Contesting Essentialist Theories of Patriarchal Relations: Evolutionary Psychology and the Denial of History

Abstract

This essay emerges from an ongoing mother-son dialogue about contemporary gender relations and their genesis in the history of patriarchy. In order to reframe patriarchy as a relational construct, rather than a simple group-based oppression, a performative notion of identities grounds the paper. It offers a critique of the body of literature that has developed under the broad heading of “evolutionary psychology,” insisting that gendered relations are not outcomes of genetic selection, divine mandate, or historical inevitability. An antidotal, millennia-spanning history of gender is offered as an epistemically and politically preferable explanation for patriarchal relations.