eSharp Issue 6:2 Identity and Marginality

Carving the Body: Female Circumcision in African Women's

Memoirs
Natasha Gordon-Chipembere (University of South Africa)

Introduction
Alison T. Slack states that 'female circumcision has been practised from as
early as 2500 years ago and continues in practice today in over forty
countries' (1988, p.489). Female circumcision is a worldwide phenomenon,
practised in twenty six African countries, Malaysia, Indonesia, the southern
parts of the Arab Peninsula, Pakistan, Russia, Peru, Brazil, Eastern Mexico,
Australia, and in immigrant communities in Europe and the United States.
Fran Hosken notes in her 1994 Hosken Report, that 99% of the female
population in Somalia and Djibouti have experienced some form of
circumcision, and that 80 to 90% of Ethiopian, Eritrean, Gambian, Northern
Sudanese and Sierra Leonean women have been circumcised. The Ivory
Coast, Kenya, Egypt, Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, Liberia, Guinea, Guinea
Bissau, and Nigeria have a circumcised female population of 60 to 75%.
Countries with circumcised female populations under 50% include Togo,
Benin, Mauritania, Ghana and Senegal. In the Hosken Report, there are no
current statistics available for Sub-Saharan Africa. Most of the women who
were infibulated (the most severe form of circumcision) lived in Mali,
Northern Sudan, Eritrea, Eastern Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia (Hosken,
1994, p.45).
Female circumcision is the removal of some or all of the female
genitals. The WHO has outlined three basic types: circumcision (the
removal of the clitoris), excision (removal of the clitoris and labia minora),
and infibulation (removal of clitoris, inner and other vaginal lips, and the
sewing together of the vaginal orifice, leaving a space the size of a rice grain
for urine and menstruation). The age ranges from a few days after birth to

1
eSharp Issue 6:2 Identity and Marginality

right before childbirth, however it is most prevalent during puberty, with the
median age range 6-12. A midwife or circumciser uses various utensils
including razors, knives and scissors. It may also be done in a hospital or
health clinic under anaesthesia.
The health risks are immense, the first being death. A long term
result of circumcision is the development of neuroma, which renders the
entire genital area unbearable to touch. Also, there is the presence of vulval
abscesses, constant infections, damage to other vital organs, and the greater
susceptibility to HIV because of the interchange of blood during penetration
or de-infibulation with an unclean circumciser's tool. Needless to say, a
circumcised woman feels severe pain during intercourse - known as
dyspareunia. (Dorkenoo, 1992, p.8). Dr. Baashir of Sudan notes in his
studies and fieldwork among circumcised women, that there is a history of
psychiatric disturbances in women who have undergone the operation,
namely 'anxiety attacks, psychotic excitement, reactive depressive states as
well as sexual frigidity, pain and sufferings during intercourse' (1977, p.4).
A woman who is infibulated has to be cut open for penetration on
her wedding night and opened again for each birth she has. Though research
on the practice and effects of female circumcision on women and children is
increasing, there has yet to be data which documents a historical origin for
the practice (el Dareer, 1982, p.2). Dr. Marie Assad's research in Egypt
proposes that the origins of female circumcision are Egyptian, since
evidence has been found that infibulation was practised on ancient
mummies. Thus, infibulation is also called Pharonic circumcision in the
Sudan. In Egypt, it is referred to as Sudanese Circumcision (Assad, 1980,
p.4). Fran Hosken notes that the term infibulation goes back to the time of
the Romans:
Fibula means clasp or pin in Latin. To prevent sexual
intercourse, the Romans fastened a fibula through the large
lips of women... Infibulated female slaves from Upper Egypt
and Sudan fetched a higher price on the slave markets of

2
eSharp Issue 6:2 Identity and Marginality

Cairo up to the 19th century, as childbearing hampers work.

