ABSTRACT
In a few pages of THS Foucault sketches a bold argument on the subject of incest. Indeed, he situates incest in a pivotal position in the thesis of the book. His argument does not relate to who commits incest, its extent or location, but, as one would expect, is about the ways in which incest is put into discourse. Making his familiar manoeuvre, Foucault reflects upon the varied discourse on incest and how it corresponds to other ways of talking about sex; in doing so, he provides a template for a discussion that pulls together various constructions of incest. That is, his arguments can act as a place to gather and compare the sociological, anthropological, legal, welfarist and feminist discourses on incest.1 This chapter discusses Foucault’s comments on incest, and uses these arguments to pose two questions for feminist work on the subject. These questions concern the place of this feminist work within the landscape Foucault describes. First I ask: is the feminist work part of the deployment of sexuality? That is, does the talk it generates inscribe its participants into the power/ knowledge networks Foucault details in THS? Secondly: what is the relationship of the feminist work to what went ‘before’ the deployment of sexuality, i.e. the deployment of alliance, which had its emphasis on kinship and prohibitions? Or, to focus this second question differently and more specifically: what has happened to the notion of the incest taboo in feminist work on incest?
