Fearful Symmetries: Essays and Testimonies Around Excision and Circumcision. (Matatu)

339 Pages·2009·2.96 MB·English

by  Chantal Zabus

Fearful Symmetries
Mat atu
Journal for African Culture and Society

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EDITORIAL BOARD

Gordon Collier Christine Matzke Frank Schulze–Engler
Geoffrey V. Davis Aderemi Raji–Oyelade Chantal Zabus
†Ezenwa–Ohaeto

TECHNICAL AND CARIBBEAN EDITOR
Gordon Collier

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BOARD OF ADVISORS

Anne V. Adams (Ithaca NY) Jürgen Martini (Magdeburg, Germany)
Eckhard Breitinger (Bayreuth, Germany) Henning Melber (Windhoek, Namibia)
Margaret J. Daymond (Durban, South Africa) Amadou Booker Sadji (Dakar, Senegal)
Anne Fuchs (Nice, France) Reinhard Sander (San Juan, Puerto Rico)
James Gibbs (Bristol, England) John A. Stotesbury (Joensuu, Finland)
Johan U. Jacobs (Durban, South Africa) Peter O. Stummer (Munich, Germany)
Jürgen Jansen (Aachen, Germany) Ahmed Yerma (Lagos, Nigeria)i

— Founding Editor: Holger G. Ehling —

(cid:93)(cid:94) Matatu is a journal on African and African diaspora literatures and societies dedicated to
interdisciplinary dialogue between literary and cultural studies, historiography, the social
sciences and cultural anthropology.
(cid:93)(cid:94) Matatu is animated by a lively interest in African culture and literature (including the Afro-
Caribbean) that moves beyond worn-out clichés of ‘cultural authenticity’ and ‘national
liberation’ towards critical exploration of African modernities. The East African public
transport vehicle from which Matatu takes its name is both a component and a symbol of
these modernities: based on ‘Western’ (these days usually Japanese) technology, it is a
vigorously African institution; it is usually regarded with some anxiety by those travelling in
it, but is often enough the only means of transport available; it creates temporary com-
municative communities and provides a transient site for the exchange of news, storytelling,
and political debate.
(cid:93)(cid:94) Matatu is firmly committed to supporting democratic change in Africa, to providing a
forum for interchanges between African and European critical debates, to overcoming
notions of absolute cultural, ethnic or religious alterity, and to promoting transnational
discussion on the future of African societies in a wider world.
Fearful Symmetries

Essays and Testimonies
Around Excision and Circumcision
Edited by
Chantal Zabus
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2008
Matatu Number 37
Cover design: Gordon Collier & Pier Post
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for
documents - Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 978-90-420-2572-1
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2008
Printed in The Netherlands
TABLE OF CONTENTS

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(cid:93) Preface and Acknowledgements | vii
(cid:93) Introduction: Why Not the Earlobe? | xi

SECTION 1: SYMMETRIES

(cid:93) SAMI A. ALDEEB ABU-SAHLIEH
Male Circumcision/Female Circumcision: Is There Any Difference? | 3

SECTION 2: ANTHROPOLOGICAL WORMHOLES

(cid:93) MICHAEL SINGLETON
Homo Hierarchicus versus Mulier Aequalis
(Un)acceptable Asymmetry? | 53

(cid:93) ANNE–MARIE DAUPHIN–TINTURIER
Pleasure and Body Adaptation:
An Approach to Gender in Northern Zambia | 77

SECTION 3: ON AUTOBIOGRAPHIES

(cid:93) CHANTAL ZABUS
‘Beyond Circumspection’:
African, Jewish, and Muslim Autobiographies Around Circumcision | 99

(cid:93) TOBE LEVIN
Nura Abdi and Fadumo Korn:
No to ‘Pudendal Desecration’ | 129

(cid:93) ROBERT DARBY AND LAURENCE COX
Objections of a Sentimental Character:
The Subjective Dimensions of Foreskin Loss | 145
SECTION 4: INTERVIEWS AND TESTIMONIES

