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The Body in Pain and the Politics of Culture

Nnedi Okorafor and Warsan Shire

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Ethics and Human Rights in Anglophone African Women’s Literature

Part of the book series: Comparative Feminist Studies ((CFS))

Abstract

In “The Body in Pain and the Politics of Culture,” Eze discusses Warsan Shire’s poetry collection, Teaching my Mother How to Give Birth (2011) and Nnedi Okorafor’s work of magical realism, Who Fears Death (2010) as narratives that demonstrate the ethical stance of writing back to the body on the one hand, and on the other, challenge the (mis)use of culture as a means of legitimizing pain. Eze argues that the writings of these authors lend force to the idea that the body of a woman who has undergone genital mutilation is disabled.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Guardian, “Female genital mutilation denies sexual pleasure to millions of women.” http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2008/nov/13/female-genital-mutilation-sexual-dysfunction (Accessed March 24, 2014) (The Guardian 2014).

  2. 2.

    Maggie O’Kane, Patrick Farrelly, Alex Rees, and Irene Baqué, “FGM: The Film that Changed the Law in Kurdistan – Video.” www.theguardian.com/society/video/2013/oct/24/fgm-film-changed-the-law-kurdistan-video.

  3. 3.

    Maggie O’Kane and Patrick Farrelly, “FGM: ‘It’s like neutering animals’ – The Film that is Changing Kurdistan.” http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/24/female-genital-mutilation-film-changing-kurdistan-law (Accessed 10 December 2014) (O’Kane and Farrelly 2014).

  4. 4.

    Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1984, 55 (Lorde 1984).

  5. 5.

    Hélène Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa,” trans. Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen. Signs 1.4 (1976): 875–893. See especially pages 877–878 (Cixous 1976).

  6. 6.

    Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/aunt lute, 1999, 17 (Anzaldua 1999).

  7. 7.

    For more on the different forms of female genital excision, see Leonard Kouba and Judith Muasher, “Female Circumcision in Africa: An Overview,” African Studies Review, 28 (1985): 95–110. (Kouba and Muasher 1985).

  8. 8.

    While it is true that male and female circumcision are compared in general discussions, apart from the fact that they both use some painful cutting, they are not the same procedure. What is done to women is very far from what is done to men. The motives of the cultures that practice female genital excision may not be evil in themselves, but that does not lessen to any degree the trauma of this procedure of physical mutilation. The effects on the female victims are not any different from what they would suffer if the practitioner’s motives were in fact evil. I am grateful to Jim Fuhr for pointing this out to me.

  9. 9.

    Chantal Zabus, Between Rites and Rights: Excision in Women’s Experiential Texts and Human Contexts. Stanford University Press, 2007 (Zabus 2007). Elisabeth Bekers, Rising Anthills: African and African American Writing on Female Genital Excision, 1960–2000. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010 (Bekers 2010). Zabus and Bekers capture the full range of the arguments about female circumcision in their important books. See especially Zabus (10–12).

  10. 10.

    Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 1. Trans. R. Hurley. Penguin Books, 1978 (Foucault 1978).

  11. 11.

    See Zabus, Between Rites and Rights, 27 (Zabus 2007). See also Elisabeth Bekers’s analysis of the same myth in Bekers, Rising Anthills, 3 (Bekers 2010).

  12. 12.

    IRIN: Humanitarian News and Analysis “In-depth: Razor’s Edge—The Controversy of Female Genital Mutilation: KENYA: Justifying Tradition: Why Some Kenyan Men Favour FGM.” http://www.irinnews.org/indepthmain.aspx?InDepthId=15&ReportId=62471&Country=Yes (Accessed September 4, 2014) (IRIN 2014).

  13. 13.

