“The Crisis of Kinship: Queer Affiliations in the Sexual Economy of Slavery” reexamines the discourse of queer kinship in order to take up Sharon Holland's call that queer studies has yet to reckon with the institution of slavery. I consider how the crisis of the oedipal drama—namely, unknown parentage and incest—is foundational to the sexual economy of slavery. Rather than a taboo that finds heterosexual resolution, incest is a sexual construct of slavery that paradoxically enables the emergence of queer sexual and kinship affiliations.