Death by benevolence

Third World Girls and the Contemporary Politics of Humanitarianism

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4367226
AutoresShenila Khoja‐moolji (0000-0001-5039-1570, Bowdoin College, autor de correspondencia), Shenila Khoja-Moolji (Bowdoin College)
Año2020
Volumen21
Número1
Páginas65-90
Fecha de publicación2020-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaFeminist Theory (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1464-7001 • E-ISSN: 1741-2773
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1464700119850026
OpenAlexW2952366140
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas14
Referencias citadas28

The bodies of non-White girls are hyper-visible in humanitarian discourses. This article engages in theoretical reflections around the articulation of Whiteness through the body of the third world girl. I curate and examine an archive of texts and visuals from menstrual hygiene and female genital mutilation (FGM) awareness campaigns to show how the figure of the third world girl is materialised simultaneously as deserving of care/protection and as a contaminant/imperfection. These apparently contradictory registers of legibility are possible due to the reiteration of the non-White female body as ontologically dirty, incomplete and an imperfect representation of full humanity. The third world girl then is the constitutive outside of Whiteness, and her production as such conjoins humanitarian protection codes with penalising political regimes. The latter is reflected by new border patrolling initiatives in the US and UK, launched specifically to identify victims of FGM. Such exercises of state power craft racialised bodies for constant interrogation, prodding and, ultimately, ejection. These bodies then become the loci of benevolent necropower and experience slow social death

Craft · Girl · White (mutation · Gender, Security, and Conflict