Patriarchal Moments

[This] volume should prove to be a useful and well-priced addition to any undergraduate course dealing with the contours of patriarchal power in the western world. The passages chosen are all relevant and interesting, and student readers will find the short essays lively and easily digestible. * Bryn Mawr Classical Review *
This excellent, wide-ranging collection of essays by leading experts is a key starting point (and a mine of information) for anyone with an interest in ideas about the links between families and states, and between patriarchal and political authority. It discusses patriarchal power in the political thought of the ancient and modern worlds – beginning with the bible, the Talmud, and the Qur’an, and ending with Angela Carter. There is especially detailed discussion of European ideas of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This is a lucidly expressed, entertaining and instructive collection, based on the latest scholarship in a number of disciplines. * Johann Sommerville, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA *
The sharp, nuanced and often witty essays in this volume cast a fresh light on the patriarchalist tradition, showing it to be nimble and plastic, far more complex and contradictory than we have imagined. With its chronological breadth and interdisciplinary perspective, Patriarchal Moments will be welcomed by students, by teachers, and by any reader wondering why the notion that men should rule women, wives and children has persisted in so forms over so many centuries. * Rachel Weil, Cornell University, USA *
Patriarchal Moments invites us to read a host of classic texts – religious and literary, philosophical and political – in the company of specialists whose perspicacious interpretations probe the tension between normative frameworks and actual social and political practice. With its salutary reminder that patriarchalism is above all a way of understanding social and political order, Patriarchal Moments offers a compelling series of contextualized analyses that explore the different kinds of personalized authority – male over female, father over child, government over families – that constitute the several, interrelated faces of patriarchal power. As such, it invites us to consider the emotional purchase that patriarchal visions of familial and political authority have exercised in both past and present, offering ways to rethink the obstacles that feminists face in their efforts to re-shape both familial and political spheres of life. * Laura Lee Downs, European University Institute, Italy *