ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I explore Khady Koïta’s and Hibo Wardere’s acts of political warfare in challenging the maintenance of intergenerational cultural violence (FGM) and (re)claiming autonomy of their bodies in Blood Stains: A Child of Africa Reclaims her Human Rights and Cut: One Woman’s Fight against FGM in Britain Today, respectively. This qualitative study uses relational content analysis, Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development, and Judith Butler’s ideas on gender performativity. It shows how FGM in the service of achieving a political goal deprives girls/women of their basic human rights and uncovers the political propaganda of a pernicious politicization of the clitoris to dominate women and thrust them to the periphery. The authors-narrators expose the political biases underlying FGM in patriarchal projection of the clitoris as a negative metaphor that forces its owner, a girl, to sacrifice her organ to aggrandize the power of the penis. Khady and Wardere, however, cease to abide by the prescribed code of conduct and insist on maintaining their bodily integrity. Fighting for basic human rights, they serve as role models for other women wanting control over their bodies, thereby creating positive social change.
Discussant: Salome Tsopurashvili
