Dualisms and Female Bodies in Representations of African Female Circumcison

03 040811_njamb (ad/ho) 12/10/04 11:53 am Page 281
281
Dualisms and female bodies in

representations of African female
circumcision
FT
Feminist Theory
A feminist critique Copyright © 2004
SAGE Publications
(London,
Thousand Oaks, CA
and New Delhi)
vol. 5(3): 281–303.
1464–7001
DOI: 10.1177/1464700104040811
Wairimũ Ngaruiya Njambi Florida Atlantic University www.sagepublications.com
Abstract The contentious topic of female circumcision brings together

medical science, women’s health activism, media, and national and
international policy-making in pursuit of the common goal of
eradicating such practices. Referring to these diverse and heterogeneous
practices as ‘female genital mutilation’ (FGM), eradicators have then
condemned them as ‘barbaric’ and medically harmful to female bodies
and sexuality. In presuming that bodies can be separated from their
cultural contexts, the anti-FGM discourse not only replicates a
nature/culture dualism that has been roundly questioned by feminists in
science studies and cultural studies, but has also perpetuated a
colonialist assumption by universalizing a particular western image of a
‘normal’ body and sexuality in its quest to liberate women and girls. I
use my own story as a circumcised woman to highlight the
entanglements of body and culture as presented in these feminist
theories of female bodies.
keywords anti-FGM discourse, female bodies, female circumcision,
feminist science studies, irua ria atumia
As is so often the case, the debate concerning these women is less about the
women themselves than about the appropriation of women as political symbols.
In other words, it is about the use of women as ammunition in a polemic of
central concern to their lives, but where the issue at stake is not the women’s
own interests but, rather, the consolidation of the powers of others to define those
interests. (Winter, 1994: 939)
Introduction
Practices of female circumcision in Africa and other places have emerged
in the past two decades or so as a highly visible arena of body politics in a
globalized women’s health activism. As such, the recently evolved
campaign to eradicate these practices has formed into a powerful discourse
intertwining feminist politics and scientific and medical knowledge in
pursuit of the common goal of protecting ‘female bodies’ from ‘harm’.
Referring to such diverse and heterogeneous practices as ‘female genital
282 Feminist Theory 5(3)
mutilation’ (FGM), many of those seeking their eradication condemn them

as ‘barbaric’ and as harmful to female bodies and sexuality. They are also
viewed as evidence of the universal oppression of women by men and male
dominated social structures.
My goal in this paper is to problematize such images using both contem-
porary feminist theories of bodies and my own personal narrative as a
circumcised woman. My approach to this paper is expressed well by
Sharon Traweek who states, ‘I am going to write some stories for you, and
I will be in some of them; I want you to know how I came to learn about
[them] and I want you to understand how the stories some. . . . write might
be different from what you expect’ (1992: 432). Throughout the paper I
employ the phrase ‘anti-FGM discourse’ to identify various perspectives
and strategies, especially in the west, that have played an important role
in the shaping and promotion of the eradication of female circumcision as
practiced mainly by Africans. My usage of the phrase ‘anti-FGM discourse’
is not meant to imply that all those who are opposed to such practices are
alike or that they can easily be collapsed under one homogeneous rubric.
Some are located in the west, some in Africa, some are women, some are
men, and some are feminists. They embrace various means of stating their
views against female circumcision practices, even as they agree that these
practices are harmful to female bodies and must be eradicated. One of my
interests in this paper is how such conclusions have been arrived at. I am
also aware that the phrase ‘female circumcision’, itself a western construct,
is troubling because it implies that cultural practices that involve female
genital modifications in Africa have no unique histories and meanings of
their own, outside of what is already understood in the west to be male
circumcision.
Similarly, by using the term ‘west’, or even the term ‘western feminists’
for that matter, I am not trying to imply that the view from this part of the
world is monolithic by any means (Mohanty, 1991). Rather, as Mohanty
puts it, ‘I am attempting to draw attention to the similar effects of various
textual strategies used by writers which codify Others as non-western and
hence themselves as (implicitly) Western’ (1991: 52).
I argue that much of the ‘anti-FGM discourse’, as currently formulated,
overly homogenizes diverse practices, is locked in a colonial discourse that
replicates the ‘civilizing’ presumptions of the past, and presents a univer-
salized image of female bodies that relies upon particularized assumptions
of what constitutes ‘naturalness’ and ‘normality’.
After introducing anti-FGM discourse, I will discuss the case of Fauziya
Kasinga, who came to symbolize the female circumcision debate in the
United States in the mid-1990s. Media representations of Kasinga’s story
perpetuated troubling colonialist assumptions in the dichotomy of an
enlightened west as refuge from the ‘backward’ and ‘barbaric’ traditions of
Africa. Her case also presents a dichotomy between normal versus muti-
lated female bodies that structures anti-FGM discourse. From this case I
critique such dichotomies via contemporary theories of bodies emerging
from feminist science studies and cultural studies. In the light of these
theories which promote the notion of enculturated bodies, I present a
Njambi: Dualisms in African female circumcision 283
personal story of my own circumcision experience, not as a celebration of

female circumcision per se, but as a means of rewriting the narrative of
female circumcision in other feminist terms. What I hope my story will
convey is that bodies do not exist in a vacuum; they are made and negoti-
ated through everyday rituals and performances that can be simultaneously
acceptable and problematic. The decision to avoid as well as to opt for
female circumcision is both within the realm of cultural possibility. In my
conclusions I suggest to feminists and other activists interested in differ-
ences, that seemingly ‘oppressed’ women have more complex stories to
offer, no matter how inappropriate and awkward such stories may appear
from one’s own cultural vantage point. Taking such complexities seriously
could be one way out of the problematic current tendency to represent
Others only as passive victims and objects of knowledge.
Introducing anti-FGM discourse

To enter anti-FGM discourse in this sense is to immediately be drawn
into a battlefield filled with conceptual oppositions already in place:
science/superstition; medical knowledge/tradition; healthy bodies/un-
healthy bodies; normal sexuality/abnormal sexuality; civilized/barbaric;
modernity/backwardness; expert/non-expert; educated/ignorant – and the
list goes on. In employing these dichotomies, anti-FGM discourse has
emerged powerfully over the past few decades as one that rewards those
who embrace its premises and punishes those who question them. For
instance, a recent informal internet poll by the BBC showed that 92 percent
of respondents believed that female circumcision could not be justified
(BBC News, 1999). Comments on the website regarding female circumcision
included comparisons of female circumcision with slavery and human
sacrifice, with numerous references to the ‘barbarism’ and ‘horrific’ nature
of such practices (BBC News, 1999). Dissenting opinions were dismissed
and treated as if they were the defenders of Nazis and slaveholders. Needless
to say, being a dissenter in this discourse is a risky proposition.
Ubiquitous in the literature on practices of female circumcision is the
three-category topology of ‘sunna’, clitoridectomy, and infibulation, organ-
ized in order of perceived increasing degree of severity. These three forms
are mobilized from one text to another in virtually identical form, repre-
senting what is considered to be the ‘reality’ of all practices of female
circumcision on the continent of Africa. Specific practices from diverse
locations are forced into one or another of these categories. And as the
phrase ‘female circumcision’ loses ground on the basis that it fails to
capture the horror of the mutilation involved, those who insist on employ-
ing the phrase (and not the preferred phrase ‘female genital mutilation’)
risk being accused of being too uncritical of such practices.
It is this power to create oppositions between all that is considered
‘normal’, and hence desirable, and what is considered to be ‘pathological’,
hence undesirable (Canguilhem, 1991), as well as the power to mobilize
allies with similar views (Latour, 1987), that has enabled the anti-FGM
discourse to generate its force in activist and policy settings and to be
successful in making us forget about its constructedness. In this discursive

