I experienced the time when the M-word “Matriarchy” was feared among feminist academics in the early 2000s. I was doing my doctoral studies focusing on feminism and religion. Feminists were in need of self-affirmation. We all have time of such necessity in one way or another. I can’t remember when and how exactly I came across Dr. Heide Goettner- Abendroth’s scholarship and advocacy of Matriarchal Studies. However, I intuitively realized the importance of her advocacy in a climate surrounded with hostility, suspicion, and silencing. I admired her boldness to assert the M-word; She lifted a layer of oppression imposed upon gyno-matricentric scholarship, another breakthrough. I wanted to read her books and bought a couple of pre-owned paperbacks and read. Then, I had an opportunity to attend the Second World Congress of Matriarchal Studies held in University of San Marcos, Texas, in 2005. It was one of the great eye-opening gatherings that I personally experienced. Cross-cultural manifestations of Modern Matriarchal Studies shed bedazzling light, too bright for bare eyes to look at. That was my official initiation to Matriarchal Studies. Although my research on Magoism, the Way of the Creatrix, extends beyond the scope of human societies, I am ever grateful for Dr. Goettner-Abendroth that she carved out and spoke of her own school of thought to the world. It is an honor and privilege that I have been personally in touch with her on and off throughout the years. Here is my conversation with her.
Helen Hwang: Tell us about your advocacy of Modern Matriarchal Studies.
Heide Goettner-Abendroth: Today, there exists a popular and scholarly interest in non- hierarchical, non-patriarchal social patterns which are egalitarian. But this topic is treated neutrally without respecting the different sexes and genders. If we include sex and gender as an analyzing category, we can see that matriarchal societies are truly egalitarian societies. They are not the mirror image of patriarchy as hierarchical “rule of women/mothers” as the common prejudice wants us to believe. To the contrary; Matriarchal patterns provide us with a radically different cultural model, based on radically different values. Matriarchies are mother-centered societies, that means, they are based on maternal values: caretaking, nurturing, need-orientation, resolving conflicts by negotiation and without violence, developing skills of peace building. These values hold for everybody: mothers and non- mothers, women, and men alike. Even though women, especially mothers, are at the center, these values govern the social functioning and freedom of both sexes.
I am often asked why I insist on the problematic concept, “matriarchy,” for these mother- centered, egalitarian societies. But we do not need surrogate concepts, for reclaiming this term means to reclaim knowledge of societies that have been socially, economically, politically and culturally created by women. In the course of these cultures’ long histories, women and men have participated equally to sustain them and pass them on to future generations.
In light of this misunderstanding about the word “matriarchy,” its linguistic background needs to be looked at more carefully. In fact, the Greek word “arché” means not only “domination”, but also “beginning”. The two meanings are distinct and cannot be conflated. They are also clearly delineated in English: you would not translate “arche-type” as “dominator-type” (it means primordial type), nor would you understand “arche-ology” to be “the teaching of domination” (it means the knowledge of the earliest cultures).
Based on the older meaning of “arché”: “beginning”, matriarchy means “the mothers from the beginning.” This refers both to the biological fact that through giving birth, mothers engender the beginning of life, and to the cultural fact that they also created the beginnings of culture itself.
This special form of society has been described as “matrilineal,” “matrifocal,” “matristic,” or “gylanic.” Instead of elaborating a clear definition of what “matriarchal” means, scholars tried to find substitute concepts – but these are rather weak, inadequate, and arbitrary. These surrogate concepts do list certain elements present in this form of society, but they lack inner cohesion. Against this, I have set myself the task of discovering its characteristics on all levels of society: the social, economic, political, and cultural levels. To bring these together means to develop a structural definition, or deep structure, of this form of society. It must be able to show the integrated, internal interconnections of all these levels that constitute the matriarchal form of society.
Hwang: What would be the difference between traditional Matriarchal Studies and Modern Matriarchal Studies? Why is it important to distinguish them?
HGA: I was well aware that the discussion on “matriarchy” had a long tradition in German- speaking Europe, going back as far as the work of J. J. Bachofen, which came out in 1861. It represents a perfect parallel to the work of H. L. Morgan (in the field of anthropology), who did research on the matriarchal society of the Iroquois of his time (1851).
For more than a century, the discussion on “mother right” and “matriarchy” continued, exclusively among male scholars. The subject now was used and abused by all the intellectual schools of thought, and all political parties, each with its distinctly different point of view. What worried me most about this reception of Bachofen’s and Morgan’s ideas was the complete lack of a clear definition of the matter at hand, and furthermore, the huge amount of emotion and ideology that was involved in the discussion. This combination of unclear definitions and excessive emotionality continued till today.
