The Three Ages of Joan Scott

Abstract

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 ur-division 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.

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