Thanks, Ayo, for that wonderful example. Given the age of the woman in question, her father was a man ahead of his time, who, unlike many other men in his time and in that cultural space, saw the horrors, oppressive logics, and patriarchal foundations of the practice.
Prof. Mbaku, you make excellent points. Africans are not children to be protected from evil foreign anti-FGM NGOs and organizations. For goodness sake, this infantilization of Africa and Africans should stop, and the ability of Africans to formulate their own ethics and morality utilizing all the knowledges and resources available to them, including foreign ones, should be recognized. Anything less than this is a little condescending, an expression of what Bill Maher calls the soft bigotry of low expectations, which is often applied to non-Western peoples by Western liberals and progressives.
On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 2:13 PM, John Mbaku <jmbaku@weber.edu> wrote:
Ken:First, not all traditional practices, whether they are practiced in Africa or some other part of the world are benign or beneficial. Who should condemn and campaign for their abolition? Anyone who is in a position to do so, whether foreigner or native.Second, while the intervention of the Royal Niger Company could be considered opportunistic and destructive to the Niger Delta's various groups and their traditions, many Nigerians, especially those from Calabar and its surrounding areas, would say that intervention by Scottish missionary, Mary Slessor, was both timely and beneficial. Perhaps, someone from Cross River and Abia States can correct me and argue to the contrary.Third, over the years, many African intellectuals have argued that European Christian missionary societies actually paved the way for and greatly enhanced the "success" of the colonial enterprise in the continent. As part of the argument, Christianity is said to have softened the African and helped him easily accept and internalize the indignities of colonial exploitation. Yet, as was quite clear in the German colony of Kamerun (which after 1916 would become League of Nations mandates under British and French administration and then UN Trust Territories under British and French administration after WWII and the founding of the United Nations), education at schools owned and operated by foreign missionary societies helped Cameroonians recognize the contradictions of colonial rule. It was these Cameroonians who provided the intellectual foundation for the successful struggle against colonialism. By any measure, Ruben Um Nyobé, who was summarily assassinated by the French colonial government, remains Cameroon's most important founding father. He and a handful of other graduates of missionary schools, led the fight against French imperialism in the UN Trust Territory of Cameroons under French administration--in fact, as these leaders would write later, the church helped them more effectively articulate their ideas about brotherhood and the dignity of all of God's creatures.Fourth, I am not totally opposed to the participation of foreign NGOs in Africa--we, like people in other parts of the world have free agency and in exercising it, we can refuse to take the assistance offered by these groups if we believe that it comes with conditionalities that are likely to result in our exploitation. Or, are we saying that Africans, at this point in their political evolution, are still incapable of determining how to develop their own societies and hence, must depend on external actors for direction? If you are fighting the forces of exploitation, I do not see why accepting foreign assistance undermines your movement, unless you provide the foreign actors with the wherewithal to do so. Even China (PRC), the world's fastest-growing economy, has accepted and fully utilized foreign assistance but has done so on its own terms. Many of the East Asian economies (e.g., South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong) readily sought and accepted foreign assistance in their efforts to develop. Today, they are fully developed economies and yet, they have managed to retain their cultures and traditions. Why not Africa?Fifth, male circumcision and FGM are two different issues that should be seen as such. My studies of the African societies that practice both, show that they are undertaken for completely different reasons. The present discussion originated from the death of a famous campaigner against FGM and I think we should focus on FGM. If anyone wants us to take up the issue of male circumcision next, we can do that.Sixth, Ken, I do not know why you still insist on trivializing FGM by reference to expressions such as "symbolic cutting," "labia is cut simply to make a mark, without any removal of the flesh?," etc. Why, for heaven's sake, should anybody cut a girl's labia? Why make a mark on the labia? What is the point? What if in the course of making this mark, the labia are infected and the girl is maimed for life or worse, dies? Death or permanent disfigurement is the fate of many young girls in the African societies in which this practice continues. All this in the name of "passage to womanhood"! There are other less intrusive ways to initiate people into adulthood. FGM should not be an acceptable way, regardless of how "small" the cutting is.Finally, in a globalizing world, I find it difficult to see how African societies can effectively prevent their cultures and traditions from being affected by outside forces. Cultures are dynamic animals--interaction with others allows them to grow, deal with changing societal needs and challenges and remain relevant to the people. Hiding from the rest of the world only contributes to stagnation, underdevelopment, poverty, and material deprivation.----On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 10:20 AM, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:hi moses--
this is complicated. i had thought the exchanges on this topic were pretty much finished, but i always welcome responding to you.