(cid:93) KOFFI KWAHULÉ
Men’s Business | 171

(cid:93) ALEX WANJALA
After the Kenyan Harvest | 191

(cid:93) DOMINIQUE ARNAUD
Will the Third Millennium Be Circumcised? | 199

(cid:93) JERRY K. BRAYTON
My Circumcision Story
As Told to J. Steven Svoboda | 211

(cid:93) SAFAA FATHY
Cutting and Film Cutting / Ashes | 219

(cid:93) Autobiographical Vignettes | 237

(cid:93) Malian Songs Against Excision | 243

(cid:93) Afterword:
STEPHEN SVOBODA AND ROBERT DARBY
A Rose By Any Other Name? Symmetry and Assymmetry
in Male and Female Genital Cutting | 251

(cid:93) Notes on Contributors | 299
(cid:93) Notes for Contributors | 305
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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T
HE PRESENT VOLUME consists, in the main, of the proceedings
of the colloquium held at the Fondation universitaire in Brussels on
18 December 2004 – (A)symétries sexuelles: Autour de la circon-
cision et de l’excision / (Dis)Symmetry Enbodied: Around Male and Female
‘Circumcision’. This was realized with the collaboration of the Prospective
Anthropology Department of the Catholic University of Louvain and its
Head, Professor Michael Singleton; the Maison de la Laïcité Lucia De
Brouckère, represented by Johannès Robyn; and with the financial support
of the Communauté française de Belgique and the Belgian Fonds National
de la Recherche Scientifique, which graciously extended its support past the
funding of the “excision” project, which I started in Louvain in 1998. I here
wish to express my gratitude to these individuals and institutions.
Except for my contribution, which was considerably expanded, the origi-
nal contributions by Sami Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh, Michael Singleton, who
coordinated the event with me, and Anne–Marie Dauphin–Tinturier, were
translated (or revised) from the French by Kevin A. Dwyer, whom I thank
most warmly for his patience and competence. Tobe Levin’s paper was left
as such because it was originally delivered in English. To these contribu-
tions, I have added various interviews which I carried out later, over a
period of two years (2005–2006). I here wish to thank the interviewees for
their willingness to share such intimate experiences with me. I also wish to
thank J. Steven Svoboda, Robert Darby and Laurence Cox for rounding off
this volume with their thoughtful essays.
The volume falls into four parts. The first essay under “Symmetries”
stands by itself and, as such, serves as a tribute to the indefatigable Sami
Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh, a Christian Palestinian and Swiss-based expert in
Islamic law, who engages in a very elaborate discussion of the sociological,
medical, legal, and religious justifications for the practice of male circum-
cision and excision or “female circumcision,” as he calls it, and the continu-
ation thereof.

