Fearful Symmetries

Essays and Testimonies Around Excision and Circumcision
Erscheinungsjahr 2008
ISBN: 978-90-420-2572-1
Verlag: Brill | Rodopi

Buch, Englisch, Band 37, 304 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 230 mm, Gewicht: 689 g

Reihe: Matatu

Often labelled ‘rituals’ or ‘customs’, male circumcision and female excision are also irreversible amputations of human genitalia, with disastrous and at times life-long consequences for both males and females. However, scholars and activists alike have been diffident about making a case for symmetry between these two practices. Fearful Symmetries investigates the sociological, medical, legal, and religious justifications for male circumcision and female excision while it points to various symmetries and asymmetries in their discursive representation in cultural anthropology, law, medicine, and literature.
Experts have been convened in the above fields – SAMI ALDEEB ABU-SAHLIEH, DOMINIQUE ARNAUD, LAURENCE COX, ROBERT DARBY, ANNE–MARIE DAUPHIN–TINTURIER, TOBE LEVIN, MICHAEL SINGLETON, J. STEVEN SVOBODA – along with first-person testimonies from J.K. BRAYTON, SAFAA FATHY, KOFFI KWAHULÉ, and ALEX WANJALA. The volume covers various genres such as sacred writings, literary and philosophical texts, websites, songs, experiential vignettes, cartoons, and film as well as a vast geographical spectrum – from Algeria, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Kenya, and Somalia to the then Congo and contemporary Northern Zambia; from Syria to Australia and the United States.
In addressing many variants of excision and circumcision as well as other practices such as the elongation of the labia, and various forms of circumcision in Jewish, Islamic, and African contexts, Fearful Symmetries provides an unprecedented, panoptical view of both practices.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Zabus, Chantal

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Kultur- und Sozialethnologie: Allgemeines

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction: Why Not the Earlobe?
Section 1: Symmetries
Sami A. ALDEEB ABU-SAHLIEH: Male Circumcision/Female Circumcision: Is There Any Difference?
Section 2: Anthropological Wormholes
Michael SINGLETON: Homo Hierarchicus versus Mulier Aequalis. (Un)acceptable Asymmetry?
Anne–Marie DAUPHIN–TINTURIER: Pleasure and Body Adaptation: An Approach to Gender in Northern Zambia
Section 3: On Autobiographies
Chantal ZABUS: ‘Beyond Circumspection’: African, Jewish, and Muslim Autobiographies Around Circumcision
Tobe LEVIN: Nura Abdi and Fadumo Korn: No to ‘Pudendal Desecration’
Robert DARBY and Laurence COX: Objections of a Sentimental Character: The Subjective Dimensions of Foreskin Loss
Section 4: Interviews and Testimonies
Koffi KWAHULÉ: Men’s Business
Alex WANJALA: After the Kenyan Harvest
Dominique ARNAUD: Will the Third Millennium Be Circumcised?
Jerry K. BRAYTON: My Circumcision Story. As Told to J. Steven Svoboda
Safaa FATHY: Cutting and Film Cutting / Ashes
Autobiographical Vignettes
Malian Songs Against Excision
Afterword
Stephen SVOBODA and Robert DARBY: A Rose By Any Other Name? Symmetry and Assymmetry in Male and Female Genital Cutting
Notes on Contributors
Notes for Contributors

Über Autor(innen)

CHANTAL ZABUS is Professor of Postcolonial Literatures and Gender Studies at the Universities of Paris 13 and of Paris 3-Sorbonne Nouvelle, and a Senior Scholar at the Institut universitaire de France. She is the author of Between Rites and Rights: Excision in Women’s Experiential Texts and Human Contexts (2007); The African Palimpsest (1991; revised edition 2007); Tempests after Shakespeare (2002). She has also edited Le Secret (with Jacques Derrida, 1999), and Changements au féminin en Afrique noire (2000). Perennial Empires: Literary Declensions of the E-Word (with Silvia Nagy–Zekmi) is forthcoming in 2009.