The interrupted seduction : sexuality and power in Arab-Muslim narratives on female circumcision / A sedução interrompida : sexualidade e poder em poder em narrativas arabe-muçulmanas sobre a circuncisão feminina

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2008

RESUMO

This study of anthropological nature regards agressive practices imposed upon the feminine body in Muslim and Arab societies, namely genital cutting operations on women performed not for therapeutic reasons but to comform to an anatomical ideal compatible with specific cultural patterns. Conceptions like modesty, promiscuity and feminine sexuality shown in the sources suggest that social relations in which race and gender act out, cannot be dramatized outside a scenario which involves not only a religious language of conversion to whom is an insider (believer), an outsider (unbeliever) and those located in states of “pollution” (apostate), but also in the cultural conversion between masculine/feminine inside the boundaries of the nation as well as the problematic relation with the West in which meaning is given in terms of postcolonialist context. On the anthropogical point of view the practice of female circumcision – especially excision and infibulation would be partially left or completely left out of the ethnographies as theoretical or political subjects. However, when that subject appears in anthropological settings, the theme sets dialogs among external interlocutors, as the press, NGO’s and feminists movements. Additionally, such study brings into consideration ethical issues inside anthropology stablishing a dialog to its primordial concept which is “culture” and its inevitable proximity with the concepts of “history” and “social and symbolic change” which are fundamental issues in studies concerning opressive practices and gender relations.

ASSUNTO(S)

circuncisão feminina sexo gender relations relações de genero antropologia poder (ciencias sociais) anthropology islamism sex female circumcision islamismo power (social sciences)

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