PoMo Prescriptions
Eller sees “fm’s”
as reinforcing patriarchal gendering by insisting on the classic feminine
traits. On the other hand, she doesn’t seem to entertain any possibility
of redefining “female” in a positive, flexible and diverse
way. For her it represents—can only represent—a negative,
constrictive category imposed by a patriarchal system. In support of this,
she uses a great quote from the 19th-century British feminist Millicent
Fawcett: “We talk about ‘women’ and ‘women’s
suffrage,’ we do not talk about Woman with a capital W. That we
leave to our enemies.” [Eller, 80] Nonetheless, many estimable feminists
such as Matilda Joslyn Gage used this syntax to articulate very radical
ideas.
It seems tautological to say that “both
the category of feminism and its context are to a large degree determined
by prior discrimination against the very people who are forced to occupy
that category.” [76] Why else would a women's rights movement come
into existence at all? Eller’s formulation seems to deny any voice,
creative shaping or subversion of 
ordained
identity to the women themselves. Her solution to the problem is simple:
vacate the category of women, as meaningless, illusory, and confining.
Valdivia, ancient Ecuador >>>
In post-structuralist mode,
Eller proclaims that it is pointless to look for commonalities, since
there are none: “The only femaleness that is characteristic of all
women as a class is the experience of having the label ‘woman’
affixed to one's being.” (Are all identities as meaningless as this?
Do we really have to talk about “all women” as opposed to
patterns affecting vast numbers of women? And do words really trump socio-political
realities?) Eller skims over the performance theory of gender without
addressing — except for a mention of pink and blue blankets—the
heavy social / cultural / economic enforcement that underlies these “performances,”
and the retaliation and repression dealt out for disapproved behaviors.
[Eller, 79, 74] As Stevie Jackson has pointed out, “Regarding meaning
as entirely fluid can mean denying even the starkest of material realities.”
[Jackson, 1992, 92]
And, because it recognizes no group interests,
a post-structuralist worldview also entails abandoning solidarity and
collective action. The program seems to be: make gender disappear, as
in no previous human society. But what about the structural realities
of patriarchy—physical and sexual abuse, low female status combined
with heavy caregiver responsibilities, economic insecurity, legal inconsequence,
women's reactions to violent and degrading treatment: can all that be
made to vanish by declaring gender irrelevant? Quoting Vicki Noble’s
remark that “We have to create the feminine,” Eller asks,
“Why can’t we just ignore it and see if it goes away?”
[73-74] (She must not have been to a toy store lately.) The naiveté
of this strangely passive approach is staggering.
Eller proposes the Sisyphean project of
overcoming a pan-historic male domination of women through... moral choice.
She doesn't address the problem of whether the will to achieve this exists
on a society-wide basis, amidst the anti-feminist backlash against women's
recent gains. But even if this goal is unreachable, we can still try really
hard, hoping for a better future in spite of a bleak past. And “We
can comfort ourselves with the thought that many of the conditions we
suspect have worked to create male dominance are no longer with us, or
need no longer produce the same response as they did in the past.”
[186-187]
Hmmm. What conditions might these be? This
is the first mention of male dominance having to be created, it having
existed since the dawn of time and all. Now Eller points to Richard Leakey’s
argument that the hunting and gathering division of labor is the culprit
in women's oppression. She hopes that “the farther we grow from
those roots, the less we need to be affected by social roles that made
sense only in the past.” This assumes that they ever made sense—that
they were not based on sheer coercion of women, children, and non-dominant
males. [186]
But if patriarchy originated in foraging societies,
why do so many of them—the Agta, Mbuti, Semang—display relatively
egalitarian social relations? And why is it that the most patriarchal
systems are found in the highly organized feudal, imperial and capitalist
societies? More than one anthropologist has proposed the reverse of Leakey’s
thesis: that hunter-gatherer gender parity gave way to patriarchy within
the settled agrarian societies. None of this has been settled.
There’s another problem. Eller puts this
era of leaving behind foraging lifeways (at least for “the West”)
at some 10,000 years ago. It seems as if that would be more than long
enough to outgrow any functionality of old hunter-gatherer roles (were
we prepared to concede them) which would then just “go away.”
