It seems widely to be acknowledged, especially in conservative circles, that social science departments in prestigious American universities are now situated far to the Left, and that cultural anthropology is the discipline most profoundly tilted in this direction. I take it as recognised as well that much of the scholarship thus produced is highly suspect—indeed, is utter nonsense. “Goddess Theory” is one of the best examples of this, and we now have important literary exposés of it, like Lotte Motz’s The Faces of the Goddess and Cynthia Eller’s The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory. But Goddess Theory is a product of…