ABSTRACT
In the stark form of ‘thou shalt not’ the incest prohibition is enshrined in both English and Scots criminal law. Thus criminal law on incest appears to be a model example of juridico-discursive power, laying out the forbidden and threatening punishment if the command is disobeyed. However, in this chapter I argue that this bald statement of prohibition rests upon several different ways of constructing incest as a problem: what masquerades as a simple restatement of a prohibition entails the mobilisation of ways of speaking which are less juridicial and more akin to the power/ knowledge networks of the deployment of sexuality. In order to argue this point, the chapter investigates the parliamentary debates which shaped the current legislation on incest.
