Feminism and the Challenge of Patriarchy or Why Complacency is not an option

When, as an enthusiastic and freshly-minted series editor, I had a conversation with Judith about re-publishing a selection of her stimulating essays in a collection, it is to her eternal credit that she said 'no', followed by a much better suggestion, to revisit some of this earlier work, in the light of subsequent commentaries and scholarship, and produce History Matters: patriarchy and the challenge of feminism. In my presentation I want to highlight two issues. First, Judith's provocative book title bears renewed scrutiny: in an academic environment that includes poststructural and postfeminist discourses, how far would card-carrying feminist scholars still support the notion of a permanent and overarching, albeit fluid, notion of 'patriarchy' at all? And if not, what replaces it. A plurality of patriarchies (rather as 'masculinity' morphed into 'masculinities')? Second, I want to explore the purpose of retrospectives such as this session. They could risk museumification of milestones in women's and gender history (Chicago's recent 35th 'anniversary' edition of John Boswell's Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality perhaps falls into this category). But they can also serve to refresh and reinvigorate the debate, and push back against recent attacks on feminism and medieval feminist scholarship by established, usually male, academics. It is worth adding that not all 'foremothers' are tremendously comfortable with their work being revisited in this way, but engaging new generations with classic texts is the ultimate feminist act, typical of Judith's generosity.