Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1998 18:08:12 -0500 (EST) From: Christina VanderVorst <cvvors25-AT-calvin.edu> Subject: Re: female circumcision Throughout this discussion I am reminded of Fanon's criticism of colonizers who portrayed the cultural practices of the colonized as barbaric. Fanon was specifically referred to the wearing of the veil and the cloistering of women in Algeria and said, Every veil that fell...was a negative expression of the fact that Algeria was beginning to deny herself and was accepting the rape of the colonizer...willingness to attend the master's school and to decide to change its habits under the occupier's direction and patronage. (A Dying Colonization, p.42) This quote troubles me as I consider female circumcision through Western eyes. It troubles me because it forces me to question if there is a morality which transcends culture. And what are the boundaries of that morality? A morality which condemns sadistic practices? But surely the Algerian colonists would have considered the veiling and cloistering of women as sadistic and demeaning. And yet I don't agree with their agressive attempt to obliterate the practice. What do you think? Is the abandonnment of female circumcision, a centuries'-old practice, assenting to the rape of the neo-colonizer? N.B. I am not equating veiling/cloistering to female circumcision. Rather, I am interchanging them as practices of the colonized which are condemned by the colonizer. --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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