Two Sisters and Their Mother : The Anthropology of Incest

In this remarkable work, anthropologist Françoise Héritier charts the incest prohibition throughout history, from the strict decrees of Leviticus to modern civil codes. Through close and subtle readings, Héritier exposes the frequent, but often overlooked, elaborations concerning what she calls a secondary type of incest, namely, the prohibition of two close blood relatives engaging in sexual intercourse with a third person. Héritier not only understands this phenomenon to be as universal as the more classical “first” type of incest banning sexual relations between certain blood relatives, she advances the controversial thesis that the first type may indeed be an outgrowth of the secondary type of incest, once it is understood properly as the transfer of bodily fluids in a love triangle of sexual partners, two of whom are related to each other. Héritier pursues this analysis with erudition and brilliance, through the classical ethnographies as well as the classical civilizations and religions of Rome, Greece, Asia Minor, and Islam. Drawing on her own fieldwork in West African societies where the bans against two sisters are particularly stringent, Héritier fashions a complex “mechanics of fluids” in which blood, milk, and semen form the basis for kinship and prohibition. Her theories, based on the identity and opposition of fluids and essences, expose the connections between the social, the natural, and the bodily, shedding new light on the complexities of kinship theory.

The sharing of a sexual partner between relatives has always been taboo. In this stunning work, anthropologist Françoise Héritier charts the incest prohibition throughout history,from the strict decrees of Leviticus to modern civil codes, and finds a secondary type of incest,which she calls the incest of two sisters. The term refers not to incest between two sisters, or between two sisters and their mother, but to a love triangle of sorts in which the transfer of bodily fluids among sexual partners, two of whom are related to each other, creates undeniable bonds. Drawing on her field work in West African societies where the bans against two sisters are particularly stringent and on various cultural practices (such as milk kinship), Héritier fashions a complex "mechanics of fluids" in which blood, milk, and semen form the basis for kinship and prohibition. The intricate connections among the social, the natural, and the bodily emerge, fully apparent, and kinship studies are seen in a new light, one that illuminates the primacy of the symbolic.

Zone Books

"Anthropologist Francoise Heritier charts the incest prohibition throughout history from the strict decrees of Leviticus to modern civil codes. Through close and subtle readings, Heritier exposes the frequent, but often overlooked, elaborations concerning what she calls a secondary type of incest, namely, the prohibition of two close blood relatives engaging in sexual intercourse with a third person. Heritier not only understands this phenomenon to be as universal as the more classical "first" type of incest banning sexual relations between certain blood relatives; she advances the controversial thesis that the first type may indeed be an outgrowth of the secondary type of incest, once it is understood properly as the transfer of bodily fluids in a love triangle of sexual partners, two of whom are related to each other."--BOOK JACKET. 341 pages : 24 cm Includes bibliographical references (p. 317-333)