setting, female circumcision becomes unquestionably harmful, where the
only remaining issue to be explored is how, once and for all, to eliminate
these practices. However, the centre maintained in anti-FGM discourse is
subject to contradictory meanings, images and practices that carry legacies
of colonial representations of ‘third world’ societies as ‘savage’ and
‘barbaric’, even while claiming to be pursuing their collective well-being –
a civilizing mission if ever there was one.
These images that infuse the west’s understandings of female circum-
cision are not new. Some date back to early white, male travellers and
explorers who reported such practices in their travel monographs and
diaries. For example, one 17th-century German explorer in Africa horrified
and amused his German readers as he entertained them with the following
sensational story:
The girls also have their special circumcision; for when they reached their tenth
or eleventh year, they insert a stick, to which they have attached ants, into their
genitories, to bite away the flesh. Indeed, in order that all the more be bitten
away, they sometimes add fresh ants. (in Gollaher, 2000: 190)
Such stories were rarely questioned and assumed to be true. The main task
of such writers was to report on what they thought they already knew –
‘natives’ had been pre-defined as ‘savage’ and ‘barbaric’, dwelling in the
‘refused places’ described by Mudimbe (1994). As such, these explorers
and travellers worked to confirm, reinforce, and even enhance the already
established western images of ‘primitive’ cultures.
Later such images would become articulated within the language of
colonialism as one of the reasons Africa needed to be colonized. As with
other cultural practices, female circumcision would be judged as a
violation of the colonizers’ notion of good Christian morals and values, and
as contrary to progress, civilization, and modernity (Kratz, 1994). Recently,
these same issues would reappear yet again, but with a new twist. As Kratz
(1994) suggests, the practices of female circumcision now enter a new
discourse of not only ‘women’s health and well-being’ (articulated within
the rhetoric of western feminism), but also that of the ‘universal oppression
of women’ and more specifically ‘universal male domination of women’.
Even in these modern times, sensational stories continue to be told about
the processes of African female circumcision. The American Medical
Association (AMA), for example, claims that ‘the instruments most
commonly used to perform FGM are razor blades, kitchen knives, scissors,
glass, and in some regions, the teeth of the midwife’ (AMA, 1995: 1714,
emphasis added). While not a single group is identified which employs
such crude instruments, such statements are presented as a matter of ‘fact’
from one text to another in almost identical language.
In addition, the history of colonialism and neo-colonialism has afforded
the more powerful west the right to intervene in the lives of its ‘third world’
Others; a right which is not reciprocal. And through the anti-FGM
movement, the west has acquired yet another chance to gaze at African
women’s genitals. After all, it has been a while now since the genitalia of
a South African woman, Sarah Bartman, were sliced from her and
displayed in a museum in Paris, France; part of the continuing eroticiza-
tion and fascination with African women’s sexuality on the part of neo-
colonial European societies. Dawit (1994) notes a similar voyeurism in the
making of a CNN news programme where a young Egyptian girl’s circum-
cised genitalia were displayed on video for ten minutes. I suggest that such
sexual fascination and voyeurism continues to play an important role in
the ways in which the practices of female circumcision are understood in
some communities. It is such a tendency to voyeurism that prompted
Walley (1997) to write that modern medical discourse may in fact be
performing the dual role of using the objective ‘language of science to
construct the issue as outside of “culture,’’ while simultaneously offering
a sanitized way of continuing the preoccupation with genitalia and sexu-
ality of African women’ (Walley, 1997: 423).
Hardliners and softliners

Indeed, just as there are diverse and heterogeneous practices of female
circumcision (a point that is often ignored in favour of the more severe
forms), there are also diverse voices that call for the eradication of such
practices. Though one could identify more varied classifications, in this
paper, I borrow Stephen Jay Gould’s (1993) concepts of ‘hardline’ and
‘softline’ to trace two main rhetorical strategies within the anti-FGM
discourse. ‘Hardliners’ are those who boldly state what they perceive as the
pure primitivity and barbarity of female circumcision, and are known for
their sensationalizing stories that are mainly meant to shock and horrify in
order to push the audience into action (see especially Hosken, 1980, 1982,
1993; Daly, 1978; Walker, 1992, 1994). For example, Hosken, who coined
the phrase ‘female genital mutilation’, states:
It is men who determine what becomes a custom and finally a tradition in each
society. The objective, which is quite openly stated by African and Middle
Eastern men, is to deprive women’s sexual pleasure and to keep women under
male control. In Muslim countries women are told that they are unable to control
their sexuality; therefore they must be excised. In different ethnic groups, the
genital operations take different forms and are performed on girls of different
ages, with a variety of different reasons. The purpose and medical results,
however, are the same. (Hosken, 1993: 32)
Still, according to Hosken, ‘all the operations are performed without anes-
thetic, often on struggling children held by force, frequently on the ground
under highly septic conditions, using a variety of tools’ (1993: 33).
Similarly, Daly writes:
There are some manifestations of the sado-ritual syndrome that are unspeakable
– incapable of being expressed in words because they are inexpressibly horrible.
Such are the ritual genital mutilation – excision and infibulation – still inflicted
upon women throughout Africa today, and practiced in many parts of the world
in the past. (Daly, 1978: 155)
According to Walker and Parmar (1993), African women who practice
female circumcision are not only victims of their own ignorance, but are
themselves ‘prisoners of ritual’:
And though one is struck by the complicity of the mothers, themselves victims,
as of the fathers, the brothers, and the lovers, even the complicity of the grand-
parents, one must finally acknowledge, as Hanny Lightfoot-Klein does in the title
of her book about genital mutilation in Africa, that those who practice it are,
generally speaking, kept ignorant of its real dangers – the breakdown of the spirit
and the body and the spread of disease – and are themselves prisoners of ritual.
(Walker and Parmar, 1993: 24–5)
‘Softliners’, on the other hand, are identified through their often sympathetic
position that attempts to contextualize these practices in their cultural
settings (see especially Kouba and Muasher, 1985; Leonard, 1996; Gallo and
Viviani, 1988; Kwaak, 1992; Lewis, 1997; Gunning, 1997; Boulware-Miller,
1985; Winter, 1994, among others). However, as was the case with colonial
anthropology, such contexts are offered as a way to help locate the most
effective means of breaking down and eradicating female circumcision.
Some softliners even go on to acknowledge and criticize the blatant ethno-
centric and colonialist assumptions within the rhetoric of some female
circumcision eradicators. While important, such critiques usually are made
in passing as a footnote or as concluding remarks in the form of a series of
questions for future research (preferably as somebody else’s responsibility).
This form of simple acknowledgement works to downplay the importance
of questions of discursive imperialism. The message, it seems, is that such
a concern is secondary and even a less relevant distraction from the pressing
need to eradicate the horror of female circumcision.
While distancing themselves from the overt colonialist tones of the hard-
liners, and being more sensitive and sympathetic to the needs of African
women and girls, softliners nonetheless presume that change requires an
external catalyst from among the more culturally and economically devel-
oped, ‘modern’ societies. While, from a softliner view, culture must be
respected, intervention is needed to establish more ‘appropriate/accept-
able’ ways of living. For example, Kouba and Muasher maintain that,
‘although custom no longer forms the backbone of tribal law, female
circumcision remains an African custom and is still rooted in the foun-
dations and sociological structures of the societies where it is practiced’
(1985: 103). However, these authors go on to characterize these foundations
and sociological structures as ‘for the most part, based on myths, an ignor-
ance of biological and medical facts and religion’ (Kouba and Muasher,
1985: 103), and thereby undermine the possibility of understanding female
circumcision within social contexts – a possibility the authors themselves
brought to our attention in the first place.
It is important to note that, although many African anti-FGM activists
may share similar ideas as those held by hardliners and softliners regard-
ing bodies and sexuality as biologically given (and hence, in need of liber-
ation), many have been very critical of the imperialism and stereotyping of
Africans in western representations of female circumcision. For example,
African feminist activist Nahib Toubia, argues that while the goal of
protecting women and girls from ‘harm’ may be important, portrayals of

circumcision have often generated understandable defensiveness among
Africans due to the perpetuation of stereotypes:
It is unfortunate that FGM is also used to stir up the historical rivalry between
the Euro/American, Christian culture and the Afro/Arab Muslim civilization.
Cultural slander and stereotyping only makes real change more difficult to
achieve. Some Western media highlight the link between FGM and Islam and call
the practice ‘primitive and barbaric’. (Toubia, 1993: 35)
Constructing Africa as the ‘land of torture’ and the west as the