i have been pretty much partly misread throughout this thread. the topic elicits such heat.
i am, as usual, not the world expert on the topic, but i know a few things, and have had long experience in dealing with or seeing the politics of it played out. so, i'll ask your indulgence as i explain my position.
where to begin? the radical excision of the parts of the genitalia that goes by the name fgm, and the infibulation that some also practice, seems quite terrible to me, and frankly most people i know. but, but, there are a few caveats that matter a lot to me. what is the labia is cut simply to make a mark, without any removal of the flesh? what if that is not done to stop women from enjoying sex but to initiate a girl into womanhood? how is that worse than male circumcision? if there is no real "mutilation," why is it shocking?
i screened Warrior Marks at MSU maybe 15-20 years ago, and the msu students (primarily female, as it so happened) were outraged, and had trouble holding back their scorn, dislike, almost hatred of africans for practicing "fgm," and the response i was given to the question i posed above was filled with abhorrence and venom.
why is that? anyone who has been around western reactions to african practices understands that the two cultures frame things differently, and that shapes the reactions. in this case, the western student sees science and medicine as trumping african religious beliefs, which they would regard as backward superstition. the western student is not humble: he or she feels they know the truth, and at best, as a "nice kind missionary" might "sacrifice" their modern comfortable status at home and go out and "save the natives."
i hope you and i agree on how reprehensible this is, and at least has to be a consideration in the issues at stake.
are there any points at which i would hold my nose and say, yes, we have to stop such and such a practice, at all cost; have to intervene as outsiders? of course; i advocate for intervention, for instance, over genocide. when human rights are violated, i advocate for intervention, but there it has to be more nuanced. i would not advocate reintroducing foreign rule, violation of sovereignty, because a govt violates human rights. but i would advocate for pressures to be brought to bear, including withholding funding. an example would be withholding american military aid to rwanda because it has stifled the opposition, jailed the political candidate who opposed kagame, because journalists have been killed, and so on.
as an aside, then, the case of amnesty. it isn't all or nothing: i am not arguing, i did not argue, that we not express our advocacy over "fgm" in africa, but that it should take the form of supporting women's organizations in africa that are working on the issue. that was my experience in senegal, and i found their work exemplary, in contrast to the u.s. congress desire to without funding to senegal until the senegalese govt passed laws against it. i feel the same way still. (to repeat; the senegal govt caved and passed anti-fgm legislation; the women's groups went out, patiently, year after year, and finally made headway. the former approach reinforced senegalese deference to the donor nation; the latter grew organically out of the local population. i favor the latter, applaud it)
amnesty is not a western organization. you are right about it being founded in the west and getting most of its funding in the west. its centers for research are now located around the world, with two centers in africa. if its principles date back to the enlightenment, that doesn't mean africans haven't adopted those principles. all african states have signed onto the u.n. declaration of universal rights. but more importantly, ai works by supporting human rights orgs in african countries, lobbies the govts, publicizes concerns, and asks its advocates to write authorities in african states asking them to act on behalf of prisoners of conscience.
not all interventions are the same. what to do about slavery in mauretania is not the same as what to do about journalists being harassed or jailed in burundi or ethiopia. in some cases we write u.s. authorities asking them to bring pressure on a govt, but even there, not all forms of pressure are acceptable. mostly we want to publicize the event and lobby foreign govts to act. that seems to have an impact.
i want to end by returning to cutting. i am not trivializing what it means to cut a child. however, i want to also not trivialize what it might mean to intervene in a practice where the child is taught in his or her community that not undergoing traditional initiation means not becoming a full man or woman (as i tried to indicate in referencing dogon practices). there are competing issues at stake: not violating the child's body versus not violating the community's beliefs and worldviews. the former, the body, is not an absolutely pure object that shouldn't be touched. i gave as an example facial scarification. we could cite many others. the latter is not an absolute: slavery, in its various forms, can't be tolerated, despite a community's claims that it forms the framework for the society. but when the objection is made, by john mbaku or my american students, that any cutting, even if merely symbolic, is absolutely to be prohibited, i believe we are not discussing simply the child's agency or the dated nature of the practice, but something more, something inherent in the refusal absolutely to hear what the other has to say or believe. that is where i see modernism, call it western if you want, shut its ears to others.
