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A FEMINIST SCIENCE STUDIES CRITIQUE of ANTI-FGM DISCOURSE Wairimé Ngaréiya Njambi Dissertation Submitted To

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A FEMINIST SCIENCE STUDIES CRITIQUE of ANTI-FGM DISCOURSE Wairimé Ngaréiya Njambi Dissertation Submitted To COLONIZING BODIES: A FEMINIST SCIENCE STUDIES CRITIQUE OF ANTI-FGM DISCOURSE Wairimé Ngaréiya Njambi Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY STUDIES APPROVED: Gary Downey, Chair Charles M. Good Ann Kilkelly Ann La Berge Timothy Luke September 8, 2000 Blacksburg, Virginia Copyright 2001, Wairimé Ngaréiya Njambi COLONIZING BODIES: A FEMINIST SCIENCE STUDIES CRITIQUE OF ANTI-FGM DISCOURSE by Wairimé Ngaréiya Njambi Gary Downey, Chair Science and Technology Studies (ABSTRACT) The contentious topic of female circumcision brings together medical science, women’s health activism, and national and international policy-making in pursuit of the common goal of protecting female bodies from harm. To date, most criticisms of female circumcision, practiced mainly in parts of Africa and Southwest Asia, have revolved around the dual issues of control of female bodies by a male-dominated social order and the health impacts surrounding the psychology of female sexuality and the functioning of female sex organs. As such, the recently-evolved campaign to eradicate female circumcision, alternatively termed “Female Genital Mutilation” (FGM), has formed into a discourse intertwining the politics of feminist activism with scientific knowledge and medical knowledge of the female body and sexuality. This project focuses on the ways in which this discourse constructs particular definitions of bodies and sexuality in a quest to generalize the practices of female circumcision as “harmful” and therefore dangerous. Given that the discourse aimed at eradicating practices of female circumcision, referred to in this study as “anti-FGM discourse,” focuses mostly on harm done to women’s bodies, this project critiques the assumption of universalism regarding female bodies and sexuality that is explicitly/implicitly embedded in such discourse. By questioning such universals, I look at the ways in which different stories regarding bodies and sexuality can emerge at the gaps of the anti-FGM discourse regarding female circumcision practices. I.e., are there other possible avenues for envisioning bodies which are subjugated and hence eliminated from the view by their rhetoric? While the main assumption within anti-FGM discourse is that bodies and sexuality are naturally given and therefore universal, contemporary theories in STS and feminism have stressed that bodies and sexualities are figures of historical and political performances, and that knowledge about them is locally situated. These perspectives redirect the typical assumption of bodies and sexuality as simply “biological” to a view of bodies as products of cultural imagination. This project shows that such perspectives have profound implications for understanding female circumcision practices by allowing different body narratives to emerge in the gaps of already established “truths.” iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge the many people who have supported and encouraged me, not only during this project, but throughout my entire stay in the STS program at Virginia Tech. I particularly want to acknowledge my committee chair and advisor, Dr. Gary Downey, for expecting the best from me and for making me believe that such a mountain can be climbed. I would like to thank my committee members, Drs. Ann La Berge in STS, Tim Luke in Political Science, Charles Good in Geography, and Ann Kilkelly in Women’s Studies and Theater and Performing Arts. Special thanks goes to Ph.D candidate, Heather Harris, for always listening with care and for knowing ahead of time what I was trying to say even before I did; Chikako Takeshita and her daughter Claire, Piyush Mathur, and Jessica Henry -- thank you from the bottom of my heart. I want to acknowledge the owners and staff of Bollo’s Café in Blacksburg for allowing me to write my dissertation there and even giving me free coffee when I was broke. To my dearest friend Dr. Martha McCaughey, thank you from the bottom of heart for all that you have given me. And to my precious family, Bill O’Brien and Mumbi O’Brien, there are no words that can fully express what you mean to me and I love you both so much. iv COLONIZING BODIES: A FEMINIST SCIENCE STUDIES CRITIQUE OF ANTI-FGM DISCOURSE TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract.............................................................................................................................. i Acknowledgements...........................................................................................................iv 1) Female Bodies and Anti-FGM Discourse: An Introduction..........................................1 2) The Emergence of Anti-FGM Discourse................................................................. ...26 3) Looking Through Feminist, Constructivist, Deconstructivist and Postcolonial Lenses: A General Overview of Conceptual Ideas Guiding this Project.............50 4) Colonialist Images in Anti-FGM Discourse................................................................70 5) Images Hidden by Anti-FGM Discourse...................................................................113 6) Mind-Body Dualism and Anti-FGM Discourse........................................................143 7) Conclusion.................................................................................................................174 References................................................................................................................... .187 Vita.................................................................................................................................202 v CHAPTER 1 FEMALE BODIES AND ANTI-FGM DISCOURSE: AN INTRODUCTION 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 To enter the anti-FGM discourse is to immediately be drawn into a battlefield filled with many oppositions already in place: science/superstitions; medical knowledge/traditions; healthy bodies/unhealthy bodies; normal sexuality/abnormal sexuality; civilized/barbaric; modernity/backwardness; experts/non-experts; education/ignorance; Christian/pagan – and the list goes on. I argue that these oppositions are constructed in the language of power in that, through these oppositions, the anti-FGM discourse becomes itself an irrefutable center, or presence, that presents itself as independent of various historical and cultural mediations. In fact, the anti-FGM discourse has emerged as a powerful discipline that rewards only those who embrace its views and punishes those who question them. For instance, a recent informal Internet poll by the BBC showed that 92% of respondents believed that female circumcision could not be justified (BBC News 1999). Comments 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 or attacked as if they were the defenders of Nazis and slave holders. Needless to say, being a dissenter in this discourse is a risky proposition. 6 It is this power to create oppositions between all that is considered “normal,” and hence desirable, and what is considered “pathology,” and hence undesirable, as well as the power to mobilize allies with similar views, that has enabled the anti-FGM discourse generate its force in activist and policy settings, and to be successful in making us forget about its constructed nature. In this discursive setting, female circumcision becomes unquestionably harmful, with the only remaining issue to be explored is how, once and for all, can these damaging practices be eliminated. However, the center 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. I focus partly on these persistent colonial meanings, images, and practices located inside and outside the panoptic space of anti-FGM discourse to help push the discussions about the practices of female circumcision in a new direction that is perhaps more mindful of the power relations that are already in place between those who set themselves up to do the rescuing and those who are supposedly being rescued. As will be shown in chapter two, the colonial images that infuse the West’s understandings of the practices of female circumcision in general, as well as the anti- FGM discourse itself, are not new. Some date back to the earlier white, male travelers and explorers who reported such practices in their travel monographs and diaries. Later, these images would also come to be articulated in the very language of colonialism and imperialism as one of the reasons why Africa needed to be colonized. In fact, it is during this moment of high colonialism and imperialism that the practices of female circumcision, like many other cultural practices, would become heavily weighted
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