‘land of freedom and liberty’
Hardliners and softliners both employ dichotomies that universalize and
homogenize practices of female circumcision (not to mention female
bodies). By presenting pre-ordained solutions, both also imply an image of
a universal African woman who is passive and ignorant and who must be
rescued. Such dichotomies can be seen in the relatively well-known case
of Fauziya Kasinga. As a normalized account, it is difficult to argue against
conceptualizations of female circumcision as ‘torture’ and ‘mutilation’ that
have recently appeared in headlines regarding her case. Headlines such as
‘U.S. Frees African Fleeing Ritual Mutilation’, ‘Fleeing Mutilation, Fighting
for Asylum’, ‘New Ground for Asylum: Threatened Female Genital Muti-
lation is Persecution’, ‘Fighting Female Mutilation’, ‘Female Genital Muti-
lation: A Form of Child Abuse’, and so forth, recreate and reinforce this
imagery of despair. Any different story, other than told by such headlines,
can only appear as lending support to the torturers and mutilators.
Kasinga’s case is presented in dichotomous terms between the super-
stition, tradition, primitivity of life in Togo, where her body would be
‘tortured’, and the land of liberty, where female bodies are presumed to
grow up free and unhindered by oppressive and dangerous cultural prac-
tices. Equally problematic is the image reinforced in Kasinga’s case that
Africa’s primitivity is to blame for Africa’s problems, whether social or
economic, and the persistent view that a heavy dose of ‘civilization’ will
go far in bringing Africa into the modern world.
Then 17 years old, Kasinga arrived at Newark International Airport in
New Jersey on 17 December 1994 and was arrested for travelling with a
false passport (McCarthy, 1996). Fearing deportation, Kasinga pleaded for
asylum claiming that if she were returned to Togo she would be forced to
be ‘genitally mutilated’ through a female circumcision ritual practised in
her country, and then forced into an arranged polygynous marriage involv-
ing an older man (Dugger, 1996). After Kasinga’s story failed to impress the
immigration officers, she was confined to an INS detention centre in New
Jersey. She was later moved to York County Prison, Pennsylvania, where
in August of 1995, her claim for asylum was again denied (Dugger, 1996).
Eventually, Kasinga was granted asylum on the grounds that, due to her
desire to avoid circumcision, she would face persecution in Togo if she
returned (Rueben, 1996). Kasinga’s lawyers successfully argued, Dugger
explains, that ‘an individual can be granted asylum based on a
well-founded fear of persecution because of race, religion, nationality,

political opinion or membership in a social group’ (Dugger, 1996: A1). In
this case, Kasinga’s lawyer argued Kasinga to be ‘part of a social group:
young women of the Tchamba-Kunsuntu tribe who resist genital muti-
lation’ (Dugger, 1996: A1). After Kasinga was granted political asylum in
the United States, the practices of female circumcision ‘joined the previ-
ously accepted categories of persecution: race, nationality, religion,
political views, and membership in a social group’ (Gollaher, 2000: 188).
In the meantime, Kasinga’s case grew in popularity as radio, newspapers,
and television talk shows picked up the case, spurring renewed discussion
and policy action on the topic of female circumcision. This was especially
the case after Kasinga’s story first came out in the New York Times in April
1996 in which Rosenthal, a columnist, explained the practices of female
circumcision as a ‘torture so hideous that most of humanity does not even
want to think about it’ (in Gollaher, 2000: 2). As Gollaher notes, Rosenthal
even had advice for the President with regard to how better to solve the
‘problem’ of female circumcision:
He called on President Bill Clinton to endorse a three-point plan, including
designating $100 million of the American foreign aid budget for local campaigns
against ritual mutilation; giving more aid to countries that actively work to eradi-
cate female genital mutilation ‘and less, or nothing’ to those that don’t; and
making the issue a top priority for American delegations to the United Nations.
(Gollaher, 2000: 188)
Rosenthal went on to say that it was the least the Americans could do in
order to combat practices whose ‘short-term results include tetanus,
septicemia, hemorrhages, cuts in the urethra, bladder, vaginal walls and
anal sphincter. Long-term: chronic infection, massive scars that can hinder
walking for life, fistula formation, hugely increased agony and danger
during childbirth, and early deaths’ (in Gollaher, 2000: 2).
In another headline regarding Kasinga’s case, ‘Fleeing Mutilation,
Fighting for Asylum’, appearing in Ms. Magazine in the summer of 1996,
McCarthy (1996) also reinforces the unquestioned image of female circum-
cision as part of the savagery that western audiences expect from primitive,
tradition-minded Africans. Reiterating Kasinga’s story the author claims
that:
Twenty-one months ago, 17-year-old Fausiya [sic] Kasinga fled her home in Togo
to escape a ritual mutilation that has been inflicted on the women of her tribe for
centuries. After being forced by her relatives to go through a marriage ceremony
to a man more than twice her age, Kasinga was told that she would have to be
‘circumcised’. She would be held down and her legs spread, while an elder
woman of her tribe cut away her clitoris and the labia minora (the inner lips of
the vulva), scraping them to the bone. Her lower body would then be bound
tightly for 40 days while her wounds healed, after which time her new husband
would be permitted to have sex with her. Female genital mutilation (FGM) is
performed on about half of all Togolese women, partly as a way to control a
woman’s sexuality upon marriage. (McCarthy, 1996: 12)
The picture portrayed here evokes a comparison between female

circumcision and gang rape. Uprooted from its social context, the author
makes clear that no redeeming images can compete with what is presented
as an assault on females and their genitalia. It is interesting to me to note
that, regarding her arrest and detention, Kasinga is quoted in the Ms.
Magazine article as saying that ‘I heard that in the United States they
protect people, but I came here asking for protection and I get punishment’
(McCarthy, 1996: 13).1 Upon her release, Kasinga is again quoted in
Dugger’s article, saying that ‘There’s nothing like freedom . . . I want to be
happy, to start a new life,’ and is reported to have said that ‘her dream is
to go to college, get an apartment and car of her own and become an accoun-
tant’ (Dugger, 1996: A1).
Strangely, given her tales of fear, in an interview on Nightline with Ted
Koppel (in Walley, 1997), Kasinga told him that ‘most young women in
Togo are happy to have the procedure done and think it is something very
great’ (Walley, 1997: 421). As Walley notes, such information could not
even help to ‘dislodge the program’s implicit assumption that these women
are coerced and would gladly flee their own countries to escape such prac-
tices’ (Walley, 1997: 421). Instead of portraying Kasinga as a woman resist-
ing circumcision because she (like many Africans) came from a family that
perhaps taught her to disapprove of such practices, Walley notes that the
media was fixated on what it saw as an example of coercion and oppres-
sion in African cultures and societies generally (1997: 421).
In this sense, Kasinga’s political asylum in the United States is sought on
the grounds that, without the help of the enlightened west, she, like all
other African women who come from societies which practice any form of
female circumcision, could not escape her culture’s demand that she be
mutilated, hence perpetuating the colonial image that Africans are slaves
to their cultural values, offering no way out for those who wish to be free.
Cultural complexities and heterogeneities are avoided entirely. Once that
avoidance becomes normalized, is it any wonder that one is left with an
impression that a renewed ‘civilizing mission’ is necessary, since there
seems to be no other way of eliminating these ‘horrendous’ acts of ‘muti-
lation’?
Given that the media is so quick to present this familiar image of the
oppression of ‘primitive’ African tradition against the liberating freedom of
life in the democratic west, one might wonder to what extent Kasinga
cleverly played upon these colonialist images to help attain her stated
‘dreams’ of a relatively affluent lifestyle that was not so attainable at home
in Togo. After all, she did hop on a plane to the wealthiest country in the
world, rather than choose to take an alternative escape-route from ‘torture’
to neighbouring African countries where female circumcision is not
practised. Clearly, landing in any of the neighbouring countries would not
have been to Kasinga’s advantage. Perhaps her ingenuity in fleeing poverty
should be commended. And after all, Kasinga should not be held
responsible for the manner in which her case was sensationalized, as one
reviewer pointed out.
Seeing female bodies through the lenses of feminist science