© Fearful Symmetries: Essays and Testimonies Around Excision and Circumcision, ed.
Chantal Zabus (Matatu 37; Amsterdam & New York NY: Editions Rodopi, 2008).
viii FEARFUL SYMMETRIES (cid:186)
The second part is called “Anthropological Wormholes.” The notion of
‘wormholes’ is a hypothetical interconnection between widely separated
regions of space–time. I owe the phrase to John Relf in his introduction to a
book which is in no way connected with the subject at hand1 but which
nevertheless describes what these two anthropologists were attempting to do
with symmetry and the lack thereof. Michael Singleton, the British-born
anthropologist who studied under the aegis of Edward Evans–Pritchard, and
the French anthropologist Anne–Marie Dauphin–Tinturier speak of their
own experience, which they wrote up rather than down, following their
fieldwork, respectively, in the then Congo in the 1960s and among the
Kitwe in Northerrn Zambia in 1998. Their contributions are “wormholes” in
that they do not directly deal with the issue of circumcision and excision.
For instance, Anne–Marie Dauphin–Tinturier examines, within broader
considerations around rites of passage, what could be considered to be the
converse of excision: i.e. the elongation of the labia. It is in part because of
these anthropological contributions that I contextualize them in an introduc-
tion on “Why Not the Earlobe?”
All of the contributors use, with some few variations, the common ter-
minology propounded by the World Health Organization (WHO), which
distinguishes among four types of operations. The first type, referred to as
sunnah, involves partial clitoridectomy, often understood as the removal of
the prepuce or hood of the clitoris. Second, excision per se, also called
‘clitoridectomy’, involves the removal of the said prepuce, the clitoris itself,
often accompanied by partial or full labiadectomy: i.e. the cutting off of the
labia minora and/or majora. Third, infibulation or ‘suturing’ consists in the
complete removal of the clitoris and the whole of the labia minora and
majora and in the stitching together of the two sides (the cut edges) of the
vulva so as to cover the urethra and vaginal opening, leaving a very small
aperture to permit the flow of urine and menstrual discharge.
Lesser-known variations are known as introcision, the cutting of the
internal genitalia. These include hymenectomy; zur-zur cuts of the cervix,
which are intended to remedy obstructed labour; and gishiri cuts, which in-
volve the cutting of the vaginal wall, a procedure intended to facilitate sex-
ual penetration in communities where child marriage is widely practised.
Despite efforts at identifying and naming excision, terminology remains
unstable. In addition to collapsing several types into a single category such
as female genital mutilation or FGM, infibulation is called ‘pharaonic cir-
cumcision’ in Sudan whereas the Egyptians call it ‘Sudanese circumcision’.

1 John Relf, John Fowles, Wormholes, Essays, and Occasional Writings (London:
Vintage, 1999): viii.
(cid:185) Preface and Acknowledgements ix
Also, it is misleading to apply sunnah (the first type above) to refer to the
obligatory excision of women. Indeed, the sunnah is simply the Arabic for
‘tradition’ or ‘duty’ based on the Qur’an and the Ahadith – the religious
obligations or recommended practices emanating from the teachings and
deeds of Muhammad the Prophet.
As Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh explains in this volume, the practice of excision
or of circumcision is not attested in the Qur’an, but general Muslim (Sun-
nite) jurisprudence deems male circumcision on the eighth day after birth to
be mustahabb (recommended), whereas female excision is makrumah: i.e.
‘permissible’ or ‘recommended’ but not obligatory (wajib). Moreover, sun-
nah or an attenuated form of excision may have taken precedence over more
severe forms such as infibulation with the rise of Islam and the Prophet’s
alleged recommendation to an exciser in one Hadith (5271) not to cut too
deeply. Because that type of unattested sunnah involves ‘only’ the cutting
of the prepuce or hood of the clitoris, Shell–Duncan and Hernlund are of the
view that sunnah is the only type “that can be construed as analogous to
male circumcision.” Such practices are commonly associated with the Afri-
can continent, but excision in particular is also practised in Bahrain, India,
Indonesia, Malaysia, Oman, Pakistan, Yemen, and other countries.2 Contri-
butors to this volume have focused on the African continent but, for the
sake of establishing symmetries, we have at times gone farther afield.
Both male and ‘female circumcision’ may be labelled rituals, but, from a
somewhat clinical perspective, may be 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 excision and the cutting-off of the
foreskin covering the glans of the penis. This volume addresses such ‘fear-
ful symmetries’.
The third part of the volume is entitled “On Autobiographies,” because
both Tobe Levin and myself discuss autobiographical, first-person accounts
of excision. I delineate an evolutionary pattern in addressing circumcision,
beyond an initial, hesitant circumspection, and the discursive asymmetry
resulting from writing in the first person about both excision and circum-
cision. Tobe Levin addresses infibulation in two Somali women autobio-

2 Bettina Shell–Duncan and Ylva Hernlund provide definitions and survey the geo-
graphical spread of these various practices in the introduction to their Female “Cir-
cumcision” in Africa: Culture, Controversy and Change, ed. Bettina Shell–Duncan &
Ylva Hernlund (Boulder CO & London: Lynne Rienner, 2000): 1–14.