After these insights, I decided – building on the foundation of my philosophical tools – to give the matriarchal studies, i.e., the research into all forms of non-patriarchal societies in both past and present, a modern scientific foundation. That means:
- first, the formulation of a precise definition of “matriarchy,” one that outlines the deep structure of this form of society;
- second, the development of a methodology capable of adequately presenting the area under investigation, in this case, matriarchal societies;
- third, the development of a theoretical framework that encompasses the vast historical and geographic extent of matriarchal social forms.
This was necessary, because clearly formulated, consistent theories are highly efficient intellectual tools, which can be used by all interested researchers. Nothing is so practical as a good theory! In that way, Modern Matriarchal Studies came into being, in contrast to traditional research on matriarchal societies. From the very start, Modern Matriarchal Studies have required an additional method: the radically critical analysis of patriarchy. For women are always aliens in the patriarchal system, always invisible, unheard; they are always “the other”. Though generally called “sexism,” this is actually internal colonialism, i.e., colonialism directed inside the society itself.
I encountered the same attitude against matriarchal cultures, the same fragmentation and distortion in anthropological research on this topic. Therefore, the criticism of patriarchal ideology was now aimed against external colonialism, i.e., colonialism directed outside of society, this exploitative combination of imperialism, racism and sexism that made indigenous peoples on every continent into “the others” – unseen and unheard. This alienation was even worse for matriarchal peoples.
Just as the female half of humanity does not exist in patriarchal Western philosophy, matriarchally organized societies and cultures also do not exist in that ideology; they never have. Nevertheless, thanks to the method of criticism of patriarchal ideology, I found abundant evidence for the existence of matriarchal societies. Little by little, a completely different perspective of society and history came to light, based on a completely different set of values: the matriarchy paradigm.
Hwang: What are your insights on global cross-cultural patterns of matriarchies past and present around the world?
HGA: To find the characteristic patterns of still extant matriarchies around the world, i.e. in East and South Asia, in Africa and in the Americas, means to find out their common denominators on each level, and the result will be the structural definition of this form of society. Therefore, I was obliged to understand the fundamentals of indigenous societies of this type. So, it developed step by step inductively from my cross-cultural research on the four levels of society: at the economic, social, political, and cultural level.
To summarize here in the most extreme brevity, this definition asserts that “matriarchy”
- on the social level, is a non-hierarchical society of matrilineal
kinship, whose main features are clan organization based on matrilineality (kinship in the mother’s line) and matrilocality (residence with or near the mother); at the same time men and women have their own spheres of action, which are valued equally and are reciprocally related (gender equality); - on the economic level, is a society of balanced economic reciprocity, in which women manage essential goods such as land, houses, and food. They have no right of ownership, but of distribution, and they pay constant attention to balancing the economy through equal distribution. Such an economy has the qualities of a “gift economy;”
- on the political level, it represents a society of consensus, with the
political basis in the clan houses – where decision making takes place – and with a system of male delegates to the diverse councils outside; this gives the men no power to decide over others, but gives them their own sphere of activity and social status. In most cases, this system results not only in a gender-egalitarian society, but also in a fully egalitarian society; - on the cultural level, it does not have hierarchical religions
based on an omnipotent male God. Here divinity is immanent, for the whole world is regarded as divine, as feminine divine: Mother Earth and Great Mother Nature. There is no separation between sacred and secular, in this sense each matriarchy is a sacred culture. Methodologically it is important to note that matriarchal societies today have gone through many changes. After a long history of struggling to defend their ancestral cultures, and now threatened by increasing pressure from their patriarchal surroundings, they have changed in many aspects. This is why it is so crucial to consult the histories of these cultures in order to obtain a more adequate understanding of their matriarchal character.
Using this definition, it was also possible for me to look at the history of cultures from a different perspective than the patriarchal lens in areas where no longer matriarchal societies are found today: West Asia and Europe. As a result, I could discover the same matriarchal patterns in the long period of the Neolithic epoch in these vast cultural areas.
Hwang: How and when did you start your research and development of Modern Matriarchal Studies?
HGA: When I was a student of Philosophy of Science at the University of Munich, I became angry and bored that the philosophical systems and teachings had nothing to do with me as a woman. It was all so very abstract and neutral and allegedly generally human, but I felt that it was male-made and excluding the ways of life and insights of women.
But by chance, I found the works of Bachofen about “Mother Right” and of Robert Graves about “matriarchy” as the oldest layer of Greek culture – he used this concept openly. I was inspired and fascinated and felt that this has a lot to do with me as a woman. So, I started to research in the libraries of diverse disciplines, anthropology, archaeology, and others, on this topic, and I found a lot of texts and traces, but all of them under cover, not using the concept “matriarchy”. For me, it was clear what was going on there: trying to make something invisible which does not fit the patriarchal worldview. In that way, I collected and combined, and step by step found out the whole picture. It was my in-official study besides my official study in philosophy.
