@article{THESIS,
      recid = {12829},
      author = {Fedi, Silvia},
      title = {<i>Gynaikokratia</i>: Women, Power, and Regime  in Classical Greece},
      publisher = {University of Chicago},
      school = {Ph.D.},
      address = {2024-08},
      number = {THESIS},
      abstract = {This dissertation examines the classical Greek tradition  of gynaikokratia (from gynē, woman, and kratos, rule,  power) understood as gynocracy, or rule by women, as well  as women’s collective use of political power or influence.  I contend that ancient figurations of women’s rule express  deep anxieties about the most radical aspects of democracy:  in particular, the prominence of contentious politics in  the democratic polis. Despite women’s political  subordination to men, many ancient Greek writers offer  imaginations of women’s power (in Greek: gynaikokratia) in  their works: they imagine what it might have been like if  women, rather than men, had control of the polis. I use the  odd figure of women holding political power in the  classical context to study how ancient democracy was  defined both against and through gendered narratives. My  dissertation asks what figurations of women’s rule tell us  about the ways in which we think and have thought about  politics and political order, especially in relationship to  democracy as a regime type. I argue that anxieties related  to the possibility of women’s rule, which are fraught with  concerns about the consequences of contentious or unruly  politics, are at the heart of the most radical aspects of  ancient conceptions of democracy. Additionally, this  project reads for political community and solidarity  created by women. That is, rather than focusing on  narratives of individual women in power (i.e., queens), I  focus on women’s collectivities, suggesting that depictions  of women’s plurality both offer an understanding of gender  based on women’s relationships with each other, and cast  such an understanding of gender as producing a different  account of what it meant to be citizens committed to a  political community.  Overall, the dissertation tracks how  concerns about gynocracy epitomize the most pressing fears  and concerns about improper allocations of power (for  instance, fears about tyranny of the majority and mob  rule). I focus on the association of gynocracy with  repertoires of contestation of existing authority that  characterized both figures of gynocracy and many  descriptions of “radical” democracy in ancient Greek  political thought. As I show, figurations of women’s rule  over men bear affinity to fears about rule of the lower  classes over the aristocracy. Thus, issues of gender and  political power depicted in gynocratic texts became central  to exploring and renegotiating class relationships and  hierarchies within Athenian democracy. That is, in figuring  gynocracy through a set of political practices that were  characteristic of famously contentious and unruly Athenian  “radical” democracy (e.g. excessive freedom, public  contestation, unruly political behavior), Greek political  commentators cast the latter as feminine, and hence  dangerous, hysterical, and uncontrollable.},
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/12829},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.12829},
}