Female Circumcision and the Politics of Knowledge

出版者:Greenwood Pub Group

作者:Nnaemeka, Obioma 编

页数:296

出版时间:2005-7

价格:$ 36.10

装帧:Pap

isbn号码:9780897898652

Heated debates about and insurgencies against female circumcision are symptoms of a disease emanating from a mindset that produced hierarchies of humans, conquered colonies, and built empires. The loss of colonies and empires does not in any way mitigate the ideological underpinnings of empire-building and the knowledge construction that subtends it. The mindset finds its articulation at points of coalescence. Female circumcision provided a point of coalescence and impetus for the articulation. Insisting that the hierarchy on which the imperialist project rests is not bipolar but multi-layered and more complex, the contributions show how imperialist discourses complicate issues of gender, race, and history. Nnaemeka gives voice to the silenced and marginalized, and creates space for them to participate in knowledge construction and theory making. The papers in this volume trace the travels' of imperial and colonial discourses from antecedents in anthropology, travel writings, and missionary discourse to modern residues and configurations in films, literature, and popular culture. In a significant way, the volume has implications for transnational feminism and development in the sense that it interrogates foreign, or Western, modus operandi and interventions in the so-called Third World and shows how the resistance they generate can impede development work and undermine the true collaboration and partnership necessary to promote transnational feminist agenda. The contributors succeed in presenting these complex ideas and arguments with great clarity and in simple, accessible language.