Jeanine Herman Book order

In this remarkable work, anthropologist Françoise Héritier explores the incest prohibition throughout history, from Leviticus to contemporary civil codes. Through nuanced readings, she highlights the often-overlooked secondary type of incest, which prohibits two close blood relatives from engaging sexually with a third person. Héritier argues that this phenomenon is as universal as the classical "first" type of incest, which bans sexual relations between certain relatives. She controversially suggests that the first type may stem from the secondary type, viewing it as a transfer of bodily fluids in a love triangle involving two related partners. Her analysis is both erudite and insightful, drawing from classical ethnographies and civilizations, including Rome, Greece, Asia Minor, and Islam. Héritier's fieldwork in West African societies, where bans against two sisters are particularly strict, informs her complex "mechanics of fluids," where blood, milk, and semen underpin kinship and prohibition. Her theories, based on the interplay of fluids and essences, reveal the intricate connections between social structures, nature, and the body, offering fresh perspectives on kinship theory's complexities.