(1994, p.33)
Yet, there remains no substantial proof of Pharonic origins. Janice
Boddy cites Ghalioungui, Heulsman and Barclay, historians who conclude
that 'analysis of human mummies from that period fails to confirm this
assertion so far as pre-mortem vaginal closure is concerned' (1989, p.51).
Slack makes it clear that female circumcision was practised before Judaism,
Christianity or Islam. She says, 'it is likely that female circumcision, as with
male circumcision, was initially part of the traditional puberty rites, in which
young women and men were introduced into the adult world - a rite of
passage' (1988, pp.443-444). Lillian Passmore Sanderson adds that 'Strabo
described Pharonic Circumcision in 23 BC amongst the Danakils of
Ethiopia and in Egypt. He also described excision in the first century AD in
Egypt' (1981, p.27). Harold B. Barclay claims that 'from its geographic
distribution, infibulation apparently represents a local elaboration of
clitoridectomy in Neolithic times by an undifferentiated Hamito-Semitic
culture' (1964, p.29). Though no religion mandates the practice, Islam has
accepted it the most culturally.
Nawal el Saadawi in The Hidden Face of Eve has probably the most
poignant and specific data to date on the prescriptions made to young
Muslim girls upon their reaching puberty. Maintenance of one's virginity
ensured a good marriage, which created the possibility of moving the family
out of economic hardship, or into another class. The importance of
circumcision was felt in all realms of social life. In order to belong, a girl
had to carefully guard her hymen so that she would preserve the honour of
her family on her wedding night. It was not uncommon for young girls who
were suspected of not being virgins on their wedding night to be killed by
their male relatives. The commodification of a woman's body was

3
eSharp Issue 6:2 Identity and Marginality

continually articulated within the various rituals which announced her

progress into womanhood.1
It is clear that female circumcision predates Islam, yet research
conducted by Awa Thiam among Islamic scholars lead back to one myth,
which suggest the origins of excision:
Long before the time of Mahomet, there was a prophet named
Ibrahima (Abraham), who was married to his cousin Sarata
(Sara). He went up to the land of Gerar where reigned King
Abimelech who delighted in taking unto himself all men's
wives who were remarkable for their beauty. Now it
happened that Sarata was unusually fair. And the king did not
hesitate to try to take her from her husband. A super-natural
power prevented him from taking advantage of her, which so
astounded him that he set her free. And he restored her back
to her husband and made her the gift of a handmaid named
Hadiara (Hagar). Sarata and her husband lived together for a
long time but Sarata bore Ibrahima no children. And
eventually, Ibrahima took Hadiara to wife: some say that it
was Sarata who said to her husband that he should take her
handmaid to wife, since she herself could not bear him no
children. And so Sarata and Hadiara became co-wives to
Ibrahima. And Hadiara bore him a son and his name was
Ismaila (Ishmael); and Sarata also bore a son to Ibrahima and
he was called Ishaga (Isaac). In the course of time, the
relationship between the women deteriorated. And so it came
to pass that one day Sarata excised Hadiara. Some say that
she only pierced her ears, while others maintain she did
indeed excise her. (Thiam, 1986, p.9)

The Koran does not mandate circumcision. Many religious male

scholars who are responsible for interpreting the Hadiths (sayings) of the
Prophet Mohammed state that the Prophet opposed total circumcision,
especially infibulation. However, the Prophet Mohammed suggested that 'if
you circumcise, take only a small part and refrain from cutting most of the

1. An infibulated woman, for example, maintained a relationship with her circumciser

throughout her lifetime, including on the night of her wedding for de-infibulation, and at
child birth for de-infibulation and re-infibulation. The various rituals in which her body
became the commodity of both midwife and husband progressed throughout her lifetime as
a woman.

4
eSharp Issue 6:2 Identity and Marginality

clitoris off. The woman will have a bright and happy face, and is more
welcome to her husband, if her pleasure is complete' (Saadawi, 1980, p.39).
Marriage is seen as a fundamental obligation of men and women in
Islam: 'Islamic sanction backs this notion in the saying that marriage
completes one's religion' (Kennedy, 1978, p.159). If one is only complete
when married, then the process which enables one to become marriageable
takes on immeasurable status within the community. Women have to
'become' marriageable, and el Saadawi notes that women are groomed all
their lives in order to become marriageable and thus fulfil their religious
obligations (1980, p.183). Part of the social obligation in this preparation is
circumcision (all types) as it maintains the central link to the other life
rituals necessary for identity formation. Within many cultures which practice
female circumcision, there is little question as to whether the tradition
should be maintained or not. It is imperative that one notes the intricate
socio-cultural and religious layering of which circumcision plays a part of,
in order to clearly understand why this tradition has lasted for over 2500
years and has been so readily accepted by some Muslims throughout Africa
and the Middle East.
It is at this ironic junction that one notes that even though it is
maintained by some Islamic countries in Africa, a larger portion of the
Middle East actually condemns the practice as it is not mandated by the
Koran. Thus, the weight of circumcision lies more within its socio-cultural
bearings than its religious mandates. However, it is maintained within an
age-old community of women and dayas who make their money off this
practice, justifying it as an obligation in Islam. Not only is economics an
immediate incentive, but the prestige, status, and communal authority that
these women demand, and are given, are heavy investments and
justifications for why midwives support the practice.
With the advent of fundamentalist Islamic interpretation and law,
many Muslim women were kept within the confines of the private home

5
eSharp Issue 6:2 Identity and Marginality

sphere; there was little encouragement for education, outside of religious

instruction. Women found it difficult to challenge the advice of men (as
evinced in the life work of Nawal el Saadawi) as they interpreted the Koran
as they saw fit. Though many of the Hadiths were narrated by the Prophet
Mohammed's wives or daughters, much contemporary (19th and 20th century)
interpretation has fallen in the hands of the Islamic religious elite, namely
men. In traditional homes, women were trained to serve and never question.
Their identification as good wives and mothers taught them not to go against
the holy words of Allah, transmitted by their fathers, brothers, or husbands.
In her book, Daughter of Isis, Saadawi recounts that it was only her father
and uncle who were allowed to read from the Koran, not the women of the
house (1999, p.8). She recounts horrific stories of young girls in Egypt,
whose bodies were found by the police, killed by their families because it
was suspected that their swollen bodies indicated an illegitimate pregnancy.
Autopsies confirmed the presence of accumulated menstrual blood that was
unable to be released because of a tight infibulation (Saadawi, 1980, p.26).
With such pious devotion on one hand comes an almost extreme
sense of power wielding and domination found amongst Muslim women.
Here we must take into consideration Chandra Mohanty's assertion that
sisterhood should not be taken for granted because of gender (Mohanty,
1984, p.399). In all areas of oppression there exist multi-faceted layers of
power structures which need to be unpacked in order to deconstruct the
creation of women by other women. Respect for elders, specifically one's
mother-in-law, combined with a hierarchical system of living, constitute the
way that many Muslim women interact with each other. Therefore, great
pressure was placed on women who were uncircumcised, and the valuing of
tight infibulations render young girls more honourable and extremely
marriageable.

6
eSharp Issue 6:2 Identity and Marginality

Women Constructing Other Women

Janice Boddy presents a rather fascinating method of interpreting female
circumcision in her research among the Hofriyati of Northern Sudan.
Women of the Hofriyati view and utilize circumcision as a method of
creating 'gendered' entities in their community. Children are raised
genderless and it is not until boys and girls are circumcised that they begin
to take on the societal understandings and responsibilities of their sex. Thus:
Among Hofriyati, women actively and ongoingly construct
other women [...] from the body of man. By eliminating any
vestiges of maleness, they constitute women as separate
entities and distinct social people. (Boddy, 1989, p.58)
It is here that, taking into consideration the socio-cultural relevance of the
practice, one must problematize the concept of women creating other
women. This concept looks at the inherent aspects of bodily fragmentation
and re-creation which result from its socio-economic and historical
constructions of the African continent. It is critical that the idea of women
using circumcision as a form of gender identification and formation
becomes clearly understood when looking at the socio-cultural and
economic power structures which keep the practice alive today. Women
begin to shift and re-create power structures within their specific social and
cultural spheres, which cannot be readily dismissed as secondary to the
proverbial omniscient male gaze. Rather, as Chandra Mohanty asserts:
Male violence must be theorized and interpreted within
specific societies, both in order to understand it better as well
as to effectively organize to change it. Sisterhood cannot be
assumed on the basis of gender; it must be forged in concrete,
historical and political practice and analysis. (1984, p.399)
Africa, the colonial landscape narrated into being by the 1885 Berlin
Conference, had superficial boundaries, borderlands and borderlines cross
lives, traditions, cosmologies, and languages – all regulated into
Europeanized nation states. Using this metaphorical framework, the
circumcised woman becomes 'colonized' under the hands of the circumciser,
in so much as she is forced into a new identity, doing away with her

7
eSharp Issue 6:2 Identity and Marginality

previous 'childlike' self into an identity sanctioned and normalised by the

larger society. At the same time, Senegal's first president, Leopold Senghor
employs his own nationalist designs upon African women. In his Negritude
poems of the early 1960s, Senghor celebrates Mother Africa, with her fertile
valleys and rich traditions, in order for the populous to reclaim a traditional
African past symbolically found in the hands and body of the African
woman:
Naked woman, dark woman
Ripe fruit with firm flesh, dark raptures of black wine,
Mouth that gives music to my mouth
Savanna of clear horizons, savanna quivering to the fervent
caress

Of the East Wind, sculptured tom-tom, stretched drumskin

Moaning under the hands of the conqueror
Your deep contralto voice is the spiritual song of the
Beloved. (Senghor, 1956, p.43)

Mapping the Body

The body takes on social agency as women are constructed into 'females'
from 'male' parts. As the midwife carved away the genitals, she becomes the
symbolic embodiment of a patriarchal, gendered entity upon which she
shapes and defines the 'feminine' with her surgery. It is pertinent to clarify
that I am not suggesting that the circumciser becomes male (in actuality she
assumes certain masculine powers); however, she is firmly rooted in a
created and imagined feminine space which has been defined through the
historically revered position of the midwife. The scarification of
circumcision and in particular, infibulation, is an actual and immediate
mapping or drawing upon the bodies of women so that their commitment to
the social responsibilities (defined through their sex) is ensured and
manifests in their socio-economic relations once they have entered
womanhood. The context of the 'map' creates a legitimate physical space
upon the female body, forcing it to re-member the act as well as its socio-
cultural relevance and responsibilities. Mapping/drawing creates links

8
eSharp Issue 6:2 Identity and Marginality

among circumcised women to navigate their bodies in similar, unifying

ways. The act of circumcision creates the norm. The power of the
circumciser as she maps/draws upon the body of other women is enunciated
as she creates a permanency which links her to the lives of these women
forever.
Vigdis Broche-Due introduces the concept of morphology, which is
the 'way in which the shapes and surfaces of particular anatomical bodies are
marked and mapped within a cultural system of meaning' (1993, p.33).
Thus, a circumcised woman's body becomes continuously re-mapped and re-
constructed as she moves through the stages of her life as a woman - this
includes infibulation, de-infibulation on the nuptial night and re-infibulation
after childbirth. Within the discourse of the female body, the skin, the body
– the actual surface of the physiology of the woman (here the gaze focuses
on the genital area) – becomes the primary site in which boundaries are
created and re-created in order to manipulate and contain anticipated social
transgressions. Also, these borderlines – openings and closings – come to
define specific gendered understandings which regulate the actions and
responsibilities of a woman within her community.
The body becomes re-inscribed, when circumcised, as a newborn
along cultural lines and expectations. The female body is thus carved into
the social realm, where she becomes an active participant in the community.
Prior to this carving of flesh, she is marginal and not 'purely feminine.' The
flesh manifests itself into an image of society, thus a language is created
between the women who are circumcised and the women who perform the
surgery. This language is the unspoken/mute, implicit dependency a woman,
especially an infibulated one, has to the circumciser, as she moves from
wedding night to the birth of children and the need to be de/re infibulated.
This language has incredible power, though silent, to reinforce gender
identity. Broche-due suggests that among the Somali, it is not the
maintenance of virginity which provokes the need for infibulation, but it is

9
eSharp Issue 6:2 Identity and Marginality

the actual societal 'making' or 'construction' of the woman through the

surgery, by the removal of her 'male' part, by other female hands which is
pertinent in the development of gender roles in the community (1993, p.45).
The closure of the vagina is a human operation and renders the
circumciser at once god-like and powerful, as her act creates, or gives birth
to, a woman. Once she is sewn up, the infibulated woman becomes a thread
in the fabric of her society. Her body joins others in a language which is
muted because there is the instant separation of her sexuality from her
biological function - reproduction. The primary job of the clitoris is for
sexual stimulation. When some or all of the genitals are removed, the ability
for full sexual development is hindered in the process. Marriage, after
becoming 'purified' ultimately leads to childbearing. This notion is so deeply
engrained in the justifications of the tradition that it is believed that the
procedure ensures fertility. In reality, this is not the case.
The dialogue invested in the power dynamics between circumciser
and circumcised is critical in the formation of gendered entities within the
community. This dynamic enables the practice to have profound significance
as a primary step which women take as they identify with a specific
community. Not only does circumcision have its economic benefits, as the
midwife maintains her livelihood in this manner, but it also works to secure
the social fabric of the community. Status and communal authority are
powerful reasons why midwives continue to support the practice, outside of
economics.
What is pertinent in viewing the historical trajectory of female
circumcision is that, once beyond the facts and figures, one begins to
negotiate the space that remains muted by circumcision. Clearly the practice
has survived for over 2500 years because it is taboo and remains unspoken,
yet continued. Why does the practice remain virtually invisible in African
cultural production which illuminates aspects of daily life? Seemingly, the
investment that circumcision has in the formation of identity and

10
eSharp Issue 6:2 Identity and Marginality

maintenance of cultural norms (birth, circumcision, marriage, reproduction,

death) allows it to become an unquestioned cultural foundation unto itself.
Thus, it is with radical steps and new 'tongues' that African women writers
break the silence and speak the language of circumcision.
African Women Writers: The Search for a Whole Self
My body was gone in a second, just as they had said. I could
hear shuu [...] like the sound when they are slicing meat - just
like that was the way she sliced my body. She cut everything,
she didn't cut the big lips, but she sliced off my clitoris and
the two black little lips, which were HARAM -impure- all that
she sliced off like meat [...] I thought I was going to die. She
[then] sliced the top off my big lips, and then she took thorns
like needles and put them in crossways, across my vagina, to
close it up. She put in seven thorns, and each time she put
one in she tightened them together with string. (Boddy, 1994,
p.56)
I found the women coming in and gathering round, and then
they took hold of me and forced my legs open and cut away
the mulberry with a razor. They left me with a wound in my
body and another deep inside me, feeling that a wrong has
been done to me, a wrong that could never be undone.
(Rifaat, 1983, p.9)
African women writers write between themselves and amongst themselves
on issues of the body and female circumcision in multivalent ways. They use
'other tongues.' Mae Gwendolyn Henderson, in her article, 'Speaking in
Tongues: Dialogic, Dialectics, and the Black Woman Writer's Literary
Tradition,' states that:
Black women's writing is ... interlocutory, or dialogic,
reflecting not only a relationship with the 'other(s)' but an
internal dialogue with the plural aspects of self that constitute
the matrix of black female subjectivity. The interlocutory
character of black women's writings is, thus, not only a
consequence of a dialogic relationship with an imaginary or
'generalized Other', but a dialogue with the aspects of
'otherness' within the self. (1990, p.259)
What I am suggesting here is that though Henderson creates this paradigm
for a seemingly African-American female constituency, this idea of inner
speech can be readily applied to the African woman writer. I believe that

11
eSharp Issue 6:2 Identity and Marginality

African women do begin a process of speaking to the silenced parts of their

'otherness,' parts that were physically and spiritually taken from them, in
most cases before puberty. Their sexual identity is thus framed within the
imaginary; the imagined self, distanced from bodies which are physically
present. They thereby write an astounding narration of re-membering female
bodies back onto the text and into a physical place of wholeness. Even
today, there is apparent tension between the articulation of the narrative of
female circumcision and its need, in many cultural and religious contexts, to
remain part of the unspoken. Davies adds, 'other tongues locate speech
within the context of gender, identity, sexuality, and the politics of location.
For it is location which allows one to speak or not speak, to be affirmed in
one's speech or rejected, to be heard or censored' (1994, p.153).
Most important in the literature created is an articulation of how
women resist each other as women, through the writing of female
circumcision and the remembering of the body. The power of the 'gaze'
becomes more immediate and personal, and so there are many levels of
resistance which become inscribed onto the text. Therefore, the irony is even
more poignant when Lloyd Brown asserts that African male writers such as
Senghor and others have 'collective images of a collective African
womanhood-as-symbol [which] are significant as idealizing concepts rather
than as literary accurate descriptions of the woman's situation throughout an
entire continent' (1975, p.496). Here we see the Mother Africa trope
employed again.
In this respect, African women writers, such as Alifa Rifaat, Nawal
el Saadawi, Waris Dirie, Aman, Charity Waciuma, Awa Thiam and others,
force movement towards this personal space, in giving a voice to an
unspoken reality that an estimated one hundred million women have had no
historical public space for others to hear their testimonies about their
cutting. A new space is thus opened; one that is hopefully not destined for
marginality. I do not assume that circumcised African women have not

12
eSharp Issue 6:2 Identity and Marginality

always spoken amongst and between themselves about the practice, but as a
collective public effort, I feel new ground is being forged by African women
writers.
In addressing issues of the place of Black/Third World women
writers, Carole Boyce Davies utilizes the theory of critical relationality as a
way of refuting the need of placing Black/Third World women in a
dichotomous binary that is endemic of Western imperialist designs for
categorizations and location:
Critical relationality, then moves beyond singularity or
sameness to varies interactions, transgression and
articulations. Critical relationality becomes a way in which
other theoretical positions interact relationality in one's
critical consciousness. Critical relationality moves beyond a
singular, monochromatic approach to any work to a
complexly-integrated and relational theoretics; it allows the
situation of a text in its own context, but provides an ability
to understand and relate it to a range of other dimensions of
thought. Critical relationality is then inherently migratory.
(Davies, 1994, p.56)
Davies uses this theory to suggest that Black/Third World women
writers then cannot be placed in monolithic, stagnant categories. Rather, as
writers, they become sojourners between the borderlines/lands which
conspire to separate margins and centres, home and the metropole, yet in
actuality, these borderlines/lands become a 'third space' of their own.
Movement back and forth between locations opens up a discourse for the
articulation of the varied localities and identities that Black/Third World
women embody and recreate in their texts.
Do African women who write about female circumcision actually re-
articulate and negotiate new spaces for their bodies? Are they constant
migrants, using language as a tool with which to travel over their bodies, to
shift? Carole Boyce Davies appropriately adds:
They [Black/Third World women writers] expand the
epistemological bases which have limited our ability to
explore the cultural texts in which we are implicated. These
in turn produce what can be identified as a 'new space,' an

