What is it about?
In this paper I use my life experience as a case study to expose and explore a family secret and interpret its ethical implications and effects on parental and filial relationships. Michel Foucault argues that the stain of incest is part of the fabric of the bourgeois family. In the majority of stories of incest, there has been a process of covering up, of secrets and lies concealing the stain. I interpret the family story to expose and exorcise the hidden stain of incest as an absent cause driving the failure of my parents’ marriage and of my family life.
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Why is it important?
Many families have secrets at their heart. My hope is that others will find in this story a mirror showing some of the fault lines in the bourgeois family, giving a fresh perspective on family dysfunction and failure.
Perspectives
My ethics of life writing is the desire to tell one's story and to understand something of the other stories within which it is enfolded and contained, so that it can be—so that I can be—set free to choose new stories; always knowing that they are just stories.
Christina Houen
Curtin University
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This page is a summary of: The Secret of Incest? Out of theMise en Abîmeof Family Stories, Life Writing, June 2012, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/14484528.2012.667902.
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