because i am jewish, i am perhaps more sensitive to what this means re male circumcision as well. for a while the germans outlawed it, until there was such a reaction that merkel had to have the legislation reversed. in a play by arthur miller, dealing with the holocaust, at one point a jewish chararacter says to another who claims he will pass as non-jewish, "what will you do when they look down your pants." if jews decide some day to end circumcision on medical grounds, and that that symbol of the covenant is less important than the child's health or agency, so be it. but if non-jews tell them, you can't inflict this on a child, then i would have to say, having seen the act performed (the baby is 8 days old; the cutting doesn't appear to inflict great pain; the child cries briefly, and it is over), knowing all the members of my religious community around the world undergo this ritual, who are you to tell us what to do?
if you explain to me why it is wrong, i will listen, and if you are right, i will have to change my mind. but i would hope that i would have something to say about the matter.
all traditions can be changed; but they are not all the same, and the means for changing them have to be weighed given the circumstances. that was what i was trying to say, and especially i want to say, the decision should be made not "from above" except in extreme cases, like genocide or slavery. mostly it should be made in collaboration.
best
ken
On 10/30/14, 9:07 PM, Moses Ebe Ochonu wrote:
Ken,
I think folks, including myself, were reacting to your seeming trivialization of female circumcision through the use of expressions like "small cutting," "symbolic cutting," etc. One discursive tactic for trivializing a matter is to unnecessarily complicate it, which is what folks read you to be doing when you sought to classify, following the WHO, female circumcision into gradations and varieties, as if to suggest that only some forms of the practice are hurtful, traumatizing, morally wrong, and thus deserving of condemnation. I for one understood your point about foreign activists and actors, but I read it as others did in conjunction with what seemed like your refusal to unequivocally condemn a practice that you now say you oppose.
By the way, if I may ask, if a practice is wrong, what is wrong with foreigners and foreign NGOs using their resources and visibility to spotlight it or mobilize people against it? At any rate, is there a foreign NGO that does not work with local groups and partners that share its advocacy? If you know of any, please let me know because you seem to be erecting a straw man of foreign NGOs who go to Africa to imperially tell Africans what to do and not to do without collaborating with or working through local partners. You're a member of Amnesty International, a group founded and funded in the West, which campaigns against human rights violations in Africa and in many cases prescribe certain notions of human rights protection and violation to African governments and peoples--notions that may in fact be informed by Western notions of rights and personhood. Why don't you see that as a form of imperialism? Why are you involved with them? If your answer is that they work with or through local partners, well, so do the anti-FGM foreign NGOs that you so vehemently condemn. I really see a double standard here with your commitment to AI and its work in African countries condemning and promoting certain practices it deems either morally reprehensible or noble.
My overarching point in all this is to suggest that the idea that foreign NGOs who campaign against FGM in Africa are imperialist and should cede the stage completely to Africans is neither practical nor consistent with your own activist commitments.--
On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 10:21 AM, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
dear ibk
i agree partly with you, but disagree strongly on other points.
i am an american, so a westerner. i don't see the world in one optic shared by everyone else. there is no single west, no single africa, no single villain out there. there are perspectives that vary, and some of those that predominate in the west are terrible about africa. maybe that means americans are imperfect, and if you can concede that you might agree that there are also views in africa that are not so great. what bothers me is lumping everyone into the same mold.
i raised the issue of male circumcision on this thread as well, and john said, another day for that. fine. but it isn't just jews who practice it; not only muslims who practice it; lots of christians throughout the world do so as well. and as for the "west" not "toying with it" because jews practice it, it is hardly the case that because it is a jewish tradition that it hasn't been challenged. you are imagining a jewish presence and power that doesn't exist. in fact, that is classic antisemitism.
you can google the issue if you want to find enormous attempts to prohibit male circumcision, not only in the u.s. but in europe as well. and in fact in amnesty international as well.