13
eSharp Issue 6:2 Identity and Marginality

area of transformation and change where we can no longer

accept a factual or natural account of history and culture, nor
simply seek to retrieve a hidden authentic identity. (Davies,
1994, p.154)
In the case of female circumcision, African women's bodies become
textualized by patriarchy as well as by other women. Female bodies become
venues upon which words are re-written in order for the body to move
outside the hidden and omniscient scopophilia of the patriarchal gaze. One
discovers and investigates what significance this 'gaze' takes on when
women circumcise other women. Laura Mulvey in her article, 'Visual Please
and Narrative Cinema,' states that in cinema:
Traditionally, the woman displayed has functioned on two
levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen
story and as erotic object for the spectator within the
auditorium, with a shifting tension between the looks on
either side of the screen. (1989, p.19)
Thus, what is questioned here is the subjectivity of the young,
circumcised girl: does she become an erotic figure for the looming,
omnipresent patriarchy (whether it be father, husband or mother-in-law who
can check her circumcision before agreeing to the marriage) and/or does she
become/remain an erotic object to the daya who slices off her genitalia with
a 'shuu - like the sound when they are slicing meat' (Barnes, 1994, p.56).
However, aspects of erotica do not present themselves in the long run, as
power and social responsibility overshadow sensuality. In many ways the
power of the gaze (by women in the case of female circumcision) causes a
fragmented representation of the female body - only aspects are magnified.
Nawal el Saadawi notes in The Hidden Face of Eve, that some
female circumcision ceremonies 2
were accompanied by ululating women
and in rural areas drumming and other musical instruments, primarily to
celebrate this rite of passage, but essentially to drown out the screams of
2. Please note that not all circumcisions are accompanied by ceremonies. Asma el Dareer
notes in Woman, Why Do You Weep? that as time progresses, younger and younger girls are
being circumcised, moving away from the initial understanding of female circumcision as a
rite of passage. In most cases now, female circumcision has been a means of maintaining
chastity, virginity and fidelity among women.

14
eSharp Issue 6:2 Identity and Marginality

pain from the young girls. In Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker,
the tsunga, (Walker's word for circumciser) M'Lissa cynically tells the
protagonist Tashi how her sister Dura died from loss of blood after her
circumcision. When asked if she remembered Dura, M'Lissa responds, 'I
could lie... and tell you I remember her. After all the years I did this work,
faces are the last thing I remember' (Walker, 1992, p.252). Thus, fragmented
bodies become a necessity for women who must circumcise other women
and the gaze is re-located elsewhere. Does conventional patriarchal power of
the spectator become transferred onto the women who excise and infibulate
young girls and women? The patriarchal power of the gaze is temporally
transferred onto the tsunga as a way of keeping women within strict
patriarchal confines, which inherently calls for the policing of women's
bodies by other women. However, even within this context, women remain
women and male power becomes reclaimed and reshaped into something
conceptually feminine.
Saadawi's Memoir
At the age of six I could not save myself from it [FC]. Four
women, as hefty as Um Muhammad, cornered me, and
pinned me down by the hands and feet, as though crucifying
me like the Messiah by hammering nails through his hands,
and feet. Since I was a child, that deep wound left in my body
has never healed.
But the deeper wound has been the one left in my spirit, in
my soul. I can not forget that day in the summer of 1937.
Fifty-six years have gone by, but I still remember it, as
though it was only yesterday. I lay in a pool of blood. After a
few days the bleeding stopped, and the daya peered between
my thighs, and said, 'All is well. The wound has healed,
thanks be to God.' But the pain was there, like an abscess
deep in my flesh. I did not know what other parts in my body
there were that might need to be cut off … I had no idea what
fate had in store for me… the future was full of danger… my
body.. had turned against me (Saadawi, 1999, pp.63-64).
Nawal el Saadawi, medical doctor, writer, activist, visionary, Egyptian,
mother and wife, was born in 1931 in the village of Kafr Thla in the Al-
Kalyoubeya province of Egypt. The commitment to writing about female

