Monday Study
February 8, 2010
From “Society and Sex Roles” by Ernestine Fredl in Human Nature, April 1978, 1(4), pp. 68-75.
“Patriarchies are prevalent, and they appear to be strongest in societies in which men control significant goods that are exchanged with people outside the family. Regardless of who produces the food, the person who gives it to others creates the obligations and alliances that are at the center of all political relations. The greater the male monopoly on the distribution of scarce items, the stronger their control of women seems to be…If male dominance depends on controlling the supply of meat, then the degree of male dominance in a society should vary with the amount of meat available and the amount of meat supplied by the men…men and women [sometimes] work together in communal hunts and as teams gathering edible plants, as did the Washo Indians of North America…Among the most egalitarian of hunter-gatherer societies are the Washo Indians, who inhabited the valleys of the Sierra Nevada in what is now southern California and Nevada. In the spring they moved north to lake Tahoe for the large fish runs of sucker and native trout. Everyone-men,women, and children-participated in the fishing…Since everyone participated…[there were] no individual distributors of…male and female rights. Men and women…were free…lovers…whenever they chose…one…celebrate[-ing] hunting…the other celebrate[-ing] gathering.
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The Washo Indians
The valleys of the Sierra Nevada
In the spring the large fish runs
Everyone-men, women, and children-fish
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From William S. Burrough’s “The Adding Machine”
Les Voleurs
Out of the closet and into the museums, libraries, architectural monuments, concert halls, ,bookstores, recording sudios and film studios of the world. Everything belongs to the inspired and dedicated thief. All the artists of history, from cave painters to Picasso, all the poets and writers, the musicians and architects, offer their wares, importuning him like street vendors. They supplicate him from the bored minds of school children, from the prisons of uncritical veneration, from dead museums and dusty archives. Sculptors stretch forth their limestone arms to receive the life-giving transfusion of flesh as their severed limbs are grafted onto Mister America. Mais le voleur n’est pas presse’ — the thief is in no hurry. He must assure himself of the quality of the merchandise and its suitability for his purpose before he conveys the supreme honor and benediction of his theft. Words, colors, light, sounds, stone, wood, bronze belong to the living artist. They belong to anyone who can use them. Loot the Louvre! a bas l’originalite’, the sterile and assertive ego that imprisons as it creates. Vive le vol– pure, shameless, total. We are not responsible. Steal anything in sight.
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Clarifications; Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin’s, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, linked below:
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction 1936
…..good studying!