i agree with you, however, that the representation of female circumcision by the west has been part of the long tradition of western denigration of africans as barbarous, and it doesn't help to adopt the dominant western tropes of civilization and barbarism that served colonialist discourse for hundreds of years.
finally, i want to make it plain to john and others participating in this discussion that i agree that the practices of excision and infibulation ought to be ended, but not by outside donors imposing their cultural norms on africans, but rather by african populations themselves taking control of the issue. i support african groups opposed to the practice; i strongly disagree that the u.s. congress should tie its money to africans changing their practices as a result.
even if i don't like the practice, i find that is a form of imperialism.
ken
On 10/29/14, 7:54 AM, Ibukunolu A Babajide wrote:
Dear friends,This is thye most illuminating narrative I have read on this topic. Coming from a supposed "victim" it is even more compelling. I have three daughters and I will NEVER allow any of them to be circumcised. The issues that we need to address are these:1. The characterization of the practice by the West;2. The dehumanization of Africa and recruitment of Africans to do the dirty for them on fellow Africans; and3. Finding African solutions to African issues without being led by the nose by ignorant non Africans who make money and create their own narratives.I raised the issue of male circumcision and so far nobody has taken up the gauntlet, afterall it fits samlessly into Jewish tradition and the west will not toy with that tradition.Cheers.IBK--
On 29 October 2014 09:57, ofure aito <ofureaito@gmail.com> wrote:
May I add my voice by sharing my experience on FGM conversation. First, I understand the position of Mr/Dr/Prof Kadiri and Samuel as well as Prof Mbaku's strong opposing position. I was genitally mutilated in what is called 'circumcision' at age 5 along with my elder sister at age 8. I recall a middle aged woman coming to our house one late afternoon and asking my mum to buy her new razors. Thereafter, my sister was taken to the bathroom. When she returned she walked astride. I worried and was transfixed by the way she walked after a simple visit to the bathroom. I didn't understand what was happening but within me I said I will not go to the bathroom. So I went to our room and hid under the bed, in fear and rejection of walking like my sister. My father came to lure me out to the bathroom where I was given my 'skin cut' and walked like my sister. When I returned to the living room I overheard our neighbor's son in our house explaining to my brother the reason why were walking like that was because we had just been circumcised. The point in this recall is that, I was born in the city and grew in the city, yet my parents felt it was necessary, even when I was already conscious of my environment. My parents never explained. My understanding came from what the neighbour said.
I do not subscribe to fgm or circumcision, but I wonder how much damage that has cost women in African societies since the 60s to date in terms of diseases and sexual deprivation? Our arguments usually take cue from western prompting. The symbolic sexual control it is expected to pose has not limited women's potentials in so many areas of self achievements and actualization (even in the precolonial that the practice was strongest and a thing of pride, women were leaders, partake in policy making, decision makers at home, during war and peace). Even promiscuity has never been affected or controlled, because in my growing up days we hear about women: married or single, who were described as 'wayward', putting it mildly. It has not stagnated women and their identity, sexuality and sensuality.
>From my experience, the change in the 21st century like Prof Mbaku clamour for is subjective and dependent on individual choices. My parents did not choose to do what they did until we were almost in our teens.
I stand on the argument that it is a societal tradition, not culture that may have outlived its implication, especially, in the age of technological consciousness. The interpretation and practice are subjective but the age-old view is to control women's sexual power and identity vis-a-viz male dominance. Has this actually been the case. Another point is that change is a natural, evolutionary process (Darwinian law) that must come. Whether, we clamour for it or not some of these anachronistic and 'perverse' practices will become obsolete and without people necessarily demanding the change. Even the culture of piercing and tattooing in the west as fad is fading.
And I do agree with Samuel that until the west has given a name and approval, Africa does not come up with her on opinionated view. For instance, the issue breastfeeding in the 70s was disdained by the west in order to sell baby formular and now, exclusive breastfeeding for at least six months is ideal. Africa is the dump site of various ideological tests and we Africans do not see anything good done in, by or come out of Africa.
Ofure
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JOHN MUKUM MBAKU, ESQ.
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Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor of Economics & Willard L. Eccles Professor of Economics and John S. Hinckley Fellow
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---Mohandas Gandhi
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