15
eSharp Issue 6:2 Identity and Marginality

circumcision has inspired her for over four decades of activism and literary
production. However, in a recent interview (June 7, 2005) Saadawi notes
that the most challenging aspect of writing is about disclosing her own
experience with circumcision. She states:
Only when I started writing, did the memory come back of
hearing my younger brother cry and cry because he was being
circumcised. It was very difficult to write about being
circumcised. Several times I burned the papers or threw them
away. It is a big risk to decide to publish it, when you could
just put it away in a drawer. I use a lot of my female
characters to process being circumcised (Saadawi, Interview,
June 7, 2005).
The tension which is present in her personal quest to write about the wound
'left in my spirit, in my soul' juxtaposed against her professional medical
observations amongst circumcised women makes her memory of the
procedure even more poignant. Clearly, the legacy of the pain informs her
activism but also informs the development of her female characters, from
Firdaus in Woman at Point Zero to Hamida in The Circling Song. Saadawi,
imprisoned under the Sadat Regime in 1980, was one of the first Muslim
African women to write openly about Muslim women and sex. Her
discussion ranges from female circumcision to childhood marriages,
challenging the interpretation of the Koran about the silenced role of
women, who during the time of the Prophet, had active, vocal participation
in society, as evinced by his wife, Khadija.
It is her writing that fills the 'abscess deep in [her] flesh.' Without a
clitoris, Saadawi writes away the notions of violence that pervade her
memories of the women (not men) reaching into the depths of her child-
body, to carve away her pleasure. And so with new 'tongue,' Saadawi writes
pleasure into her text, into her life through her characters as she gives them
lives that actuate realities not confined with traditional Islamic settings.
Saadawi states, 'All my life I wanted to write about my life. And when I
started writing, the memories came slowly. I started to write when I was 18
years old' (Interview, June 7, 2005).

16
eSharp Issue 6:2 Identity and Marginality

Waris' Story
The next thing I felt was my flesh, my genitals, being cut
away. I heard the sound of the dull blade sawing back and
forth through my skin. When I think back, I honestly can't
believe that this happened to me. I feel as if I were talking
about someone else. There's no way in the work that I can
explain what it feels like. It's like somebody slicing through
the meat of your thigh, or cutting off your arm, except this is
the most sensitive part of your body. However, I didn't move
an inch, I wanted Mama to be proud of me. I just sat there as
if I were made of stone, telling myself the more I moved
around, the longer the torture would take. My legs began to
quiver of their own accord. I passed out. When I woke up, the
Killer Woman has piled next to her a stack of thorns from an
acacia tree. She used these to puncture holes to sew me up.
My legs were completely numb, but the pain between them
was so intense that I wished I would die (Dirie, 1998, p.42).
Waris Dirie, Somali supermodel and UNFPA Special Ambassador for the
Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation, tells a compelling story of her
own infibulation at the age of five in Somalia. In her candid reflections, the
mere recalling of the cutting is shocking and distancing to her adult mind. In
the writing process, she stops, horrified that this has been done to her and
that she will never have to true ability to share the feelings of that moment.
Her memory is laced with her childhood desire to please her mother, at the
same time she names the woman who cuts her, Killer Woman. The words
are weighty and imply not just a child's name-calling, but a metaphoric
bringer of death. Her autobiography, Desert Flower, recounts how many
other Somali girls did not heal or survive under the circumciser's blade. One
of the most poignant moments is when she looks over after having been
sewn up and sees 'pieces of my meat, my sex, lay on top, drying undisturbed
in the sun' (Dirie, 1998, p.43).
Some fifteen years later, a model and living in Europe, Dirie chooses
to become de-infibulated by medical surgery. She states:
Within two or three weeks, I was back to normal. Well, not
exactly normal, but more like a woman who hadn't been
circumcised. Waris was a new woman. I could sit down on

