Ruby flames and Rohrlich raves

Robert Thornton (031RTHOR@MUSE.ARTS.WITS.AC.ZA)
Thu, 14 Mar 1996 02:38:22 -0500

Ah, to be flamed by Ruby! I can feel the heat from here! Are Pat
Buchanan, Bill Clinton and Ruby's rabbi really Patriarchs? How i
WONDER, might Michaelangelo have painted such partiarchs onto the
ceiling of MacDonalds, or prepared his HTML file for the Sistine
Homepage? Is Hilary Clinton a Matriarch, then? The point was - and
I don't want to waste more of people's time here -- that the idea of
'patriarchy' was lifted from a religious and nineteenth century
discourse about the natural-ness of the primitive, and about a theory
of human social evolution that seems irrelevant today. If Ruby wants
to use it to mean 'everything I hate about men', I suppose that is
her priviledge, but it hardly counts as an intellectual contribution
to this debate.
r


===========Robert Thornton, Department of Social Anthropology======
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