The End of Kinship: Measure for Measure, Incest, and the Ideal of Universal Siblinghood by Marc Shell (review)

256Rocky Mountain Review the origins, authority, legitimacy, and implications ofliterary canons, this kind of inquiry is a healthy enterprise. FRED PINNEGAR University ofArizona MARC SHELL. The End ofKinship: Measure for Measure, Incest, and the Ideal of Universal Siblinghood. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. 297 p. Unpacking the unwieldy, punning title of Marc Shell's study of incest in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure is an introduction to the vast scope and peculiar methodology (Marxist, Freudian, and a dash of new historicist) of this book. The "end" of kinship refers first to the generic social intention of kinship , that is, its tefos, in the Aristotelian sense. Determining who is kin and who is non-kin is essential to most cultures in order to avoid incest, a nearly universal taboo. But the West, Shell argues, has relocated a kind of incest within the realm ofordinary human relations through the primarily Christian doctrine of universal siblinghood. If all men are brothers (and all women sisters ), then all sexual relations are essentially incestuous. Thus the intention behind our kinship structure is called into question: the end of kinship is the ending of the kinship structure. And where does Measure for Measure fit into this title? Fortunately, at the very center. In Shell's view, this problem play rehearses "fundamental problems involving the classification of kin and kind, the tension between natural teleology and political teleology, and the opposition between celibacy and liberty" (xiii). In the opening chapters, which occasionally seem strained in argument and method, Shell considers the conflict between a "natural" view of sexuality and a political view. For "nature," at least as we hypostatize it, the end of all sexual activity is reproduction ofour own kind, while the political order seeks to restrain or even to arrest reproduction, since the latter depends for its very being on its control over who is having sex with whom. The chapter on "Civilization and Its Discontents" explores some beliefs that might have informed Shakespeare's understanding of the incest taboo. But, dismissing any direct historical connections, Shell maintains, "Measure for Measure most strongly draws our attention ... to the fact that both the fear ofthe practice of incest and the practice itself are social diseases that lead, one way or another, to the death ofthe body politic as we know it" (40). If people so fear committing incest that they try to avoid procreating altogether, then the political order must collapse. On the other hand, if incest is no longer a taboo, then sexual liberty would destroy the rule ofthe father. Parents would no longer have the right to rule children, nor kings the right to rule subjects. And the horror ofWestern political order might occur: people might claim that all property should be held in common. The critical point of contact between Shakespeare's play and this analysis of incest and the political order lies in the play's two monastic figures, Isabella Book Reviews257 and the disguised Friar Vincentio. In a chapter on "Children of Adoption," Shell refigures the monastic tradition as a powerful challenge in itselfto the reigning political order of sixteenth-century western Europe. With its call for universal siblinghood between its members and every Christian being, the monastic tradition subsumes and sublates the prohibition against incest. At the same time, the celibacy practiced by such institutions furthers its political challenge, since it guarantees that no reproduction will occur. Less persuasive is his attempt to argue that earthly sibling love and heavenly sibling love are closely related in the history of monasticism. Pointing to selected instances of brothers and sisters becoming saints, Shell flirts with the generalization that most monks and nuns entered the cloister to avoid incest. If the first chapters seem disorganized despite their subtitles and strained in argument, Shell's analysis ofthe problems of exchange and identity in Measure for Measure is incisive and enlightening. In a series of chapters on taliation, the law that specifies the return of like for like, this text exposes the mode of exchange that informs the title and the structure of the plot. "Measure for Measure," Shell maintains, "is about measuring up to such unreturnable goods as lost maidenheads and lost lives" (97...