Fearful Symmetries: Essays and Testimonies Around Excision and Circumcision. Rodopi

Fearful Symmetries Matatu Journal for African Culture and Society ————————————]^——————————— EDITORIAL BOARD Gordon Collier Christine Matzke Frank Schulze–Engler Geoffrey V. Davis Aderemi Raji–Oyelade Chantal Zabus †Ezenwa–Ohaeto TECHNICAL AND CARIBBEAN EDITOR Gordon Collier ———————————— ]^ ——————————— BOARD OF ADVISORS Anne V. Adams (Ithaca NY) Jürgen Martini (Magdeburg, Germany) Eckhard Breitinger (Bayreuth, Germany) Henning Melber (Windhoek, Namibia) Margaret J. Daymond (Durban, South Africa) Amadou Booker Sadji (Dakar, Senegal) Anne Fuchs (Nice, France) Reinhard Sander (San Juan, Puerto Rico) James Gibbs (Bristol, England) John A. Stotesbury (Joensuu, Finland) Johan U. Jacobs (Durban, South Africa) Peter O. Stummer (Munich, Germany) Jürgen Jansen (Aachen, Germany) Ahmed Yerma (Lagos, Nigeria)i — Founding Editor: Holger G. Ehling — ]^ Matatu is a journal on African and African diaspora literatures and societies dedicated to interdisciplinary dialogue between literary and cultural studies, historiography, the social sciences and cultural anthropology. ]^ Matatu is animated by a lively interest in African culture and literature (including the Afro- Caribbean) that moves beyond worn-out clichés of ‘cultural authenticity’ and ‘national liberation’ towards critical exploration of African modernities. The East African public transport vehicle from which Matatu takes its name is both a component and a symbol of these modernities: based on ‘Western’ (these days usually Japanese) technology, it is a vigorously African institution; it is usually regarded with some anxiety by those travelling in it, but is often enough the only means of transport available; it creates temporary com- municative communities and provides a transient site for the exchange of news, storytelling, and political debate. ]^ Matatu is firmly committed to supporting democratic change in Africa, to providing a forum for interchanges between African and European critical debates, to overcoming notions of absolute cultural, ethnic or religious alterity, and to promoting transnational discussion on the future of African societies in a wider world. Fearful Symmetries Essays and Testimonies Around Excision and Circumcision Edited by Chantal Zabus Amsterdam - New York, NY 2008 Matatu Number 37 Cover design: Gordon Collier & Pier Post The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 978-90-420-2572-1 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2008 Printed in The Netherlands TABLE OF CONTENTS ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ ] ] Preface and Acknowledgements | vii ] Introduction: Why Not the Earlobe? | xi SECTION 1: SYMMETRIES ] S AMI A. A LDEEB A BU-SAHLIEH Male Circumcision/Female Circumcision: Is There Any Difference? | 3 SECTION 2: ANTHROPOLOGICAL WORMHOLES ] M ICHAEL S INGLETON Homo Hierarchicus versus Mulier Aequalis (Un)acceptable Asymmetry? | 53 ] A NNE–MARIE D AUPHIN–TINTURIER Pleasure and Body Adaptation: An Approach to Gender in Northern Zambia | 77 SECTION 3: ON AUTOBIOGRAPHIES ] C HANTAL Z ABUS ‘Beyond Circumspection’: African, Jewish, and Muslim Autobiographies Around Circumcision | 99 ] T OBE L EVIN Nura Abdi and Fadumo Korn: No to ‘Pudendal Desecration’ | 129 ] R OBERT D ARBY AND L AURENCE C OX Objections of a Sentimental Character: The Subjective Dimensions of Foreskin Loss | 145 SECTION 4: INTERVIEWS AND TESTIMONIES ] K OFFI K WAHULÉ Men’s Business | 171 ] A LEX W ANJALA After the Kenyan Harvest | 191 ] D OMINIQUE A RNAUD Will the Third Millennium Be Circumcised? | 199 ] J ERRY K. B RAYTON My Circumcision Story As Told to J. Steven Svoboda | 211 ] S AFAA F ATHY Cutting and Film Cutting / Ashes | 219 ] Autobiographical Vignettes | 237 ] Malian Songs Against Excision | 243 ] Afterword: S TEPHEN S VOBODA AND R OBERT D ARBY A Rose By Any Other Name? Symmetry and Assymmetry in Male and Female Genital Cutting | 251 ] Notes on Contributors | 299 ] Notes for Contributors | 305 PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ ] HE PRESENT VOLUME consists, in the main, of the proceedings of the colloquium held at the Fondation universitaire in Brussels on T 18 December 2004 – (A)symétries sexuelles: Autour de la circon- cision et de l’excision / (Dis)Symmetry Enbodied: Around Male and Female ‘Circumcision’. This was realized with the collaboration of the Prospective Anthropology Department of the Catholic University of Louvain and its Head, Professor Michael Singleton; the Maison de la Laïcité Lucia De Brouckère, represented by Johannès Robyn; and with the financial support of the Communauté française de Belgique and the Belgian Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique, which graciously extended its support past the funding of the “excision” project, which I started in Louvain in 1998. I here wish to