Wounded Bodies, Recovered Bodies: Discourses around female sexual mutilations

Diogenes 57 (1):15-29 (2010)
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Abstract

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"

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Citations of this work

Teaching ‘Philosophy of Feminism’ from a Global Perspective.Gail Presbey - 2012 - Apa Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy 12 (1):4-9.

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References found in this work

La différence des sexes.Geneviève Fraisse - 1996 - Presses Universitaires de France.

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