studies
As Kasinga’s case suggests, the presumption of the dichotomies presented
above facilitates problematic representations of female bodies in anti-FGM
discourse. This discourse represents a meta-narrative on female bodies in
which, as with colonial discourse, a particular perspective is universalized
to stand for all. In this narrative, a ‘natural’ female body has ‘normal’ geni-
talia as opposed to the ‘mutilated’ ones that result from female circum-
cision. Female bodies are seen as corporeal or biological entities only,
represented as easily separable from their cultural context. For some
feminists, such as Alice Walker, such practices result in ‘a distortion of the
original anatomy’ (Walker and Parmar, 1993: 19). Elsewhere, Walker
invokes a popular biblical view: ‘We can tell you that the body you are born
into is sacred and whole, like the earth that produced it, and there is
nothing that needs to be subtracted from it’ (Walker and Parmar, 1993: 19).
In an interview on Bravo (Walker, 1994), when asked whom she is repre-
senting in her mission to eradicate the practices of female circumcision,
Walker responded: ‘I am not speaking for anybody. I am not speaking for
Africans. The body of a woman is a universal treasure, precious. It should
not be mutilated. Period!’ Fran Hosken similarly states, ‘The female geni-
talia that are created “perfect” are deliberately crippled and altered accord-
ing to custom’ (Hosken, 1993: 32). Here the search for a normal body and
normal genitalia becomes not only a medical scientific concern but a
religious one as well. However, while feminists such as Walker and Hosken
have been at the forefront of the FGM eradication movement, other
feminists have questioned this dualism between nature and culture (body
and mind). Grosz, for instance, has problematized such dualisms showing
how they are directly rooted in Cartesian thinking, in which ‘the body is . . .
understood in terms of organic and instrumental functioning in the natural
sciences’ (Grosz, 1994: 8), and from the western Judeo-Christian’s notion of
the ‘human body’, as ‘part of a natural or mundane order’ (1994: 8).
As Franklin notes, ‘debates concerning the body, embodiment, and
corporeality have become increasingly central to cultural theory in the past
decade’ (Franklin, 1996: 95). These debates have disrupted the view of the
body as a natural, biological entity with its own physical reality separated
from culture. Instead, these new studies of bodies have urged us to see the
body as a site of enculturation, performance and embodiment (see for
example, Butler, 1994; Franklin, 1996; Gatens, 1996; Grosz, 1994; Haraway,
1997; Terry and Urla, 1995).
For example, Gatens argues that ‘human bodies are diverse and, even
anatomically speaking, the selection of a particular image of the human
body will be a selection from a continuum of difference’ (Gatens, 1996:
vii–viii). Furthermore, many anatomical depictions that are supposed to
represent the ‘human body’, according to Gatens, can be viewed as
depictions of particular groups of people or individuals and not others. She
urges us to abandon the question, ‘How is the body taken up in culture?’
to a question more relevant to this study, ‘How does culture construct the
body so that it is understood as a biological given?’ From these perspec-

tives, I suggest that the assertions of a universalized ‘normal’ body in anti-
FGM discourse hide the particularity of bodies as practised and imagined
from particular cultural and historical standpoints.
By speaking generally about the ‘harmfulness’ of female circumcision,
anti-FGM discourse problematically implies that it knows exactly how an
‘unharmed’ body looks. Gatens’ lesson is that one must learn to see the
forms and functions of the body as a product of the ways in which each
particular culture organizes, regulates and remakes itself, for better or for
worse. According to Haraway, ‘The point is to learn to remember that we
might have been otherwise, and might yet be, as a matter of embodied fact’
(1997: 39).
Other constructivist perspectives in science, technology, and medical
studies have raised similar concerns regarding the representation of human
bodies, pointing out how the nature/culture dualism implicit in some
medical conceptions of bodies typically ignores not only how such a
dualism is culturally produced and maintained, but also how each acts in
the production of the other (Callon and Rabeharisoa, 1998; Latour, 1993;
Mol and Law, 1998; Whatmore, 2002). Kwaak, for instance, describes two
conversations that took place between herself and a Dutch friend and
between herself and a Somali friend. The Dutch friend told her ‘what struck
her most about the practice of infibulation was the fact that it was so un-
natural’ (Kwaak, 1992: 781). This statement reflects the presumption that a
normal body, a ‘natural’ body, is always uncircumcised, like hers. Kwaak
also remembers a Somali female friend who said to her that it is western
women who seem to behave unnaturally: ‘first, they had hair on their arms
and legs; second, they did not cover their hair . . . and thirdly she showed
great disbelief concerning the fact that western women still had their ugly
genitalia and pubic hair’ (1992: 781). Kwaak’s point is that there is a deep
chasm between what these two cultural positions view as normal and
natural. However, rather than offering a critical perspective that would
have been utilized to problematize the two equally exclusive accounts,
Kwaak resorted to what Latour (1993) calls a ‘purification ritual’, of separ-
ating nature from culture, with those who are successful at doing so being
assigned to the category ‘modern’. Conversely, those who are deemed
unable to separate the two – those non-moderns who have yet to adopt the
scientific worldview and remain mired in nature/culture mixing and
blending – have a clouded view of the ‘natural’ since cultural values
allegedly get in the way of objectivity. In the end, Kwaak concurs with her
(objective) modern Dutch friend’s view, while she is ultimately baffled by
the views of her (non-objective) Somali friend: ‘An educated Christian
woman I knew in Somalia, [who] just had her third child . . . When I
returned from a short visit to the capital, I was surprised to hear that she
had been re-infibulated again’ (Kwaak, 1992: 781).
By the same token, the American Medical Association (AMA, 1995) and
the World Health Organization (WHO, 1982, 1997, 1998) explain that prac-
tices of female circumcision are ‘medically unnecessary’, and thus should
be eradicated. Yet while these two institutions admonish members to
refrain from participating in ‘unnecessary’ African female circumcision

practices, even under the clinical conditions of a hospital setting, culturally
acceptable (even expected) male circumcision and elective cosmetic surg-
eries are not included in their directive. In many western cultural settings,
for instance, a ‘normal’ penis is a circumcised penis, while breast implants
have now helped define the ‘ideal’ female body. Open virtually any biology
textbook (in the US) that shows human male genitalia and you are likely to
see a picture of a circumcised penis. In other words, the default image of a
normal penis in western contexts is a circumcised penis (see especially
AMA, 2000). In fact, not only is the AMA’s (2000) depiction of the normal
penis a circumcised one, but also the colour of the diagram clearly depicts
the human male as being ‘white’. Meanwhile, within such contexts, the
most common explanations that parents give for opting for male circumci-
sion according to Eisenberg, Murkoff and Hathaway, ‘in addition to just
“feeling it should be done,’’ include: . . . The locker room syndrome. Parents
who don’t want their sons to feel different from their friends or from their
father or brothers often choose circumcision’ (1989: 18). African women
who claim the same thing for their daughters, on the other hand, are
depicted as ignorant, genital mutilators, and in need of western education.
Recently, cases of intersexuality have presented yet another contradic-
tion within the anti-FGM discourse. As an effort to ‘correct ambiguous geni-
talia’ or ‘abnormal genitals’, such cases involve ‘Cutting off part or all of a
girl’s clitoris if it is considered abnormally large or aesthetically repugnant’
(Gollaher, 2000: 203). In 1997, Rolling Stone magazine published a story
entitled, ‘The True Story of John/Joan’, about a male infant whose genitalia
were supposedly disfigured during the circumcision procedure. One paedi-
atric urologist from Rhode Island insisted that ‘I don’t think it’s an option
for nothing to be done. . . I don’t think parents can be told, this is a normal
girl, and then have to be faced with what looks like an enlarged clitoris, or
a penis, every time they changed the diaper. We try to normalize the
genitals to the gender or reduce psychological and functional problems
later in life’ (Urology Times, 1997: 10–12).
By constructing categories of what is ‘medically necessary’ and
‘medically unnecessary’, both the AMA and WHO in the above sources
assume that what is medically necessary is a universal reality that is not
produced through specific cultural, political, and historical values and
interest, as opposed to practices deemed unnecessary. However, we can re-
assess this dichotomy through feminist science studies theory that suggests
that all knowledges are mediated – that there is no such thing as
unmediated reality that exists ‘out there’ waiting to be discovered or to
be described. The concepts of ‘situated knowledge’ and ‘embodied
knowledge’ help to explain this point. According to Haraway (1991,
1997), situated knowledge is never about seeing the world ‘clearly’. It is
never about mapping the world from unmarked positions. It is
always about accountability, somewhereability, locatability, positioning(s),
responsibility, and partiality. In this sense, embodied or situated know-
ledge is useful because it allows for mobility beyond fixed stations or
beyond the sites of the final and only word. Haraway writes:
All that critical reflexivity, diffraction, situated knowledges, modest inter-

