ABSTRACT
The introductory chapter sketches out the research design and provides the primary outline of the study. It dissects and details the major concepts to present the research puzzle. Using the theoretical concepts of body and representation, the chapter addresses the process of exoticising women’s bodies through the prism of external gaze and knowledge production. A thorough analysis of the knowledge-power nexus and discursive formation questions the epistemological and ontological groundings of the existing representative lenses. The knowledge basis, which underscores the existing discourse through a cultural prism, forms the core of the politics of representation. The chapter portrays how a veil-clad or circumcised woman becomes a prisoner of the external gaze. While in the case of female genital cutting/female circumcision (FC/FGC), the images associated with the practice remain somewhat constant, the trajectory of veiling seems to polarise opinions.
