Wounded Bodies, Recovered Bodies
Discourses around female sexual mutilations
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7750227 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tanella Boni (Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Cocody, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 57 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 15-29 |
| Publication date | 2010-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Diogenes (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0392-1921 • E-ISSN: 1467-7695 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0392192110369311 |
| OpenAlex | W2060610862 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 8 |
This study reviews various discourses around female sexual mutilation from the perspective of the human and social sciences, and also current debates between supporters of the cultural argument and those defending the universality of human rights. An aside about the Dogon myth of world order recorded by Marcel Griaule in Dieu d’eau or Aristotle's philosophical discourse in the Reproduction of Animals is required in order to widen the debate and see its importance as regards the dignity of the human person. In Aristotle woman is a freak accident, she interrupts the circle that goes from man to man so that he can start off again. Woman is a “catastrophe” necessary to the exercise of the male genitalia; her body is naturally mutilated and incomplete. In the Dogon myth the clitoris rises up like a termite-hill, it is oversized and must be knocked down, that is, excised. Between excessive size, monstrousness and ugliness come discourses which have since time immemorial accompanied and justified wounding the female genitals. But today a medical type of discourse, which is widely accepted, is aiming to repair excised genitalia and give back to women the happiness of a recovered body. Thus we may ask what “woman's dignity” consists of and whether it is the same as the “dignity of the human person
Art · Aside · Biology · Clitoris · Dignity · Eugenics · Human rights · Literature · Mythology · New Woman · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting Issues · Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies · Gender Studies · Law · Legal and cultural studies analysis · Psychology
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |