Thanks to everyone who expressed interest in Vikki Bell's book
_Interrogating Incest: Feminism, Foucault and the Law_ I'm not able to
provide a full summary as some have requested because I don't have a lot of
spare time on my hands [note the infrequency of my posts--I have two jobs,
two lovers, two children and one elderly and demanding cat, so it's hard to
find time to do my laundry, let alone post book reviews :-) Oh, BTW, anyone
in the vincinty of Vancouver, BC who wants me to post more often is welcome
to do my laundry, thereby freeing up my time :-)]
In brief, Bell considers Foucault's argument that incest is a place of
tension between the deployment of alliances and kinship and the deployment
of sexuality. At the same time, she considers the different approaches to
incest taken by feminists. In describing her book, a negative definition
(of what the book is not) may be the best way to proceed: it is not a book
in which Foucault is regarded as "another male theorist . . . we can file
alongside the previous male thinkers [and then] having filed him . . .
either ignore him or . . . pick up and mould his concepts" (pp. 176). Nor is
it a book in which feminism is treated as if it was "inescapably within the
Foucauldian filing cabinet . . . .neither Foucault nor feminism has been set
up as the acid test for the other . . . neither has all the answers" (176-177).
Particularly interesting to members of this list is chapter 6 "Making
Monsters, Locating Sex: Foucault and feminism in Debate", in which Bell
discusses Foucault position on what some call adult-child sex and others
call child sexual abuse (depending on their point of view).
Anyway, hope this helps.
chloe
(alas, I may be the only one who's read it on this list; so much for my
pitiful attempt at starting threads.)
***************************************************************
"The women who hate me cut me
as men can't Men don't count.
I can handle men. Never expected better
of any man anyway.
But the women,
shallow-cheeked young girls the world was made for
safe little girls who think nothing of bravado
who never got over by playing it tough" Dorothy Allison
***************************************************************
_Interrogating Incest: Feminism, Foucault and the Law_ I'm not able to
provide a full summary as some have requested because I don't have a lot of
spare time on my hands [note the infrequency of my posts--I have two jobs,
two lovers, two children and one elderly and demanding cat, so it's hard to
find time to do my laundry, let alone post book reviews :-) Oh, BTW, anyone
in the vincinty of Vancouver, BC who wants me to post more often is welcome
to do my laundry, thereby freeing up my time :-)]
In brief, Bell considers Foucault's argument that incest is a place of
tension between the deployment of alliances and kinship and the deployment
of sexuality. At the same time, she considers the different approaches to
incest taken by feminists. In describing her book, a negative definition
(of what the book is not) may be the best way to proceed: it is not a book
in which Foucault is regarded as "another male theorist . . . we can file
alongside the previous male thinkers [and then] having filed him . . .
either ignore him or . . . pick up and mould his concepts" (pp. 176). Nor is
it a book in which feminism is treated as if it was "inescapably within the
Foucauldian filing cabinet . . . .neither Foucault nor feminism has been set
up as the acid test for the other . . . neither has all the answers" (176-177).
Particularly interesting to members of this list is chapter 6 "Making
Monsters, Locating Sex: Foucault and feminism in Debate", in which Bell
discusses Foucault position on what some call adult-child sex and others
call child sexual abuse (depending on their point of view).
Anyway, hope this helps.
chloe
(alas, I may be the only one who's read it on this list; so much for my
pitiful attempt at starting threads.)
***************************************************************
"The women who hate me cut me
as men can't Men don't count.
I can handle men. Never expected better
of any man anyway.
But the women,
shallow-cheeked young girls the world was made for
safe little girls who think nothing of bravado
who never got over by playing it tough" Dorothy Allison
***************************************************************