Suchergebnisse

Genital modifications are rites of institution related to gender binarism. The article elucidates how only some of them came to be depicted as "traditional", irrational, backward, and harmful by the humanitarian morality, which, after having associated them to "non-therapeutic" reasons, labelled them as "Female Genital Mutilation". The authors illustrate the problematical aspects of this globalised order of discourse on FGM, by articulating theories on humanitarian reason, gendered subjection and vernacularization. Thanks to the ethnography, the essay highlights that critical political anthropology is needed in order to stop concealing the multiple subjectivities who are implicated in this issue. ; Le modificazioni dei genitali sono riti di istituzione che partecipano al binarismo di genere. L'articolo ricostruisce come solo alcune di queste, connotate come "tradizionali", irrazionali, primitive e dannose, per il loro carattere "non terapeutico", siano state definite dalla morale umanitaria Mutilazioni Genitali Femminili/MGF. Le autrici evidenziano le criticità dell'ordine del discorso globale sulle MGF, intersecando le teorie della ragione umanitaria, dell'assoggettamento di genere e della vernacolarizzazione. Grazie all'etnografia, si evidenzia quindi l'importanza di un'antropologia critica del politico che non invisibilizzi le multipli soggettività coinvolte.

International audience ; Premise The subject/problem of the so-called Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) became a public issue in Italy only at the end of the 1990's, for the following reasons: an historical one, due to the silence on a colonial past which was different from that of other European countries; a situational one, that is a structural and cultural delay in facing social diversity and, in particular, the social transformations produced by migrations; a third reason, that we call opportunity/opportunism, ascribable to the political in-strumentalization of the patterns of social citizenship for migrants, namely forms of subaltern inclusion. At the time the discourse indicated a poor knowledge, the same that nowadays promotes an image of diversity full of stereotypes, the ones that reappear when immigration , Islam and Africa, are generically addressed. This is an approach which is often characterised by a high poignancy and/or paternalism, sometimes maternal-ism, which produces that effect of emotive participation which critical anthropology would define as "moral economy" (Fassin, 2009), that participates in producing, through indignation, forms of refusal and identification which orient judgments and acts, distinguishing among what is done, by what is not done and, mostly, what must not be done anymore, with a specific focus on female gender. In this way a distancing has been consolidated from a world, "their" world, represented by an always poor, ignorant and violent Africa, to exalt another one, "our" world, that of the human rights defenders, as the best possible world, despite the social complexity and the subjective situatedness of women with regard to FGM. Italy, furthermore, emphasised the question by firstly perceiving it as a health problem, and then, secondarily, as a legal one, de facto anticipating what in the European context would be handled with the three Ps: Prevention, Protection and Prosecution, that is the principles underlying the main global and national treaties. Following these ...