Later as a young scholar, teaching at the university, I stood at the crossroad: Should I continue with Philosophy of Science at this institution, where I was soon discriminated as a female philosopher, or should I continue with developing Modern Matriarchal Studies of which I felt it was much more needed. For at that time when the Second Wave Feminism began, the rooms were crowded with female and some male students hungry to hear me talk about “matriarchy” and what it means to us in the present patriarchal times. So, I decided to leave the university and continue with Modern Matriarchal Studies, and, of course, I was ridiculed and defamed by my former colleagues. But I never gave way, and today, knowledge about matriarchal societies and the results of Modern Matriarchal Studies are spreading worldwide.
Hwang: How do you see the contribution of Modern Matriarchal Studies scholarship to Feminist scholarship and Feminist activism?
HGA: I am convinced that Modern Matriarchal Studies is broader than Feminist scholarship, because it includes other cultures, i.e., many indigenous cultures, and goes beyond the analyses of the situation of women in Western industrial national states. Furthermore, it is not focused on women exclusively, but includes the situation of men, the youth and the elders, for they are all parts of a society, and the relation of humans and nature. For example, it is interesting to understand the completely different attitude of matriarchal men, compared to patriarchal and patriarchalized men; and it is intriguing to see the attitude of matriarchal people toward their natural surroundings and resources. Additionally, it is extremely important that knowledge and activism inspired by Modern Matriarchal Studies transgresses the patriarchal system and works in a revolutionary way, while Equality Feminism tries to take part in the system, fighting for giving women their share within the patriarchal system.
This does not change patriarchal patterns but provides them with a female face and women as tokens.
Contrary to this, it is becoming increasingly clear that this radically different model of matriarchy as women-centered, egalitarian societies based on consensus will have great significance for the future of women and mothers, and of humankind in general. Looking at this devastating late patriarchy of our time, I am deeply convinced that our future will be matriarchal – or we will have no future!
Hwang: What are your visions for the future of humankind inspired by Modern Matriarchal Studies?
HGA: This question has been answered by the ideas of Matriarchal Politics, which have been developed in many dialogues with friends and students. Today, it is becoming increasingly clear that these radically different cultural mode has great significance for the future. For matriarchies are not abstract utopias, constructed according to philosophical concepts that can never be implemented. On the contrary, they have existed throughout long historical periods until today. They embody an enormous amount of intellectual creativity and practical experience, and their values show how life can be organized in such a way that it is based on needs, is non-violent and peaceful.
I would like to give some of these ideas and make some suggestions for new mother-centered, egalitarian, consensus-based, peaceful societies. Of course, we cannot imitate traditional matriarchal societies, but we can gain much stimulation and insights from them which – unlike theoretical concepts – have been lived over millennia.
Economically, the lesson of matriarchies is
- to create new subsistence economies, based on local and regional units,
- subsistence communities work self-sufficiently and create circles of gift giving,
- mothers are the mainstays of these economic structures, because these support best their families.
On the social level, it is necessary
- to create and support groups and communities, based on affinity (traditional or alternative new ones),
- these affinity communities whose members feel as “siblings by choice” form “symbolic clans”,
- these clans will become matriarchal, if they are initiated and lead by women/mothers, according to the needs of women and children, who are the future of each society.
On the political level, the lesson is
- to adopt the matriarchal consensus principle which is of utmost importance for egalitarian communities and an egalitarian society,
- to produces a true “grassroots democracy” in that way,
- it can only be practised up to the regional level, but flourishing and self- sufficient regions are the political aim,
- big nation states, state unions and super powers are superfluous.
On the cultural level, matriarchal politics mean
- instead, the world is regarded as holy again, the mother of us all, and is treated with care and love,
- everything in the world is respected as divine,
- matriarchal spirituality infuses everything as an inherent part of everyday life.
In that way, the values and knowledge of matriarchies can become a clear vision, which could be a practical guideline to create new matriarchal communities and societies. And it can integrate all the different actions of peacemakers and alternative movements of today to make them more powerful. The reason is that much of the economic, social, political and spiritual work which is done by these movements implicitly tends towards the matriarchal paradigm given here.
Hwang: Thank you so much for your answers to my questions. May your advocacy of Modern Matriarchal Studies reach near and far to bear abundant fruits!
See the major works of the author:
Heide Goettner-Abendroth: Matriarchal Societies. Studies on Indigenous Cultures across the Globe, New York 2013, Peter Lang Publishing.
Heide Goettner-Abendroth: Matriarchal Societies of the Past and the Rise of Patriarchy. West Asia and Europe, New York 2022, Peter Lang Publishing. See the website of the author:
www.goettner-abendroth.de
and of the Academy for Modern Matriarchal Studies. www.hagia.de