    IRIN: Humanitarian News and Analysis: “Razor’s Edge—The Controversy of Female Genital Mutilation SIERRA LEONE: Female Circumcision Is a Vote Winner.” http://www.irinnews.org/indepthmain.aspx?InDepthId=15&ReportId=62473&Country=Yes. For more on female circumcision, see Penelope Hetherington, “The Politics of Female Circumcision in the Central Province of Colonial Kenya, 1920–30,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 26.1 (1998): 93–126 (Hetherington 1998). Lewis Hope, “Between Irua and Female Genital Mutilation: Feminist Human Rights Discourse and the Cultural Divide,” Harvard Human Rights Journal, 8 (1995): 1–56 (Hope 1995).

  14. 14.

    http://www.afrol.com/Categories/Women/wom005_fgm_norway.htm. See also UNHCR, The UN Refugee Agency, “The Gambia: Report on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) or Female Genital Cutting (GC).” www.refworld.org/docid/46d5787732.html.

  15. 15.

    Jomo Kenyatta, Facing Mount Kenya. London: Secker and Warburg, 1938, 133 (Kenyatta 1938).

  16. 16.

    Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, The River Between. London: Heinemann, 1965 (Wa Thiong’o 1965).

  17. 17.

    Augustine H. Assah and Tobe Levin, “Challenges of Our Times: Responses of African/Diasporan Intellectuals to FGM,” AFROEUROPA: Journal of Afro-European Studies, 2.1 (2008) (Assah and Levin 2008). No page. http://journal.afroeuropa.eu/index.php/afroeuropa/article/viewFile/62/73. See also Haseena Lockhat, Female Genital Mutilation: Treating the Tears. Middlesex University Press, 2004 (Lockhat 2004).

  18. 18.

    Alice Walker, Possessing the Secret of Joy. New York: New Press, 1992 (Walker 1992).

  19. 19.

    Joyce Russell-Robinson, “African Female Circumcision and the Missionary Mentality,” A Journal of Opinion 25. 1 Commentaries in African Studies: Essays About African Social Change and the Meaning of Our Professional Work, 25.1 (1997): 56 (Russell-Robinson 1997).

  20. 20.

    Ibid.

  21. 21.

    L. Amede Obiora, “The Little Foxes That Spoil the Vine: Revisiting the Feminist Critique of Female Circumcision,” in African Women and Feminism: Reflecting on the Politics of Sisterhood, ed. Oyeronke Oyewumi. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, Inc., 2003, 199 (Obiora 2003).

  22. 22.

    Ibid., 211.

  23. 23.

    Oyeronke Oyewumi, “Alice in Motherland: Reading Alice Walker on Africa and Screening the Color ‘Black,’” in African Women and Feminism: Reflecting on the Politics of Sisterhood, Oyeronke Oyewumi ed. (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, Inc. 2003), 161 (Oyewumi 2003a).

  24. 24.

    Ibid, 160.

  25. 25.

    Ibid.

  26. 26.

    Ibid.

  27. 27.

    Ibid, 170.

  28. 28.

    Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy. Trans. Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971, 170–177 (Althusser 1971).

  29. 29.

    See Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997 (Butler 1997).

  30. 30.

    Obioma Nnaemeka, “African Women, Colonial Discourses, and Imperialist Interventions: Female Circumcision as Impetus,” in Female Circumcision and the Politics of Knowledge: African Women in Imperialist Discourse, ed. Obioma Nnaemeka. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005, 274–276 (Nnaemeka 2005).

  31. 31.

    Sylvia Tamale, “African Feminism: How Should We Change?” Supplement: Women’s Rights and Development; Association for Women’s Development Houndmills United Kingdom, Palgrave Macmillan, 49.1 (2006): 38–41.

  32. 32.

    Tamale, “African Feminism,” (61–62) (Tamale 2006).

  33. 33.

    Waris Dirie, Desert Flower: The Extraordinary Life of a Desert Nomad. London: Virago, 1998 (Dirie 1998).

  34. 34.

    http://www.desertflowerfoundation.org/en/.

  35. 35.

    See for instance NPR, http://www.pbs.org/speaktruthtopower/issue_female.html; Huffington Post, “Nearly 4,000 Treated For Female Genital Mutilation In London.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/20/female-genital-mutilation_n_5000214.html and The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/end-fgm.

