‘Circumcision: everyone's talking about it’: legislation, social pressure and the body

Abstract

This article reads Megan Lindholm's short story ‘Cut’ alongside Judith Butler's work on legal structures as an intervention into debates about the relationship between the body and the state. Focusing on issues relating to female genital cutting, I argue that Lindholm's narrative draws attention to the ways in which pre-political conceptions of gender undermine attempts to establish women's rights over their bodies through legislation. By challenging the distinction between female genital cutting and cosmetic surgery, ‘Cut’ compels us to reconsider the ways and the purposes for which we make use of the law. The second half of the article will consider the ways in which ‘Cut’, much like Butler, frames its response to these tensions in primarily individual terms. I argue that the valuing of individual over collective action risks making effective activism appear impossible and leaves both writers unable to explore crucial means of collective response to the issues to which they rightly and astutely draw attention. Finally I consider some of the possibilities for collective action arising from ‘Cut’ that resonate with successful activism in the real world, that are not fully explored in the text.

Keywords:

• the body
• female genital cutting
• Judith Butler
• law
• science fiction

Notes

1. In the context of discussions relating to genital cutting the choice of terminology is highly political, such that the choice of one term over another necessarily implicates a particular perspective, none of which I intend to endorse uncritically here. I am using the term ‘female genital cutting’, rather than the lesser ‘circumcision’ used by Lindholm or the more extreme ‘female genital mutilation’ used most frequently in anthropological studies, as this term both accounts for the variety of types of genital alteration and avoids reducing it to either the least or most extreme forms.

2. For a full discussion of successful interventions into FGC practices see Kristof and Wudunn (2010).