Información General

• Autores: Maria Caterina La Barbera
• Editores: Compostampa
• Año de publicación: 2009
• País: Italia
• Idioma: inglés
• ISBN: 978-88-903912-6-2
• Enlaces
  • Texto Completo Libro

Resumen

• The compatibility of gender equality with traditional cultures has been lively debated by political theorists during the past twenty years. I devoted my PhD dissertation to examine the case of ritual female genital cuttings practiced by African women in Western countries as a paradigm of the impasse that the feminism versus multiculturalism discourse can cause. The public debate around these ritual practices shows how mainstream, white and liberal Western feminism difficultly manages both women’s autonomy and diversity. In order to address such an issue, and construct theoretical tools to build this study, I first reconstructed the plural meanings of gender by taking into account the different voices of feminism. Relying on Black, Chicana, Postcolonial, and Islamic perspectives, I argued that assuming the lives of white, middleclass, heterosexual women as standard, Western feminism fails to understand how race, ethnicity, class, and sexual orientation profoundly alter gender, perplex identity, pluralize and specify the meaning of being woman. I took into account the different voices of feminism to represent it as a non-homogeneous and multifaceted thought, which I referred to as “multicentered feminism”. Bringing marginalized feminist perspectives to the core, I adopted the concept of intersectionality to analyze the very notion of gender and uncovered that it is inextricably linked to other elements that shape social identity, such as race, sexuality, disability, religion, class, and citizen/alien status. I used the concept of “intersectional gender” to capture gender as a factor located and contexted, as well as interconnected with the other elements that shape social location and identification. I argued that intersectional gender is a crucial concept for approaching cultural differences in Western countries, while protecting gender equality. From this theoretical standpoint, I focused on the Female Circumcision/Genital Mutilation/Surgery/Cutting discourse, analyzing the terminology, the current legislation, and the socio-symbolic meanings of these practices. I compared these rituals with some Western practices, such as male circumcision, Victorian clitoridectomy, breast implantation, designer vagina, and intersex surgery. Several questions guided my analysis. The first group of questions was oriented at understanding these ritual practices beyond the mainstream medicalized (and purportedly neutral) Western representation. These included: how should we properly name these ritual interventions? What is their social meaning? Do ritual female genital interventions gain a different meaning in the Western context? Are female genital interventions an African anomaly? Are they comparable to breast implantation? To what extent are ritual female genital interventions different from male circumcision? The second set of questions was oriented at understanding how the legal framework is useful to tackle such a complex issue without producing the unintended effect of making migrant African women in Western countries even more vulnerable. The main questions were: Is criminal law an effective tool? Which is the symbolic function of law? What lessons could be learnt from anti-FGM banning failures enforced by colonial powers in African countries? How does law shape the perception of social phenomena? How could liberal Western societies differently regulate these practices? Why did the proposal of symbolic circumcision fail in Western countries? To revisit the mainstream liberal Western discourse on the so-called female genital mutilation the very name of “female genital mutilation” had to be questioned. The practicing populations do not perceive these practices as maiming or mutilating, but as a rite of purification, sanitization, and beautification. In order to avoid a colonialist-like approach, I adopted the term “ritual female genital interventions”. By adding “ritual”, I alluded to the cultural and ethnic dimensions of this body modification; by using the plural form, my goal was to underline the plurality of typologies (circumcision, excision, and infibulation) included under this entry. Finally, by using “interventions”, I enabled the comparison with Western cosmetic interventions. As a second step, I analyzed in detail the anti-FGM legislation of the United Kingdom, France, Italy and the United States, which condemn and foresee prosecution for any kind of ritual female genital intervention. Regulation of ritual interventions on female genitalia in Western countries raises very controversial issues that entails biopower over female body and reveals crucial unresolved tensions between gender equality, self-determination, and cultural diversity. Contributing to the broader debate about criminal law and the discipline of female body, in the analysis of anti-FGM laws that have been adopted to the end of eliminating gender-based violence I used the concept of intersectional gender as a category of analysis. I finally questioned the adequacy of “gender-based violence” as a concept useful to tackle the complexity at stake. The analysis of legislation focuses on how the problem of ritual interventions on female genitalia has been represented and which solutions have been proposed in the selected countries, showing their inconsistencies and biases. The study also considers the dissenting voices that are excluded from the hegemonic discourse fuelled into legislation, focusing in particular on the proposal of “circumcision without cutting” in the United States and Italy. The final goal of my PhD dissertation was to uncover how the legislation adopted with the purpose of combating gender-based violence, in turn, generated new forms of vulnerability for African descent women in Western countries. It called for a more complex articulation of gender along with migration status, ethnicity and neo-colonial power relations. This articulation is needed to adequately regulate ritual interventions on female genitalia in countries that receive immigration flows

Otros catálogos

• Red de Bibliotecas Universitarias (REBIUN)