ventions, or strong objectivity ‘dodge’ is the double-faced, self-identical god of
transcendent cultures of no culture, on the one hand, and of subjects and objects
exempt from the permanent finitude of engaged interpretation, on the other. No
layer of the onion of the practice that is technoscience is outside the reach of
technologies of interpretation and critical inquiry about positioning and location;
that is the condition of articulation, embodiment, and mortality. The technical
and the political are like the abstract and concrete, the foreground and the back-
ground, the text and context, the subject and the object. (Haraway, 1997: 37)
In this sense, according to Haraway (1991), the only way to have a
view/vision is to be standing from somewhere in particular. Furthermore,
as Haraway continues, ‘Vision is always a question of the power to see –
and perhaps of the violence implicit in our visualizing practices’ (1991:
192). Butler makes a similar point when she asks: ‘Indeed, how is it a
position becomes a position, for clearly not every utterance qualifies as
such? It is clearly a matter for certain authorizing power, and that clearly
does not emanate from position itself’ (Butler, 1994: 160).
I argue that such feminist science studies perspectives offer useful
guidance and metaphors needed to understand what is done away with
when anti-FGM discourse constructs meanings of female circumcision
through such a dualistic approach. They help to raise the question, what
forms of violence and silencing does anti-FGM discourse introduce, repli-
cate, and maintain? If the idea of embodied knowledge was to be applied
by anti-FGM discourse, then a possibility of envisioning bodies differently
might emerge, that is accountable to local specificities and variations,
rather than replicating the western view of a ‘natural body’.
Telling my story of irua ria atumia

The feminist idea of embodiment or culturally situated bodies provides an
important means of locating and critiquing problems in anti-FGM
discourse. One problem with anti-FGM discourse is its refusal to recognize
differences – ignoring the diversity of female circumcision’s forms and
histories. Perspectives that present bodies as ‘figures of performances’
(Butler, 1990, 1994); as sites of ‘imagination’ (Gatens, 1996); as ‘collectively
distributed’ (Callon and Rabeharisoa, 1998); and as ‘a matter of embodied
fact’ (Haraway, 1997), can help transform assumptions in the female circum-
cision debate, pushing participants to rethink the relationship between
nature and culture in the representation of bodies. To re-emphasize my
point, these perspectives share a common trait in their ability to redirect us
away from the conventional assumption which, according to Grosz, refuses
to ‘acknowledge the distinctive complexities of organic bodies, the fact that
bodies construct and in turn are constructed by an interior, a psychical and
a signifying view-point, a consciousness or perspective’ (1994: 8).
Taking such views seriously, I draw upon the recollection of my own
personal experience as a Gı̃kũyũ woman from Kenya who underwent irua
ria atumia, the circumcision ritual that marks the passage to womanhood,
to demonstrate how ‘normality’ regarding bodies is culturally produced.
My intent in this section is not to provide yet another universal account of

how female circumcision should be viewed, or even a comprehensive or
‘authentic’ view of Gı̃kũyũ practices, but rather to demonstrate the situated-
ness of bodies in relation to such practices, all the while recalling
Haraway’s point that ‘Location is also partial in the sense of being for some
worlds and not others’ (1997: 37, emphasis in original). Additionally, I see
myself as a post-colonial product; a hybrid; raised as a Catholic in a rural
peasant family in central Kenya, now living and teaching in the US – with
all ambivalences about cultural practices that such a mixture can produce.
Such a story matters to me first of all because it is rendered invisible and
unimportant by anti-FGM discourse.
In Gı̃kũyũ, context, culture and bodies are not held separately, and they
are historically tied very closely to circumcision, for both women and
men. The oral history I encountered while growing up presented irua ria
atumia (female circumcision) as a ritual that was appropriated by the
Gı̃kũyũ women, from a neighbouring ethnic group, as a way of introduc-
ing a celebration of ‘womanhood’ to a culture that only celebrated
‘manhood’. Yet this empowering image was reconfigured within Chris-
tianity. As Edgerton notes, ‘for reasons that remain obscure, the church did
not object to the [Gı̃kũyũ] practices of circumcising teen-aged boys, but it
regarded the circumcision of adolescent girls as barbaric’ (Edgerton, 1989:
40). To me this reflects a common Judeo-Christian assumption that
circumcised male bodies are normal and acceptable, and even that painful
passage to manhood is desirable. On the other hand, the same tradition
upholds a presumption that female bodies are innately passive and should
be protected from such pain. Contrary to missionary concern, for Gı̃kũyũ
women, as for men, enduring pain bravely is also integral to the passage
of womanhood, as Kratz (1994) observed. Additionally, given the
dominant view that men transcend nature while women remain nature-
associated, it is possible to suggest that irua offers a clear case in which
women disrupt such a paternalistic dualism as a way of marking their
entry into culture.
While the cultural significance of female circumcision has been waning
in the past few decades, due mainly to church pressures, its cultural
importance was still strong enough during my youth that I saw it as a neces-
sity. It may seem ironic, given the tales of ‘flight from torture’ told in the
media, but my parents refused to allow me to be circumcised, as it was
against Catholic teachings. I had to threaten to run away from home and
drop out of school before my parents relented and allowed me to be circum-
cised. The procedure was performed with a medical scalpel in a local clinic
run by a woman who was a trained nurse in the western sense, and also a
relative of an important Gı̃kuy~ u~ female medical healer and powerful leader
of the early 20th century, Wairimu ~ Wa Kı̃nene. During the operation, the
hood of the clitoris was cut through its apex which caused the hood to split
open and the clitoris to become more completely exposed. Such exposure
has been associated with sexual enhancement. However, any generaliza-
tion here might be unwise as it is likely that women’s experience of irua
varies, perhaps significantly.
Performed in a time of many social transformations in the 1970s, my

circumcision was not the communal experience it would have been in
earlier decades, an event that would have tied me forever to other women
and men of my ‘age-set’ (riika). However, despite shifting cultural forms,
circumcision still continued to be fundamentally important in that those
who were circumcised were inscribed with the status and privilege of
‘womanhood’. Usually performed on girls aged 14–16, Gı̃kuy ~ u~ female
circumcision, like many other forms, does not involve holding young
women down so that they cannot escape their ‘torture’ from ‘mutilating
villains’. Rather, it is a chance for teenage girls to demonstrate their bravery
by unflinchingly accepting their moment of pain, as mentioned in some
~ u
Gı̃kuy ~ songs.
Prior to my circumcision, my circumcised age-mates still considered me
(16, at the time) a child. With their newly acquired ‘womanhood’, they
wore a new ‘no nonsense’ attitude that demanded the attention of most
adults around. I was not allowed to join the more serious conversations
about topics such as menstrual cycles, pregnancy, and sexual fantasies.
I could not talk to other adults without having to worry about the words I
chose to employ, without having to worry about interrupting someone.
I was required, with all the other little kids (!), to cover my ears with my
hands whenever grown-ups made sexual jokes with one another that
children were not allowed to hear. All the uncircumcised girls (Ir~ıgu) ~ and
boys (Ih~ı~ı), seen as childish and immature, were required to respect and to
give up their seats when requested. In fact, the most profoundly humiliat-
ing insult that one can level at a G~ıkuy ~ u
~ adult is to accuse them of acting
like an ‘uncircumcised’ boy or girl. Today, however, as the importance of
female circumcision declines, this insult has less power over women than
it does over men, for whom circumcision remains a must.
By completing my irua, I became a G~ıkuy ~ u~ woman. And even though the
concept of ‘age-set’ had been disrupted by the time of my circumcision, I
entered a category whose pleasures and benefits were previously denied to
me. As a 16-year-old girl, I just wanted to become a woman like many other
G~ıkuy
~ u~ girls, problematically or unproblematically.
Historicizing G~ıkuy
~ u~ female and male irua (circumcision)
While somewhat dislocated in the post-colonial context, the cultural coding
of bodies was even more profound prior to colonialism, when circumcision
formed an unambivalent focal point for group identity. Through circum-
cision, cultural and historical events that happened throughout G~ıkuy ~ u
~
history would be recorded upon the bodies of women and men, who by
virtue of being circumcised together, not only formed a tight bond (an age-
grade or age-set known as riika, or mariika in the plural), but a specific name
would be allocated to signify both these bonds and the particular historical
event that took place during that moment. Kenyatta wrote:
The irua marks the commencement of participation in various governing groups
in the tribal administration, because the real age-group begins from the day of
the physical operation. The history and legends of the people are explained and
remembered according to the names given to various age-groups at the time of
the initiation ceremony. For example, if a devastating famine occurred at the time
of the initiation, that particular irua group would be known as ‘famine’
(ng’aragu). In the same way, they have been able to record the historical moment
when Europeans introduced a number of maladies such as syphilis into the
country, for those initiated at the time when this disease first showed itself are
called gatego, i.e., syphilis. Historical events are recorded and remembered [in
the body] in the same manner. Without this custom a tribe that had no written
records would not have been able to keep a record of important events and
happenings in the life of the nation. (Kenyatta, 1959: 129–30)
It is not uncommon to this day to hear older G~ıkuy

