Description
Book SynopsisIn this major new book, Mary Hamer offers a new perspective on incest, making a link with the scandal of sexual abuse on the part of priests. She places sexual abuse in the context of the whole social order. Hamera s novel and innovative approach challenges the taboo on clear thinking around the subject of incest.
Trade Review"Hamer's book plunges into the thicket of our scandals and blindness about incest, to tell us that abuse is the price paid by a society that insists on clear norms of masculinity and femininity. It is not possible to speak of incest, in other words, says Hamer, without addressing the entire social order. And this is what she does, in this clearly written, energetic, and powerful book." A
ntonia Lant, Department of Cinema Studies, New York University
"A personal journey of significance to us all. This account of the routine withdrawal of tenderness from close relationships will go against the grain of much formal cogitation. But it slides along the grain of an important kind of emotional knowledge. Agree with it or not, the effect is uncanny. Its echoes will reverberate a long time." Marilyn Strathern
"A brave and original book. Mary Hamer's Incest combines autobiography, literary criticism and psychoanalysis to break down embedded formulae about love, masculinity and tenderness." Terri Apter, Newnham College, Cambridge
Table of ContentsPreface.
Acknowledgements.
Introduction.
Part One: ON KNOWING AND NOT WANTING TO KNOW.
Intimacy and pleasure.
Mystification.
Danger.
Louis Malle: Murmur of the Heart.
Jennifer Montgomery: Art for Teachers of Children.
Sappho Durrell.
Father James Porter and Cardinal Law.
Sandor Ferenczi and Sigmund Freud.
Valerie Sinason and Estela Welldon.
Part Two: ON BEING REMINDED.
Introduction.
Suddenly Last Summer.
Through a Glass Darkly.
Lolita.
The Bluest Eye.
The God of Small Things.
Conclusion.
Notes.
Index
