Dé-manager

This interview with Dorothée Dussy examines the role of incest in the functioning of the family institution and, beyond that, of society. In doing so, it raises a central question: to what extent is the family the ‘cradle of domination’, the primary and fundamental place of learning for a dominated relationship or, on the contrary, a dominant relationship with the world? Returning to the conditions that make an anthropological approach to incest possible, free from its androcentric biases, Dorothée Dussy shows that sexual and physical violence within the family socializes people into fear and leads to the internalization of a disposition towards submission and acceptance of domination. In the system of silencing that surrounds incest, everyone – incest victims, perpetrators, relatives, friends, teachers or childcare professionals, neighbours, classmates – learns their place, by contagion and impregnation.