She tries to explain away the problem: “social systems can continue
to thrive long after the conditions that formed them have become irrelevant.”
[186] Indeed. This is what any number of feminist thinkers have been saying
about the persistence of goddess veneration in patriarchal societies,
but Eller doesn’t apply the principle in that case.
Although Eller posits male domination throughout
history, she hedges toward the end of her book with the question “Why
is it that where gender hierarchy has developed, women have always been
the dominated gender?" (emphasis added) [182] So, is male domination
universal or not? The Myth gives the impression that patriarchal social
systems serve no interests, entail no power or benefits: “Male dominance
may be perpetuated through inertia and have no better reason to exist
than tradition.” [187] My question is, what are the politics of
that tradition? Whose interests are served?
The author reports that she presented her students with an choice: would they prefer "that of explaining women's (pre)historical loss of power in such a way that it does not rule out women's power in the future, or that of explaining how male dominance -- universal up until now -- can be ended at some point in the future." (They split evenly.) But a group which never had power is not more likely to gain future power than one which once had it, and there's no reason to assume that lost power can not be regained. Enslaved people free themselves, countries throw off colonial yokes -- and they always look back to their previous freedom for inspiration.
Although it is already being pointed to as the authoritative summation of its subject, this book obscures the variety and differences among matrix historians. Eller comes off as dismissive or ignorant of female contributions in the field. She cites Will Durant as crediting women with the invention of farming, weaving, and pottery, but the omission of Ariel Durant's name from early editions of their historical series has long since been remedied, and should not have been repeated here. In the same fashion Eller presents Leonard Shlain as the first to propose a relationship of literacy to patriarchy.
At the end of the book,
Eller offers an unconvincing sop to the objects of her inquiry: “The
care and imagination feminist matriarchalists have devoted to these ‘origins’
questions is in itself an impressive achievement.” There is cold
comfort in this, as she immediately reverts to accusing “fm’s”
of “sloppy or wishful thinking.” She must continue to protest
against “the myth” even after it is “stripped of its
pretensions to historical truth.” [182-183] Not only does Cynthia
Eller consider the entire spectrum of matrix theories escapist and nostalgic
for patriarchal archetypes, she thinks they are dangerous and ultimately
serve the enemies of feminism.
The only problem is, those enemies just
love her book. On the net it's being gleefully hailed by outright and
covert anti-feminists alike. Lawrence Osborne's article on <salon.com>
trumpets: “False Goddess: Despite what believers in prehistoric
matriarchy proclaim, women never ruled the Earth.” [Osborne, 2000]
Osborne gloats that Cynthia Eller is “unravelling the pretensions
of matriarchalists” and “middlebrow feminists.” According
to him, they are “sentimental, gawky,” and “woozy, sexist
romantics,” whose “twaddle” is probably a “pathological
reaction” to corporatist society. (In Osborne’s blinkered
worldview, women’s oppression could not be considered a valid cause
of anything.) The more cautious types on scholarly listservs won’t
be caught using his extreme language, but some are still holding up this
book as the definitive refutation of pesky “feminist ideologues”
and goddess “fantasies.”
So The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory
fails Eller’s own “enemies” test. But we don’t
have to choose between the two extremes of pan-historic masculine domination
or a utopian negation of violence and oppression. The differences between
the Hopi and the Nazis do count. There’s a vast expanse of variation
in human culture, with much more to be learned about the history of women’s
power, oppression and resistance. However, theory needs to take a back
seat to assembling a broader range of knowledge, one that accounts for
female clan heads in Yunnan, women shamans in Chile and South Africa and
Korea, Alaskan huntresses, Bulgarian midwives, and priestesses in Togo
and Okinawa. Richer and more nuanced scholarship is on the way. Some of
the most exciting contributions, histories never published before, are
coming from indigenous perspectives and from the global South. The real
task of synthesizing and analyzing information from archaeology, oral
history, linguistics, and written records is just beginning.
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Copyright 2000 Max Dashu