19th century saw patriarchy as an evolutionary advance, Eller
contends there is "nothing inherently feminist" in the "matriarchal"
thesis. Worse, since it was proposed by "the enemies of feminism," she
believes that it is against women's interests to pursue this theory.
(If this were true, consistency demands that analysis based on
Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault should also be pitched overboard.) The
fact that history was still firmly in white men's hands in Bachofen's
time does not somehow obligate today's women to follow their
interpretations.

In any case, it's hard to see how a matriarchal thesis would advance
the patriarchal agenda in a world where male domination was already a
given. In fact, the initial reception of Das Mutterrecht was hostile.
After several decades, the book became influential, but its pull was
often indirect (it didn't appear in English until 1967) and diffuse
(the idea of mother-right itself eclipsed the particulars of
Bachofen's analysis). Sexist preconceptions aside, the Swiss scholar
seems to have been trying to account for information that didn't fit
the picture of universal male domination. It wasn't Bachofen's heroic
view of patriarchy that attracted several generations of women
researchers, but his anomalous suggestion of prehistoric female power.
By pulling together little-discussed information on women's history to
make that case, he stimulated discussion of the question of female
status from a new angle.

It's worth looking more closely at the history of this idea. Earlier
writers had already begun to address the issue of female power as they
encountered non-European societies in colonial contexts. Their
accounts present a tangle of European projections based on everything
from Greek Amazon traditions to Christian colonizers' claims that
indigeous peoples worshipped devils. They also recorded their culture
shock at encountering senior priestesses (as in the Philippines) and
female chieftains (as in mid-Atlantic North America and the Pacific
Islands).

In the Jesuit Relations (1724) the French missionary Lafitau expressed
astonishment at the power of Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) matrons: "All
real authority is vested in them... nothing is more real than the
superiority of the women." Lewis Morgan spent four decades studying
the Iroquois and spinning his own theories about matriarchy, published
in 1877 as Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human
Progress from Savagery, through Barbarism to Civilization. The
unconscious, patent racism of these categorizations marked the new
"science" of anthropology, as also history and all other disciplines
in Western learning.

Morgan's work in turn had a tremendous impact on Engels, who put forth
its outlines in The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the
State (1884), and on Marx, who began writing along similar lines
before his death. Eller's brief summary indicates that Freud and many
other thinkers of the late 19th century were influenced by these
theories of matriarchy, barbarism and civilization, and that feminists
-- notably Matilda Joslyn Gage and Charlotte Perkins Gilman -- also
began to draw on them for their own sociopolitical analysis.

With Gage, however, we come back full circle to the Iroquois -- but
not as anthropological informants, grist for an elite white
theoretical mill. For Gage they acted as teachers who inspired a
different vision of human relations than the patriarchal European
model, and as elders who honored her with the rank of matron of the
Wolf clan in the Mohawk nation. Sally Roesch Wagner has fleshed out
the direct impact of Iroquois culture on Gage, Stanton, and other
founders of the US women's movement. Her research shows that these
early feminists (based in upstate New York) had frequent contact with
the Haudenosaunee and were deeply impressed by the contrast in women's
status in the two cultures.

While white women were legal non-persons lacking rights to vote, hold
property and child custody, and even rights over their own persons,
Haudenosaunee women spoke in council, participated in decision-making,
selected the men who would be chiefs, and had the authority to "knock
the horns off" a chief who failed the people. The chiefs themselves
upheld the traditional respect for women, staunchly defending it to
white men over the centuries. It was not a coincidence that the first
women's rights conference took place at Seneca Falls. Even the
"Bloomer" dress reform, with "an uncanny resemblance to the
loose-fitting tunic and leggings" of the Haudenosaunee women, started
in this region. [Roesch Wagner's groundbreaking article "The Untold
Story of the Iroquois Influence on Early Feminists" appears inAwakened
Woman (February 2000) at [3]www.goddessaltar.com/iroquois_women.htm]

Barbara MannÕs phenomenal Iroquoian Women: the Gantowisas [New York:
Peter Lang, 2000. ISBN 0-8204-4153-8] is the definitive, must-read
exposition of Six Nations history. She synthesizes oral tradition with
all the key Euro-American written sources with insight, wit, and a
trenchant critique of ÒEuro-forming the data.Ó [A review of this
important book will be posted on this site later.]

Paula Gunn Allen laid out indigenous antecedents for the
European-American womenÕs movement as well as the "matriarchal" theory
in her essay, ÒWho is Your Mother: The Red Roots of White Feminism.Ó
She points to Òthe informal but deeply effective Indianization of
EuropeansÓ that seeped in from many directions, including the second-
and third-hand accounts of Morgan, Marx and Engels. These influences
went unrecognized, since Indians were "offically and formally ignored
as intellectual movers and shapers in the United States, Britain and
Europe." [Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine
in American Indian Traditions, Boston: 1986 (Beacon) pp. 211, 220]

[INLINE]

<<<
Southern
Illinois

Seemingly unaware of these studies of American Indian influence on
white feminists, anthropologists and leftists, Eller portrays the
matrix theories as indebted only to male chauvinists. She moves on
quickly to a discussion of anthropologists' sudden repudiation of
"matriarchy" after 1900. Her explanation is that evolutionary theory
came into disrepute and armchair anthropology gave way to fieldwork.
Still, classicists like Jane Harrison and George Thomson, as well as
the anthropologist Robert Briffault, continued to mine the cultural
record for evidence of early female power.

Eller admits that scholars who did not adhere to the new doctrine of
timeless patriarchy were subjected to "the jeers of most of their
colleagues." It's strange that she so quickly passes over this subject
of ridicule, which has persisted to the present day in academia. In
college during the late '60s, I experienced it full force before I
even had a position on "matriarchy"; it was made quite clear that
certain questions were not to be asked. The negation was so pervasive
as to be doctrinal, a trigger for shouting-down rather than reasonable
discussion. Breaches have appeared in the wall since then, but the
threatened behavior persists. Many of its targets have been
non-academics, but the most visible challenge emerged from within the
ivory tower, in the person of the archaeologist Marija Gimbutas.

(Continued) ............................................. [4]NEXT
------>

[5]The Furor Over Gimbutas
[6]Deconstructing "Matriarchal Myth" 
[7]Where's the History?
[8]Arguing About the Goddess
[9]PoMo Prescriptions

Copyright 2000 Max Dashu

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References

1. http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/matriarchy.html
2. http://sas.upenn.edu/&7Epsanday/matril.html
3. http://www.goddessaltar.com/iroquois_women.htm
4. http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/eller2.html
5. http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/eller2.html
6. http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/eller3.html
7. http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/eller4.html
8. http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/eller5.html
9. http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/eller6.html
10. http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/articles.html
11. http://www.suppressedhistories.net/catalog.html
12. http://www.suppressedhistories.net/index.html