On occasion feminist theory has been drawn to the thought of an origin, a time before what some would call “patriarchy” that would provide an imaginary perspective from which to establish the contingency of the history of women’s oppression. Debates have emerged over whether prepatriarchal cultures have existed, whether they were matriarchal or matrilineal in structure, whether patriarchy could be shown to have a beginning and, hence, be subject to an end. The critical impetus behind

these kinds of inquiry sought understandably to show that the antifeminist argument in favor of the inevitability of patriarchy constituted a reification and naturalization of a historical and contingent phenomenon.