Incest as Dismissal: Anthropology and Clinics of Silence

This chapter would like to propose a critical description of how the injunction to silence constitutes the keystone of denials about sex crimes against minors. From the foregoing, I will analyse the various motives that make it possible to configure anthropologically the “good” reasons for keeping quiet. I postulate that what makes the enunciation of such reasons possible is not only the anchoring of the various anthroposocial structures that constitute our common world in a violent ecosystem, but the inscription of this violence in a daily practice where it sometimes represents a major term of the negotiation between individuals in the struggle for survival. In this configuration, silence and endurance are primordial phases of socialization.“That are part of ordinary life in Cameroon” and not “that innervent”. This will be the first section of my reflection. The second section will focus, through the illustration of a clinical case, on the ontological and pathics repercussions of the terror of silence as a non-place of the aggression which closes the promise of justice contained in each aggressive act.