Matriarcato? Gilany? Ginarchia? Matristico? i molti nomi proposti
in questo articolo Max Dashu affronta il tema del nome da dare al matriarcato: gilania? matrice? ecco le sue spiegazioni
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Max Dashu ha fondato gli Archivi delle Storie Soppresse nel 1970 per ricercare e documentare la storia delle donne a livello globale. Ha raccolto una collezione di 15.000 diapositive e 30.000 immagini digitali e ha creato 150 presentazioni sul patrimonio culturale femminile nel corso del tempo. Il lavoro di Dashu colma il divario tra il mondo accademico e l'istruzione di base. Mette in primo piano le donne indigene trascurate dalle storie standard e mette in luce le sfere di potere femminili conservate persino in alcune società patriarcali. Dashu è nota a livello internazionale per la sua competenza sull'antica iconografia femminile nell'archeologia mondiale; sulle sfere di potere femminili e sulle matriculture; sui patriarcati e sui sistemi di dominio correlati; sulle donne medicina, sulle sciamane, sulle streghe e sulla caccia alle streghe. Dashu è autrice di "Streghe e Pagani: Donne nella Religione Popolare Europea, 700-1100" (2016) e di un nuovo libro sulle donne nella mitografia e nel patriarcato ellenico, in uscita nel 2022. Questi libri fanno parte di una più ampia collana di 15 volumi, "Storia Segreta delle Streghe". Dashu ha anche prodotto due video: " Sciamana Donna: Gli Antichi" (2013) e "Il Potere delle Donne in una Prospettiva Globale" (2008).
Max: ‘Matriarchy’ is such a fraught term. People interpret it as if it were just a mirror image of patriarchy. That’s the big error. It’s not female domination. And that’s why I stopped using the word ‘matriarchy’ somewhere in the mid-70s. Because you wind up in arguments about terminology and never get to actually talk about the subject. People will say, ‘Well, there are no female-dominated societies.’ And I’d say, ‘That’s right.’ But there are societies which are not male-dominated, and we need a name for them.
Jane: Right. We’re aiming at anti-domination. It’s such a perfect representation of patriarchal logic. Things can only be conceptualized by reversal. There is so much investment in the refusal to conceptualize something that would function according to a different logic, a totally different paradigm. Inside the logic the two sides are actually just part of the same thing. There’s just one thing and the projection. And then people just flip backwards and forwards and you’re like, ‘No, could we just get outside of this entire paradigm and just do this completely differently?’
Max: If I had $100 for every time I’ve said, ‘matriarchy is not the mirror image of patriarchy.’
Jane: But the whole of patriarchy is a hall of mirrors, right? And they can only think in terms of mirror images.
Max: Speaking of binaries.
Jane: Right. Exactly.
Max: And we do have societies in which women are equal, although I don’t want to put it that way ["Women are just as good as men" is still problematic]. But egalitarian societies in which women have governance and authority. Not to the exclusion of men, but in a cooperative mode. And governance in proportion to the amount of labour they’re actually doing. Those societies exist, have existed, but we don’t have a word for them, because ‘matriarchy’ has already been taken out, by defining it as female domination. Anyway, I started using ‘mother-right.’ I like this term. Right as in women’s rights, also rights of the mother as well as rights and identity derived from the mother. And, in many European languages ‘right’ also has to do with law.
There are various concepts women have used to name this. ‘Gylany’ is Riane Eisler’s term.1 ‘Gynarchy,’ I think that was Paula Gunn Allen’s formulation. ‘Matristic’ was what Marija Gimbutas came around to using, with that same intention of bypassing the deliberate misunderstanding of matriarchy. Then I came up with this concept of ‘matrix cultures,’ based on this idea of the web of life and the ultimate value being the sustenance of life. And cooperation of human communities in relationship to each other, and to life, to the Earth.
Jane: I really like it.
Max: I like it too. But it has to be explained because people don’t understand the meaning of ‘matrix,’ but tend to think of the movie The Matrix. Then this last term, ‘matricultures,’ is something that Indigenous feminists in Canada came up with, as a description for their own societies. I liked it a lot because it doesn’t cause that reactivity that immediately derails the discussion. And I think ‘matriarchy’ is also a more narrowly defined category, which we do need a word for. This is what I’m about to come to, ‘matrilineal,’ ‘matrilocal,’ all these aspects of matriarchy.
But ‘matriculture’ shows us more of a spectrum, a set of historical transformations, because a lot of societies on the planet are not fully patriarchal. Even now, there are elements of matriculture that women keep alive, and sometimes men participate in too, whether it’s goddess traditions, or certain kinds of ceremonies, even social customs. I think that a multiplicity of concepts is desirable, because there’s a range of situations to describe.
Mother-right societies centre women as the ones who bear children, through matrilineage and matrilocal residence — which means that men come to live with their female partner and her family. The social bond is kinship through the motherline. The primary relationship is not husband/wife, but sister-brother. The patriarchal marriage tie is a legal artifice which disadvantages women in all kinds of ways. It is full-on oppressive, locking women in, and yet also unstable and fragile, as we see in modern societies.
�In the matricultures, there can be no illegitimate children. The sexual double standard doesn’t exist, because there’s no need to control paternity, as a patrilineal system does. And women and children are not being rendered homeless by divorce or abuse. They stay with their mother-kin. Matrilocality also gives protection against violence because the woman’s kin are around, and a husband can’t beat her up or otherwise abuse her.
Mother-right [or literally, Mother Law] also allows for ‘social motherhood,’ collective assumption of responsibility for the young and very old, for anyone who needs special care. In Western civilization, women are often impregnated not by their plan — whether they’re raped, or wind up having children before they wanted to, or when they didn’t want to — and that constrains their possibilities in all kinds of ways. And they are alone in the nuclear family. Or they become single mothers. Maybe he sticks around for a couple years, and then he’s gone. And now she’s in poverty with all these children.
In a social motherhood system, you have an entire generation, actually tiers of generations, that are caring for that child. You have societies where all of the women of the mother’s generations are called Auntie and are even regarded as mothers, addressed as mothers. And the brothers are responsible as well, particularly in matrilineal societies; it’s the mother’s brother who takes much of the role that we think of as ‘father.’ Social motherhood is a built-in support system, putting women and their life-giving power at the centre of the life support network.
Jane: This is the mistake Firestone makes where she equates the biological family with the patriarchal family, and makes biological reproduction the problem …
Max: I’m glad you mentioned that, because yes, the body is not the problem. And artificial wombs and technological gestation are certainly not the solution.
...
Women are bearing a massive load, and nobody [except feminists] wants to even look at it, or think about how it might be organized fairly, so that it isn’t so arduous and alienating and exploitative. Social motherhood means shared caregiving and cooperation. The kin shares resources. Non-aggression is also really important. And this is not necessarily only matrilineal societies, because it’s also true in a lot of foraging societies — which tend to be bilateral. They have very strong enforcements against aggression.
Matricultures and the Matrix of Life: An Interview With Max Dashu, by Jane Clare Jones. The Radical Notion. Issue 6
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