ABSTRACT

This chapter considers the parliamentary debates which are from two different periods and deals with English and Scots law respectively. The justifications for criminalizing incest that take place within the parliamentary debates construct incest as a problem that can be measured and considered by rational, scientific methods. The chapter discusses three of the most important ways in which incest has been constructed as a problem in these parliamentary debates: incest as a problem of health, incest as a problem of harm to a living individual, and incest as a threat to the institution of the Family. It draws upon a general Foucauldian understanding of discourse as a site of struggle, a web of power/knowledge networks. In the 1980s debates, a possibly more dominant problematization of incest is that which draws on psychological knowledge. In the 1980s debates, there are some comments that present a feminist knowledge.