>>For what it's worth, "feudalism" is mostly a dirty word among medievalists,
>>these days.
>Largely a result I think of a generation of medievalists being
>brought up to avoid any taint of Marxist historiography.
The current debate started with an article written by Elizabeth A.R. Brown in 1974. But even Marc Bloch, who wrote the classic Feudal Society in the 1930s, had to answer criticisms of his use of the term. TOne of his replies was that we still call atoms atoms, even after it's well known they can be split.
There is also a distinction, even held to among critics of the term, between Bloch's sociological use of it and the Marxian use of it to describe a mode of production. The main impetus of the criticism started by Brown is that the sources simply don't support the concept.
>The baleful effects of postmodernism included the avoidance of the
>slightest attention to modes of production.
This just ain't true. I came to paying attention to modes of production by way of references to them by "postmodernists." I have also sat in graduate history seminars at UCLA where Foucault and the usual suspects, but especially Foucault, were dismissed out of hand by profs leading the group. These same profs also readily admitted to having read very little of Foucault or any of his supposed cohorts. The exception to the rule was Carlo Ginzburg, whose work was head and shoulders above most of his UCLA colleagues.
I have also noticed, as we see here in the last few days and as the lbotalk archives will bear out with many rounds over the years, that critics of postmodernism, so-called, largely avoid the slightest attention to the texts they are criticizing.