Fathers in disarray

Abstract

Can the sociological and anthropological concept of patriarchy, which has become a fighting name in contemporary feminist struggles, be applied to the Middle Ages? You'd think so, given that the concept of paternitas semantically configures all relations of domination. But when we look both at the actual functioning of kinship systems in the Middle Ages, and at the values and imaginaries on which they are based, things become more complicated. Particularly when it comes to the figure of God the Father, and everything that, in the Church's system, did not evacuate the feminine part, which is not without effect on the conception of the relationship between generation and production. By studying the paradoxes of the Christian anthropology of begetting, and identifying some of its consequences for governmentality, we suggest that, here again, there is more ferment than cement.

Contents

• Patriarchy, "main enemy" (Christine Delphy): definitions
• Bachofen, Morgan, Engels: matriarchy and its "repeatedly discovered" (Émilie Hache)
• Marija Gambutas's ideal gynocracy
• Femme génitrice et mère nourricière (Julien d'Huy, Cosmogonies. La préhistoire des mythes, Paris, 2020)
• Dominus: on the trail of God the Father
• Marital obedience and social order in Le Jeu d'Adam (Joseph Morsel, "Dieu, l'homme, la femme et le pouvoir. Les fondements de l'ordre social d'après le 'Jeu d'Adam'" in Monique Goullet et alii dir., Retour aux sources. Textes, études et documents d'histoire médiévale offerts à Michel Parisse, Paris, 2004)
• Paternitas: textual archaeology and historical semantics (Nicolas Perreaux, "In nomine patris. Éléments pour une sémantique de la paternité médiévale", in Léo Dumont, Octave Julien and Stéphane Lamassé eds, Histoire de mots. Saisir le passé grâce aux données textuelles, Paris, 2023)
• The false symmetry of dominus/servus and pater/filius , and the test of vouvoiement
• Patriciate as impregnable fortress: from Jacques Lacan's Nom-du-Père to Jacques Derrida's pallogocentrism
• "Ce gouvernement qui ressemblait à mon père" (Pierre Legendre, Leçons VIII. Le crime du caporal Lortie. Traité sur le Père, Paris, 1989)
• Dying for the fatherland: from the Vitae necisque potestas of Roman law to the "Petit père des peuples" (Ernst Kantorowicz, Yann Thomas and Giorgio Agamben)
• Les topolignées et l'inflexion agnatique d'un système de parenté indifférenciée (Anita Guerreau-Jalabert, "La Parenté dans l'Europe médiévale et moderne: à propos d'une synthèse récente", L'Homme, 1989)
• Back to earth and things: God is dominus insofar as he is "creator of all things" (Hugues de Saint-Victor)
• The masculine principle of world production ex nihilo (Émilie Hache, De la génération. Enquête sur sa disparition et son remplacement par la production, Paris, 2024)
• On the notion of the androcene, between "strategic essentialism" and political belief
• Du Dieu un au Dieu unique: quand Yahvé devient célibataire (Thomas Römer, The Invention of God, Paris, 2014)
• Where has Asherah gone, Yahweh's goddess? (Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: toward a philosophy of women's liberation, Boston, 1973)
• "Like a woman in labor, I will breathe, gasp and yearn at once" (Isaiah): God our mother begets community
• Masculum et feminam creavit eos (Genesis, 1, 27): God creates man in his own image, masculine and feminine
• Expelling the feminine part of God: Christian anti-Judaism and the obsession with blood flows
• Hatred of the identity gap (Daniel Sibony, L'Énigme antisémite, Paris, 2004)
• And yet: theChurch's "unisex postulate" (Luca Castiglioni, Filles et fils de Dieu. Égalité baptismale et différence sexuelle, Paris, 2020)
• Une figure inattendue du patriarcat: le sein d'Abraham (Jérôme Baschet, Le Sein du père. Abraham et la paternité dans l'Occident médiéval, Paris, 2000)
• The fold:sinus, between interiority and sinuosity
• "Virginmother, daughter of your son" (Dante, Paradiso, XXXIII): the signum contradicibile in the Christian anthropology of generation
• "By his way of loving, the Father has acquired what is characteristic of feminine nature" (Clement of Alexandria)
• The Church is its own Mother, and her son, who is at the same time her father, is also her husband (Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat, Les Pères de leur Mère. Essai sur l'esprit de contradiction des Pères de l'Église, Paris, 2000)
• "To her lord, or rather her father, her husband, or rather her brother, her maid, or rather her daughter, her wife, or rather her sister...": Héloïse à Abélard
• Le regimen et l'indignité au pouvoir (Jacques Dalarun, Gouverner c'est servir. Essais de démocratie médiévale, Paris, 2006)
• Sicut mater: François d'Assise dreams of a little black hen (Jacques Dalarun, François d'Assise ou le pouvoir en question. Principes et modalités du gouvernement dans l'Ordre des frères mineurs, Brussels, 1999)
• Une mère poule dévorante: les déboires du Re Chichinella (Emma Dante)
• Deconstructed masculinities and social domination
• "Drill, baby, drill": for an archaeology of fathers' disorder