Matriarchy, Gender and Power

Coralie Raffenne is a senior lecturer in law at the Universite Paris Dauphine-PSL, France, and teaches on the legal aspects of corporate social responsibility, sustainable development and transition. She holds a PhD in law from the University of Warwick. Her current research explores the application of feminist approaches to environmental law and economics. Her recent publications include Cosmopolitics of Care—The State and the Company beyond the Neoliberal Anthropocene (forthcoming monograph) and La Souverainete Marchandisee—L’Empire des paradis fiscaux et le pillage environnemental (2012).Cécile Coquet-Mokoko is a professor of US cultural history, African American studies and gender studies at Universite Versailles-Saint Quentin, France. She has 30 years of experience in historical and sociological research on race and gender relations in the United States from the nineteenth century to the present, particularly in the Deep South, and on the legacy of colonialism and slavery in interpersonal relations in France, the United Kingdom and the United States. Her recent publications in English include Love under the Skin: Interracial Marriages in the American South and France (2020).

• Introduction; Part I: Matriarchal traces: Questioning the myth of universal patriarchy; 1. The quest for prehistoric matriarchy: archaeological perspectives; 2. Matriarchy, A Fantasized Model? Considering Indigenous Notions of Kinship, Decision-making, and Personhood Among the Na of China; 3. Insights into the Representations of Matriarchy in the Visual Culture of the Medieval East; Part II: Matriarchal imaginaries of female empowerment; 4. The Concept of Matriarchy in the Writings of Cheikh Anta Diop: Foundations, Topicality, and Influences on Feminist Organizations in Senegal; 5. Clan Mothers: The matriarchal figures of Mona Susan Power’s stories; 6. The Myth of Primordial Matriarchy in the Goddess Movement: Between Strategic Mythmaking and the Construction of Artistic Matrilineage; Part III: Matriarchal narratives and ideologies of male domination; 7. Mother Earth and the matriarchal imaginary of environmental law: posthuman advances and biopolitical limits of rights of nature; 8. The myth of matriarchy in the narratives of separated fathers' associations and their influence on the law; 9. Primitive Matriarchy and the maternal self in the Takamure Itsue’s Feminist Historiography