~ u~ generations of women
and men identify themselves with the names of their riika (age-grade). For
instance, my grandmother’s riika is that of ndege (airplane), signifying the
moment when airplanes were first observed in G~ıkuy ~ u
~ society.
Far from maliciously torturing women, circumcision not only gave
G~ıkuy
~ u~ women some access to social, political and economic power in an
undeniably patriarchical society, but it also allowed them to be keepers of
G~ıkuy
~ u~ history, a valuable responsibility. Furthermore, apart from their
obvious gendered differences in relation to the surgical operation and
cultural expectations associated with each, there was little difference in the
ceremonial aspects of female and male circumcision. Both women and men
were circumcised on the same day, they wore the same ceremonial
clothing, they both were secluded in the forest (for educational instruc-
tions) for the same time period.
For the G~ıkuy
~ u,
~ the circumcision initiation did not stand by itself, but
was integrated with other social activities, such as ngw~ıko, a communal
sexual practice for newly circumcised women and men after the healing
period. According to my grandmother (Njoki), ngw~ıko itself was accom-
panied by a series of long dances that took place throughout the day after
which, as the night approached, groups of women and men were paired
and moved together into a k~ır~ır~ı (women’s hut), or a thingira (men’s hut).
During this time, both women and men were expected to engage in sexual
activity where both would take multiple sexual partners in a one-night
session so that they might attain the ultimate sexual excitement through
the process of ngw~ıko (see Edgerton, 1989; Maloba, 1993; Kenyatta, 1959;
Kratz, 1994; Leakey, 1977; Shaw, 1995). As Shaw points out, ngw~ıko trained
G~ıkuy
~ u~ women ‘to respond to a wide range of bodily sensations, and the
period of socially sanctioned sexual activity allowed her time to appreci-
ate her own body’s responses’ (1995: 79). Furthermore, sexual activity
between members of the riika could take place for the rest of their lives,
regardless of marital status. It might be possible here to compare ngw~iko
with another practice that is performed by the Baganda people of Uganda
that is referred to as okukyalira ensiko, or simply ‘visiting the Forest’. As
Kilbride and Kilbride (1990) explain, soon after their menstruation and
sometimes even before, young girls would be taken to a secluded place in
the forest where their ‘labia minora’ would be physically massaged
outward in order to elongate it:
Elongation narrows the vaginal entrance and keeps it ‘warm and tight’, an
attribute highly desired by Baganda men. Ssenga [father’s sister] teaches the girl
specific utterances and techniques appropriate during intercourse. Traditionally,
women are taught to not only desire sex but to also lead an active sex life. A
woman is expected to reach orgasm several times before the man and respond
throughout intercourse with vigorous body movement. A man is evaluated by
women according to the length of time coitus is maintained before his orgasm
(about thirty minutes is typical). A too-rapid male ejaculation is likely to evoke
female anger and comparison with, for example, a ‘hen’ (enkoko) who, of course,
has rapid coitus. A second erection soon after orgasm is also expected of men.
(Kilbride and Kilbride, 1990: 92)
For Christian missionaries, practices of okukyalira ensiko and ngw~ıko were

seen as immoral acts displaying African ‘promiscuousness’ that was an
even greater affront to Christian values than female circumcision itself. As
one missionary testified:
The most important rite among the Kikuyu was (and still is) that of initiation.
The sign of initiation for both sexes is circumcision. . . . The physical operation
is the same in all areas although the rites vary quite considerably from place to
place. In every case, however, the ceremonies are accompanied by dancing and
immorality. After the ceremony the initiates are allowed to wander around the
countryside for several months singing and dancing. During this time they are
given instruction in matters relating to the tribe, to fighting, and to sex. As we
shall see later the church was compelled to denounce the immoral practice
[ngw~ıko], which accompanied initiation together with female circumcision as
injurious to the body and degrading to the soul. On the other hand, until recent
years the church has done nothing to replace the sex instruction, which was
given at initiation. (Cole, 1959: 130)
To missionaries, ngw~ıko epitomized the vices of fornication and promis-

cuity. Therefore, prohibiting both ngw~ıko and female circumcision was
seen as necessary in order to conquer such vices. Thus, according to
Kenyatta, many women and men ‘have been punished and regarded as
sinners by missionaries simply for having been found sleeping together in
such a manner’ (1959: 152). In contemporary times, ngw~ıko has been
suppressed to the point of eradication. By the time of my own circumcision,
ngw~ıko was already relegated to history. Irua, on the other hand, has only
been partially suppressed, despite legal prohibition and years of church
activity. However, it is clear that the importance of irua is now less than it
was in the past. If I were a girl growing up today, it is not clear to me
whether I would have the same desire for circumcision that I had in the
1960s and 1970s.
A reflexive look at irua ria atumia

My intention here is not to suggest that irua for the G~ıkuy
~ u~ is better or any
less problematic than other cultural practices that mark women’s bodies in
one way or another. And probably no amount of critical reflexivity will
protect me here from those who, when criticized for imperialist and
arrogant representations of ‘Others’, are quick to dismiss such criticism as
nothing more than a mindless defence of tradition. However, far from

blindly celebrating the G~ıkuy~ u~ irua ria atumia and my experience of it, I
am perfectly aware that it is never possible for any cultural practice, no
matter how small, powerful, acceptable or desirable, to be non-problem-
atic. For values and interests only exist in competition with other values
and interests. Consider that, to some extent, the deployment of circum-
cision rituals is part of an attempt to galvanize an essential ‘G~ıkuy ~ u~
identity’ in relation to neighbouring ethnicities and later to colonial intru-
sions. In 2003 a contemporary G~ıkuy ~ u
~ social movement called Mungiki ~ is
engaged in what one would call a dangerous form of revivalism, even
fundamentalism, of ‘G~ıkuy ~ u~ culture’ in the face of social change. Embrac-
ing female circumcision as an important component of this revival, some
~
Mungiki members are reported in the Kenyan media to have resorted to
violence against some G~ıkuy ~ u~ women who resist this reinscription. As
Edward Said makes clear in Culture and Imperialism, one danger here lies
in the assumption that there is such a thing as one uncontaminated
(G~ıkuy
~ u)
~ ‘identity’ or ‘culture’ that exists ‘out there’ in the first place – and
into which some would automatically (or forcibly) be included while
others are excluded.
At the same time, to re-emphasize a question I raised earlier, in the
presence of so many religious and other cultural disputes over practices of
female circumcision, is it possible to say that the decision to refrain from
such practices is not equally a product of specific values and interests? For
example, should we say that those in my village who refrained from prac-
tices of female circumcision but who chose Christianity instead (like those
who assert ‘science’ as on their side) cleverly and safely managed to escape
the markings of culture? Are their bodies any less culturally marked than
those whose bodies underwent practices of female circumcision? To
answer ‘yes’ to these questions allies one with common fixations (feminist
or otherwise) on dichotomies of bodily oppression (via circumcision)
versus freedom (via eradication). I instead would like to move the dialogue
to rethink this idea that bodies exist outside of cultural performativity, and
to look at multiple and heterogeneous ways in which not only cultures,
bodies, and sexualities emerge in contextualized entanglements, but also
the kinds of negotiations and ambiguities that are involved in such
processes. For instance, while circumcised women are at times invited to
describe its impact on their sexuality or their ability to achieve orgasm,
there is no interrogation of the constructions of ‘sexuality’ and ‘orgasm’
upon which the discussion is based.
Also, it is important to point out that all genital operations (like all other
physical operations) come with the risk of infections and bleeding, and irua
is not an exception to such problems. This is especially the case in places
where the healing practices that once accompanied irua have been discon-
tinued and the new healing procedures are expensive, or have not been
adopted due to fear of prosecution in places where circumcision is
outlawed. My question is how do we situate the potential for infections
associated with female circumcision in the context of similar risks with the
multitude of other body modifications practised by people worldwide?
Besides those of female circumcision, consider similarities with abortion