express my gratitude to these individuals and institutions. Except for my contribution, which was considerably expanded, the origi- nal contributions by Sami Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh, Michael Singleton, who coordinated the event with me, and Anne–Marie Dauphin–Tinturier, were translated (or revised) from the French by Kevin A. Dwyer, whom I thank most warmly for his patience and competence. Tobe Levin’s paper was left as such because it was originally delivered in English. To these contributions, I have added various interviews which I carried out later, over a period of two years (2005–2006). I here wish to thank the interviewees for their willingness to share such intimate experiences with me. I also wish to thank J. Steven Svoboda, Robert Darby and Laurence Cox for rounding off this volume with their thoughtful essays. The volume falls into four parts. The first essay under “Symmetries” stands by itself and, as such, serves as a tribute to the indefatigable Sami Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh, a Christian Palestinian and Swiss-based expert in Islamic law, who engages in a very elaborate discussion of the sociological, medical, legal, and religious justifications for the practice of male circumcision and excision or “female circumcision,” as he calls it, and the continu- ation thereof. © Fearful Symmetries: Essays and Testimonies Around Excision and Circumcision, ed. Chantal Zabus (Matatu 37; Amsterdam & New York NY: Editions Rodopi, 2008). viii F EARFUL SYMMETRIES º The second part is called “Anthropological Wormholes.” The notion of ‘wormholes’ is a hypothetical interconnection between widely separated regions of space–time. I owe the phrase to John Relf in his introduction to a book which is in no way connected with the subject at hand1 but which nevertheless describes what these two anthropologists were attempting to do with symmetry and the lack thereof. Michael Singleton, the British-born anthropologist who studied under the aegis of Edward Evans–Pritchard, and the French anthropologist Anne–Marie Dauphin–Tinturier speak of their own experience, which they wrote up rather than down, following their fieldwork, respectively, in the then Congo in the 1960s and among the Kitwe in Northerrn Zambia in 1998. Their contributions are “wormholes” in that they do not directly deal with the issue of circumcision and excision. For instance, Anne–Marie Dauphin–Tinturier examines, within broader considerations around rites of passage, what could be considered to be the converse of excision: i.e. the elongation of the labia. It is in part because of these anthropological contributions that I contextualize them in an introduction on “Why Not the Earlobe?” All of the contributors use, with some few variations, the common terminology propounded by the World Health Organization (WHO), which distinguishes among four types of operations. The first type, referred to as sunnah, involves partial clitoridectomy, often understood as the removal of the prepuce or hood of the clitoris. Second, excision per se, also called ‘clitoridectomy’, involves the removal of the said prepuce, the clitoris itself, often accompanied by partial or full labiadectomy: i.e. the cutting off of the labia minora and/or majora. Third, infibulation or ‘suturing’ consists in the complete removal of the clitoris and the whole of the labia minora and majora and in the stitching together of the two sides (the cut edges) of the vulva so as to cover the urethra and vaginal opening, leaving a very small aperture to permit the flow of urine and menstrual discharge. Lesser-known variations are known as introcision, the cutting of the internal genitalia. These include hymenectomy; zur-zur cuts of the cervix, which are intended to remedy obstructed labour; and gishiri cuts, which in- volve the cutting of the vaginal wall, a procedure intended to facilitate sex- ual penetration in communities where child marriage is widely practised. Despite efforts at identifying and naming excision, terminology remains unstable. In addition to collapsing several types into a single category such as female genital mutilation or FGM, infibulation is called ‘pharaonic circumcision’ in Sudan whereas the Egyptians call it ‘Sudanese circumcision’. 1 John Relf, John Fowles, Wormholes, Essays, and Occasional Writings (London: Vintage, 1999): viii. ¹ Preface and Acknowledgements ix Also, it is misleading to apply sunnah (the first type above) to refer to the obligatory excision of women. Indeed, the sunnah is simply the Arabic for ‘tradition’ or ‘duty’ based on the Qur’an and the Ahadith – the religious obligations or recommended practices emanating from the teachings and deeds of Muhammad the Prophet. As Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh explains in this volume,

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