ABSTRACT
Feudalism is an invention of bourgeois society. It is the product of a particular kind of historical consciousness, a way of describing the past which cleanses bourgeois society itself of relations it deems anachronistic. It cannot be described, however, as another form of the ‘irrational’. It is not another instance of fun. What is attributed to feudalism (and thus rejected by capitalism) is a particular species of reason. The categories of medieval culture are constructed with meticulous regard to the law of non-contradiction, but its unity and coherence depends entirely upon an order of symbols: an order which reveals itself at every turn as a hierarchy of being.