practices, which, when driven underground, routinely result in serious
health problems and even death for women and girls. Yet our consistent
call is for ‘safe and legal’ abortions, rather than their eradication, on the
basis that women should control their own bodies. Also consider the host
of legal and fashionable body modifications (in the US especially) such as
tattooing, piercing, penis/clitoris slicing, tongue slicing, and cosmetic
procedures (including botox injections, liposuction, breast implants, and
female genital trimming) that escape the ‘mutilation’ label. How is it deter-
mined which of these practices leads to a risk that warrants the emergence
of a global eradication movement? How do we discuss these issues without
creating an imperialistic impression that only those with some social,
political, and economic power and who live in the west have rights to take
risks with their bodies?
Conclusion: listening to the Other in ways that seriously matter

Hopefully, what my story conveys is that there are ways of looking at the
female circumcision issue which go beyond colonialist stories of barbarity
and primitivity; stories that surely leave the represented without a sense of
agency. Practices of female circumcision involve negotiations, ambiguities,
complexities, and contradictions that must be addressed and not
dismissed, even as we problematize them. What I hope, at least partly, to
accomplish is not to resolve issues once and for all but rather to promote
a dialogue which I find seriously lacking or closed-off by current anti-FGM
discourse which often presumes a universalized perception of embodied
women. Indeed, writings from different margins, and in particular those of
post-colonial feminists, such as Chandra Mohanty, Trinh Minh-ha, Gayatri
Spivak, Francoise Lionnet, among others, have taught us that beyond our
desire to figure out and maintain what ‘women’ have in ‘common’, the
question of ‘difference’ is something that we must learn how to address.
That is, even as we extend our hands for a ‘common theoretical and ethical
ground from which to argue for political solidarity’ (Lionnet, 1995: 3) with
other women everywhere, we must learn how to do so ‘without objectify-
ing the “other” woman, or subsuming collective goals under the banner of
sameness’ (Lionnet, 1995: 3).
Such a goal may seem difficult to attain given such entrenched images of
the Other. Yet Spivak concurs that such an attempt is a must. She states:
‘however unfeasible and inefficient it may sound, I see no way to avoid
insisting that there is a simultaneous other focus: not merely who am I? But
who is the other woman? How am I naming her? How does she name me?’
(Spivak, 1990: 179).
In other words, women whose everyday life practices are culturally
situated at the margins have given us unique insights into how they survive
and negotiate structures of power, but also more importantly, how they
resist such structures in the best ways they know how. In this sense, they
seem to be saying to us – indeed, as my own mother once told me – ‘Please!
Before you go naming me and all my troubles, just know that I also have a
say in that!’ I interpret my mother’s statement as meaning that, first, she is

not a passive victim, and second, if I care enough to listen, I might just learn
that she too has something to say regardless of whether I perceive it as
ambiguous, contradictory, or inappropriate.
Again, I am not claiming that cultures should not change, or that female
circumcision practices are necessarily good or proper and that outsiders
should ‘keep their hands to themselves’. Perhaps this paper is not really
about female circumcision at all. Perhaps it is about the arrogance and
presumptuousness on the part of those (no doubt, well meaning) social
change agents who do not see/ignore/do not care about the imperialism
residing in their views and actions. What might appear as defensiveness on
the part of ‘third world’ voices, which seem to shout protests whenever
cultural values are questioned, is better viewed as an acknowledgement of
the history which has made this western gaze and interventionist stance a
normal part of this ‘globalized’ world. While many of those in dominant
positions would prefer to just ‘get on with it’ in terms of forgetting the past
and moving on to improve the future – whether it is white views on race
relations in North America or Europe or westernized attitudes towards
female circumcision, or some similar issues – such words deny the import-
ance of this history of domination, exploitation, and unequal relationships
that has not been adequately and seriously addressed to allow such ‘getting
on with it’ to take place.
Note
1. There is an interesting irony here that while Kasinga herself, as well as the
media, present America as the land of liberty, Kasinga was incarcerated for
two years before her release.
References
AMA (1995) ‘Female Genital Mutilation’, Journal of the American Medical
Association 274(21): 1714–16.
AMA (2000) ‘Atlas of the Body: Male Reproductive System’, available at:
http://www.ama-assn.org/insight/gen_hlth/atlas/newatlas/male.htm
BBC News (1999) ‘Can Female Circumcision be Justified?’, available at:
http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/talking_point/ne. . ./439894.asp#hav
e_your_say
Boulware-Miller, K. (1985) ‘Female Circumcision: Challenges to the Practice
as a Human Rights Violation’, Harvard Women’s Law Journal 8: 155–77.
Butler, J. (1990) ‘Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of
“Postmodernism” ’, pp. 153–70 in S. Siedman (ed.) The Postmodern Turn:
New Perspectives on Social Theory. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Butler, J. (1994) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. New
York: Routledge.
Callon, M. and V. Rabeharisoa (1998) ‘Reconfiguring Trajectories: Agencies,
Bodies and Political Articulations: The Case of Muscular Distrophies’.
Presentation at Workshop on Theorizing Bodies, Ecole des Mines, Paris,
9–11 September.
Canguilhem, G. (1991) The Normal and the Pathological. New York: Zone
Books.
Cole, K. (1959) Kenya: Hanging in the Middle Way. Oxford: Church Army
Press.
Daly, M. (1978) Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. Boston:
Beacon Press.
Dawit, S. (1994) ‘African Women in the Diaspora and the Problem of Female
Genital Mutilation’. Address presented to the Women’s Caucus, 37th
Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association, 19 November.
Dugger, C.W. (1996) ‘U.S. Frees African Fleeing Ritual Mutilation’, New York
Times, 25 April, p. 1.
Edgerton, R.B. (1989) Mau Mau: An African Crucible. New York: The Free
Press.
Eisenberg, A., H.E. Murkoff and S.E. Hathaway (1989) What to Expect the
First Year. New York: Workman Publishing.
Franklin, S. (1996) ‘Postmodern Body Techniques: Some Anthropological
Considerations on Natural and Postnatural Bodies’, Journal of Sport and
Exercise Physiology 18: S95–S106.
Gallo, P. and F. Viviani (1988) ‘Female Circumcision in Somalia’, Mankind
Quarterly 29: 165–80.
Gatens, M. (1996) Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality. London:
Routledge.
Gollaher, D.L. (2000) Circumcision: A History of the World’s Most
Controversial Surgery. New York: Basic Books.
Gould, S.J. (1993) ‘American Polygeny and Craniometry before Darwin: Blacks
and Indians as Separate, Inferior Species’, pp. 84–115 in S. Harding (ed.)
The ‘Racial’ Economy of Science: Toward a Democratic Future.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Grosz, E. (1994) Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
Gunning, I.R. (1997) ‘Arrogant Perception, World Traveling, and Multicultural
Feminism: The Case of Female Genital Surgeries’, pp. 352–60 in A. Wing
(ed.) Critical Race Feminism: A Reader. New York and London: New York
University Press.
Haraway, D.J. (1991) Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of
Nature. New York: Routledge.
Haraway, D.J. (1997) Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©_
Meets_OncoMouse™: Feminism and Technoscience. New York:
Routledge.
Hosken, F. (1980) Female Sexual Mutilations: The Facts and Proposals for
Action. Lexington, MA: Women’s International Network News.
Hosken, F. (1982) The Hosken Report: Genital and Sexual Mutilation of
Females, 3rd edn. Lexington, MA: Women’s International Network News.
Hosken, F. (1993) The Hosken Report: Genital and Sexual Mutilation of
Females, 4th edn. Lexington, MA: Women’s International Network News.
Kenyatta, J. (1959) Facing Mount Kenya. London: Secker and Warburg.
Kilbride, P.L. and J.C. Kilbride (1990) Changing Family Life in East Africa:
Women and Children at Risk. University Park and London: The
Pennsylvania University Press.
Kouba, L.J. and J. Muasher (1985) ‘Female Circumcision in Africa: An
Overview’, African Studies Review 28(1): 95–110.
Kratz, C.A. (1994) Affecting Performance: Meaning, Movement, and
Experience in Okiek Women’s Initiation. Washington and London:

