Female genital mutilation and human rights

This article evaluates five different discourses on female genital mutilation for affinities with the language of international instruments codifying human rights: an activist physician's fieldwork journal; two novels, one a Lebanese-American's lyrical work largely indebted to a human rights perspective and, in contrast, a Kenyan publicist's fiction which mutes that approach; an American activist's auto-ethnography; paintings by Nigerian artists in an exhibition travelling in Germany; and a letter to the editor of an African American magazine. I read these varied lexica in light of recent literature on female genital surgery that tends to oppose academics, mainly anthropologists captive to their training, to activists impatient with post-modern wavering who claim that global instruments for women's human rights should be enforced to stop genital torture. Creative writing is instrumental in presenting a clear moral imperative confronted by the complexities of human lives

Art · Criminology · Ethnography · Exhibition · Female circumcision · Human rights · Kenya · Media studies · Political science · Sociology · Torture · Visual arts · Anthropology · Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting Issues · Gender Studies · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Law · Medicine

• Learning from “Female Genital Mutilation

  Open Access•L Wade•Ethnicities•2012

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• Ending Footbinding and Infibulation

  Gerry Mackie•American Sociological Review•1996

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• Les Cancrelats

  Arlette Chemain•Présence Africaine•1980

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