Learning from “Female Genital Mutilation”: Lessons from 30 Years of Academic Discourse

Abstract

At the intersection of feminism and postcolonial theory is an acrimonious debate over female genital cutting (FGC). I subject this debate to an analysis in order to separate productive from destructive discursive strategies. I find that both FGC and the literature about the practice are frequently mischaracterized in consequential ways. Especially prior to the mid-1990s, scholars frame FGC as an example of either cultural inferiority or cultural difference. In the 1990s, postcolonial scholars contest the framing of FGC as a measure of cultural inferiority. However, they often argue that Western feminist engagement with FGCs, writ large, is ‘imperialist’. I contend that both accusations of African ‘barbarism’ and of Western feminist ‘imperialism’ are empirically false and inflammatory. Furthermore, reifying ‘African’ and ‘Western’ perspectives erases African opposition to FGC and Western feminist acknowledgement of transnational power asymmetry. I conclude with a discussion of the role of outrage in academic scholarship.