  36. 36.

    Nawal El Saadawi, The Hidden Face of Eve. New York: Zed Books, 2007 (Saadawi 2007).

  37. 37.

    Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007 (Ali 2007).

  38. 38.

    Fauziya Kassindja, Do They Hear You When You Cry. New York: Delta, 1998 (Kassindja 1998).

  39. 39.

    Nnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death. New York: Daw Books, Inc., 2010 (Okorafor 2010).

  40. 40.

    Ibid., 14.

  41. 41.

    Ibid., 8.

  42. 42.

    David Scheffer, “Sudan and the ICC: Rape as Genocide.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/opinion/03iht-edscheffer.1.18365231.html?_r=0. See also Jennifer Leaning, Susan Bartels, and Hani Mowafi, “Sexual Violence during War and Forced Migration,” in Women, Migration, and Conflict: Breaking a Deadly Cycle, ed. Susan Forbes Martin and John Tirman. New York: Springer, 2009, 173–199 (Leaning et al. 2009).

  43. 43.

    Okorafor, Who Fears, 30 (Okorafor 2010).

  44. 44.

    Ibid., 31.

  45. 45.

    Ibid., 32.

  46. 46.

    Ibid., 33 (original italics).

  47. 47.

    Ibid., 39 (italics mine).

  48. 48.

    Ibid., 41.

  49. 49.

    Ibid., 50.

  50. 50.

    I have discussed Scarry in greater detail in Chapter 4.

  51. 51.

    Okorofor, Who Fears, 74 (Okorafor 2010).

  52. 52.

    Ibid.,76.

  53. 53.

    Elizabeth S. Anker, Fictions of Dignity: Embodying Human Rights in World Literature. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012, 4 (Anker 2012).

  54. 54.

    Okorafor, Who Fears, 78. (Okorafor 2010).

  55. 55.

    Ibid., 78–79.

  56. 56.

    Ibid., 79.

  57. 57.

    Ibid., 80.

  58. 58.

    Ibid., 81.

  59. 59.

    Ibid., 90. [Original Italics].

  60. 60.

    Ibid., 130.

  61. 61.

    The Guardian, “Warsan Shire: Young Poet Laureate Wields Her Pen Against FGM.” http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/17/warsan-shire-young-poet-laureate-michael-gove

  62. 62.

    http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/17/warsan-shire-young-poet-laureate-michael-gove

  63. 63.

    http://badilishapoetry.com/radio/WarsanShire/

  64. 64.

    Warsan Shire, “Tribe of Woods” http://badilishapoetry.com/radio/WarsanShire/

  65. 65.

    Fahma Mohamed, “Tell Schools to Teach Risks of Female Genital Mutilation Before the Summer.” http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/educationgovuk-tell-schools-to-teach-risks-of-female-genital-mutilation-before-the-summer-endfgm

  66. 66.

    http://www.theguardian.com/society/video/2014/feb/14/girls-warsan-shire-fgm-video?INTCMP=

  67. 67.

    http://www.spreadtheword.org.uk/resources/view/warsan-shire-young-poet-laureate-for-london.

  68. 68.

    Palash Kumar, “India Has Killed 10 Million Girls in 20 Years.” http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2728976.

  69. 69.

    See the introductory chapter for my discussion of Aristotle and Paul Ricoeur.

  70. 70.

    Aristotle understands human flourishing also in political terms. It is about people participating actively in the life of community.

  71. 71.

    Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues. Peru, IL: Open Court, 1999, 124 (MacIntyre 1999).

  72. 72.

    Ibid., 1.

  73. 73.

    Ibid., 141.

  74. 74.

    Ibid.

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    Chielozona Eze

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Eze, C. (2016). The Body in Pain and the Politics of Culture. In: Ethics and Human Rights in Anglophone African Women’s Literature. Comparative Feminist Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40922-1_4

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