Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Three Ages of Joan Scott

2008; Oxford University Press; Volume: 113; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1086/ahr.113.5.1390

1937-5239

Dyan Elliott,

Multicultural Socio-Legal Studies

THE STRUCTURE OF JOAN SCOTT'S NOW-CLASSIC INTERVENTION on gender might be expected to have particular resonance for the medieval historian. Her delineation of both the past and possible future potential of the kinetic categories of male and female could be read as a meditation on binaries. Yet these binaries are developed within the evolution of the term gender-a concept presented in terms of its past, present, and possible future applications, thus constituting something of a triune configuration. From this perspective, Scott's article could be described structurally as a study in twos and threes: an equation that in many ways parallels medieval society's own efforts at self-understanding. The medieval commitment to binaries can hardly be overstated, leaving a permanent impression on all subsequent Western thought. Theologians were remarkable adepts at manipulating categories such as body/soul, laity/clergy, letter/spirit, flesh/spirit, and church/Christ. But nowhere was their virtuosity more in evidence than in the alignment of these pairs with that urdivision of male/female. Invariably, male was associated with the category of prestige: soul, clergy, spirit, Christ. The less estimable part of the binary (body, laity, letter, flesh, church) was reserved for the female part. This appetite for binaries was often satisfied within a structure of tripartite hierarchies. For example, the spiritual merit of an individual's sexual condition is established according to the declining scale of chastity, with virginity at the summit, chaste widowhood in the middle, and marriage lagging far behind. By the same token, labor is assessed according to the descending hierarchy of those who prayed, those who fought, and those who tilled the soil.' That such threefold configurations could also be put to more abstract uses is apparent in the exegetical learning curve propounded by the third-century theologian Origen. His model begins with the literal reading (the lowest), then advances to the moral interpretation, before finally reaching the high plateau of allegorical understanding. Moreover, this ascending hierarchy corresponded to the Platonic tripartite vision of humanity as body, soul, and spirit. The literal renders a carnal reading, associated with the body; the moral is aligned with the soul; and the allegorical soars on the wings of the spirit. The implicitly tripartite structure of Scott's argument especially resonates with the eschatological thinking of Joachim of Fiore, the twelfth-century Calabrian abbot