Inner Circles: Kinship, Inclusion, and Inaccessibility
The family is often conceived in terms of exclusivity, closeness and intimacy. The word ‘intimate’ – intimus, or ‘most interior’, in the Latin – suggests that this relationship touches our innermost part, that which is deepest and hidden from view. Familial ties are further corporealized in terms of blood, or the physical proximity of shared space, resources, and memories, and acts of care. Broader ethnic, linguistic, cultural and national communities may be framed as extensions of this familial ‘inner circle’, as the concept of the body politic suggests; the family, for Rousseau, is ‘the first model of political societies’ (The Social Contract).