17
eSharp Issue 6:2 Identity and Marginality

the toilet and pee – whoosh! There's not way to explain what
a new freedom that was' (Dirie, 1998, p.148).
The notion of freedom is liberating in the simple act of urination, but also
the ability to create a new identity for herself as a politicized, de-infibulated
Somali woman. She remains true to her cultural identity, yet her lived
experiences motivate her to educate all who will listen against infibulation.
She gave up her modelling career to become a UN Ambassador towards the
collective abandonment of circumcision in Somalia.
Conclusion
Female circumcision exists today because of its socio-cultural significance,
where the value of belonging to one's group and being recognized as a
meaningful and thoughtful participating member of the community may
outweigh the pain and life-long health implications of circumcision. I
propose that women are as responsible for the practice as their male
counterparts. Men alone cannot be held solely responsible for a practice
which dates back some 2500 years. Rather, it becomes much more intriguing
to envision the potential of working women and men together towards
eradication, as Tostan in Senegal and Maendeleo ya Wanawake in Kenya
have proven possible.
The challenge remains for one to imagine places where female
circumcision has proper self-articulation without being silenced by other
'do-good communities'3 or external patriarchal pressures. In order to fully
appreciate the ways in which women interact and maintain power
relationships with each other, specific cultural understandings have to be
considered. Both Saadawi and Dirie write their stories as venues through
which politicisation and activism is initiated by themselves, their female
characters and those they educate through the presence of their words on a
historically taboo subject. Both authors make it clear that women are as

3. The reference here are to some Western feminists who have taken up the banner of FC as
a fight, insisting that they must speak for the women being cut, as these women cannot
speak for themselves. Discussions about this tension can be found in African Women and
Feminism, edited by O. Oyewumi.

18
eSharp Issue 6:2 Identity and Marginality

liable for the continuation of the practice as their male partners. However,
without breaking the myths with new 'tongues' the practice will remain
relegated as 'simply' a woman's issue, and therefore a silenced and un-
prioritised topic, or a sensationalised feminist topic which again silences the
women who are being cut.

Bibliography
Assad, M.B., 1980. 'Female Circumcision in Egypt: Social Implications,
Current Research and Prospects for Change', Studies in Family
Planning, 1(3-20).
Baashir, T.A., 1977. 'Psychological Aspects of Female Circumcision,'
unpublished conference paper given at the 55th Congress of the
Obstetrical and Gynecological Society; Sudan (4-16).
Barclay, H.B., 1964. Buuri al Lamaab. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Barnes, V.L. and Boddy, J., 1994. Aman: The Story of a Somali Girl. New
York: Pantheon Books.
Boddy, J., 1989. Wombs and Alien Spirits: Women, Men and the Zar Cult in
Northern Sudan. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Broche-Due, V., Bleie, T., and Rudie, I., 1993. Carved Flesh - Cast Selves:
Gendered Symbols and Social Practices. Oxford: Berg Publishers.
Brown, L., 1975. 'The African Woman as Writer.' Canadian Journal of
African Studies. 19(493-505).
Davies, C.B., 1994. Black Woman, Writing and Identity. New York:
Routledge.
Dirie, W., 1998. Desert Flower. New York: William Morrow.
Dorkenoo, E., 1992. Female Genital Mutilation: Proposals for Change.
London: Minority Rights Group Press.
El Dareer, A., 1982. Woman, Why Do You Weep? Circumcision and Its
Consequences. London: Zed Press.

19
eSharp Issue 6:2 Identity and Marginality

Henderson, M. G., 1990. 'Speaking in Tongues: Dialogic, Dialectics and the

Black Woman Writer's Literary Tradition.' Reading Black, Reading
Feminist: A Critical Anthology, (ed.) Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New
York: Meridian Press.
Hosken, F. P., 1994. The Revised Hosken Report: Genital and Sexual
Mutilation of Females. Massachusetts: WINN.
Kennedy, J. G., 1978. Nubian Ceremonial Life. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Mohanty, C. T., 1991. 'Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and
Colonial Discourse', in C. Mohanty, A. Russo, L Torres (eds.), Third
World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, pp.51-79.
Mulvey, L., 1989. 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.' Visual and Other
Pleasures. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Rifaat, A., 1983. Distant View of a Minaret. London: Heinemann.
El Saadawi, N., 1980. The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Islamic
World. London: Zed Books.
El Saadawi, N., 1999. A Daughter of Isis. London: Zed Books.
El Saadawi, N., Personal Interview, 7 June 2005.
Sanderson, L.P., 1981. Against the Mutilation of Women: The Struggle to
End Unnecessary Suffering. London: Ithaca Press.
Senghor, L., 1956. 'Black Woman' Shadow Songs. Paris: Editions de Seuil,
p. 43.
Slack, A. T., 1988. 'Female Circumcision: A Critical Appraisal.' Human
Rights Quarterly, 10(480-509).
Thiam, A., 1986. Black Sister, Speak Out: Feminism and Oppression in
Black Africa. London: Pluto Press.
Walker, A., 1992. Possessing the Secret of Joy. New York: Harcourt, Brace,
Jovanovich Press.

20