Familia Servanda Est: Family Must be Saved, but How? Some Evaluations about Beyond the Family

This book review puts forward some evaluations about Bülent Somay’s book Beyond Family: A Case for Another Regime of Reproduction, Sexuality and Kinship. The basic aim of this review, is to analyze Somay’s thesis that the family is to be destroyed (familia delenda est). He formulated this thesis by making reference to Shulamith Firestone’s book The Dialectic of Sexuality and Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach. In this book Somay tries to justify the opinion that even if the family is spontaneously changing, splitting into it’s parts and dissolving today, it will not be enough for a meaningful transformation of the society. To finalize this destruction human agency and action are also necessary. In order to realize this mission, Somay handles the three components of the family: father(hood), mother(hood) and child(hood). And analyses the changes in the meanings of these concepts. According to Somay, the new forms of motherhood, fatherhood and childhood, together with queering, have a capacity to threat the current order which is founded on the hegemony of the father. This book review is making a general evaluation and criticism of the ideas put forward in Beyond the Family. And, in relation with this criticism, defends the idea that family can take different forms according to the social conditions and -as other institutions- family can also be a medium for the establishment of justice.