Smithsonian Institution Press.
Kwaak, A. (1992) ‘Female Circumcision and Gender Identity: A Questionable
Alliance’, Social Science and Medicine 35(6): 777–87.
Latour, B. (1987) Science in Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Latour, B. (1993) We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Leakey, L.B. (1977) The Southern Kikuyu Before 1903. London: Academic
Press.
Leonard, L. (1996) ‘Female Circumcision in Southern Chad: Origins, Meaning,
and Current Practice’, Social Science and Medicine 43(2): 255–63.
Lewis, H. (1997) ‘Between Irua and “Female Genital Mutilation”: Feminist
Human Rights Discourse and the Cultural Divide’, pp. 361–70 in A. Wing
(ed.) Critical Race Feminism: A Reader. New York and London: New York
University Press.
Lionnet, F. (1995) Postcolonial Representations: Women, Literature, Identity.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
McCarthy, S. (1996) ‘Fleeing Mutilation, Fighting for Asylum’, Ms. 7(1):
12–16.
Maloba, W.O. (1993) Mau Mau and Kenya: An Analysis of a Peasant Revolt.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Mohanty, C.T. (1991) ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial
Discourses’, pp. 51–80 in C. Mohanty, A. Russo and L. Torres (eds) Third
World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
Mol, A. and J. Law (1998) ‘Situated Bodies and Distributed Selves: On Doing
Hypoglycemia’. Presentation at Workshop on Theorizing Bodies, Ecole des
Mines, Paris, 9–11 September.
Mudimbe, V.Y. (1994) The Idea of Africa. Bloomington and London: Indiana
University Press and James Currey.
Rueben, R.C. (1996) ‘New Ground for Asylum: Threatened Female Genital
Mutilation is Persecution’, ABA Journal 82(August): 36.
Said, Edward (1994) Culture and Imperialism. London: Vintage.
Shaw, C.M. (1995) Colonial Inscriptions: Race, Sex, and Class in Kenya.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Spivak, G.C. (1990) The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues.
New York: Routledge.
Terry, J. and J. Urla, eds (1995) Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on
Difference in Science and Popular Culture. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
Toubia, N. (1993) Female Genital Mutilation: A Call for Global Action. New
York: Women, Ink.
Traweek, S. (1992) ‘Border Crossings: Narrative Strategies in Science Studies
and among Physicists in Tsukuba Science City, Japan’, pp. 429–66 in A.
Pickering (ed.) Science as Practice and Culture. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Urology Times (1997) ‘Is Early Vaginal Reconstruction Wrong for Some
Intersex Girls?’ February, pp. 10–12.
Walker, Alice (1992) Possessing the Secret of Joy. New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich.
Walker, Alice (1994) Interview on Bravo.
Walker, A. and P. Parmar (1993) Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation
and the Sexual Blinding of Women. New York: Harcourt, Brace and
Company.
Walley, C.J. (1997) ‘Searching for “Voices”: Feminism, Anthropology, and the
Global Debate over Female Genital Operations’, Cultural Anthropology
12(3): 405–38.
Whatmore, S. (2002) Hybrid Geographies: Natures, Cultures, Spaces.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
WHO (1982) Female Circumcision – Statement of WHO Position and
Activities. Geneva: World Health Organization.
WHO (1997) ‘Female Genital Mutilation, Fact Sheet N 153’. Geneva: World
Health Organization. Available at http://www.who.int/inf-
fs/en/fact153.html.
WHO (1998) ‘World Health Organization Tells Third Committee Debate on
Advancement of Women Female Genital Mutilation Could be Eliminated in
Three Generations’. Press Release GA/SHC/3477. 19 October.
Winter, B. (1994) ‘Women, the Law, and Cultural Relativism in France: The
Case of Excision’, Signs 19(4): 939–74.
Wairimu Ngaruiya Njambi is Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies and
Sociology at the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, Florida Atlantic University.
She obtained her PhD in Science and Technology Studies from the Center of
Interdisciplinary Studies at Virginia Tech. Her research and teaching areas
include feminist approaches to science, technology and medicine; post-
colonial studies; cultural studies; critical race and sexuality studies; feminist
studies; and theorization of bodies. She is currently working on a book project
entitled ‘Colonizing Bodies: A Feminist Science Studies Critique of Anti-FGM
Discourse’. Other research interests include Woman-Woman Marriage
practices among G~ıkuy~ u
~ women. Her work on this topic has appeared in the
NWSA Journal.
Address: Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, Florida Atlantic University, 5353
Parkside Drive, Jupiter, Florida 33458, USA. Email: wnjambi@fau.edu

Dualisms and Female Bodies in Representations of African Female Circumcison

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Dualisms and Female Bodies in Representations of African Female Circumcison

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

03 040811_njamb (ad/ho) 12/10/04 11:53 am Page 281

Dualisms and female bodies in

Abstract The contentious topic of female circumcision brings together

282 Feminist Theory 5(3)

mutilation’ (FGM), many of those seeking their eradication condemn them

Njambi: Dualisms in African female circumcision 283

personal story of my own circumcision experience, not as a celebration of

Introducing anti-FGM discourse

284 Feminist Theory 5(3)

successful in making us forget about its constructedness. In this discursive

Njambi: Dualisms in African female circumcision 285

Hardliners and softliners

286 Feminist Theory 5(3)

Njambi: Dualisms in African female circumcision 287

protecting women and girls from ‘harm’ may be important, portrayals of

Constructing Africa as the ‘land of torture’ and the west as the

288 Feminist Theory 5(3)

well-founded fear of persecution because of race, religion, nationality,

The picture portrayed here evokes a comparison between female

Njambi: Dualisms in African female circumcision 289

290 Feminist Theory 5(3)

Seeing female bodies through the lenses of feminist science

Njambi: Dualisms in African female circumcision 291

body so that it is understood as a biological given?’ From these perspec-

292 Feminist Theory 5(3)

refrain from participating in ‘unnecessary’ African female circumcision

Njambi: Dualisms in African female circumcision 293

All that critical reflexivity, diffraction, situated knowledges, modest inter-

Telling my story of irua ria atumia

294 Feminist Theory 5(3)

My intent in this section is not to provide yet another universal account of

Njambi: Dualisms in African female circumcision 295

Performed in a time of many social transformations in the 1970s, my

296 Feminist Theory 5(3)

It is not uncommon to this day to hear older G~ıkuy

Njambi: Dualisms in African female circumcision 297

For Christian missionaries, practices of okukyalira ensiko and ngw~ıko were

To missionaries, ngw~ıko epitomized the vices of fornication and promis-

A reflexive look at irua ria atumia

298 Feminist Theory 5(3)

nothing more than a mindless defence of tradition. However, far from

Njambi: Dualisms in African female circumcision 299

Besides those of female circumcision, consider similarities with abortion

Conclusion: listening to the Other in ways that seriously matter

300 Feminist Theory 5(3)

say in that!’ I interpret my mother’s statement as meaning that, first, she is

Njambi: Dualisms in African female circumcision 301

302 Feminist Theory 5(3)

Experience in Okiek Women’s Initiation. Washington and London:

Njambi: Dualisms in African female circumcision 303

You might also like