While watching the movie, “Warrior
Marks” I was overcome with many of the same critiques Gunning articulates in
her essay “Cutting through the Obfuscation: Female Genital Surgeries in Neoimperial
Culture.” The film spends an incredible amount of time exotisizing various
stereotypical representations of “Africa.” The film rests on close up shots of despondent
looking women and girls, and clips of a women performing African dance. Her
dance is striped of any original meaning and recontextualized to represent the
pain of genital mutilation surgery with an “African” twist. Interspersed
between clips are interviews with Walker posing extremely leading and outright
condescending questions to her interviewees. Problematic, to say the least.
My own concerns with the film were mirrored in
Gunning’s essay. She discusses the “Eurocentric” lens Walker and Parmar take in
making the film, which promote a decontextualized representation of FGS. This
representation failed to acknowledge Walker and Parmar’s own privileges as
Westerners and wipes away all of the incredible diverse and complicated ways
FGS are enacted in a variety of settings. Though Gunning’s essay does not
specify or elaborate on any of the diverse ways in which these practices are
realized in different societies, she simply offers a claim at the end of her
paper for more research into the matter.
While I appreciate Gunning’s
acknowledgment of the problematic discourse surrounding FGS, I am still
questioning what right the west has in intruding on another culture. What
allows “us” to conduct this unsolicited research on other societies and decide
if it needs further legislation? I would assume researchers must proceed with
caution to avoid the age-old trap of “othering” a community and further
imposing Western help on an issue with which communities aren’t asking help.
Abusharaf’s
essay addresses the more specific practices that Gunning’s essay only alludes
to. Abusharaf delves into the stories of women who have had direct experience
with FGS. I found this to be an extremely enlightening ethnographic work. She
presents their narratives in full, allowing their work to (for the most part)
speak for itself. Though the questions she asks, and the contexts in which she
spoke with these women are absent, the narratives still provide great insight
into the complicated ways these women are navigating very specific societal
practices.
In Aziza’s story, for example, it
appears as though she used her surgery to avoid marital rape. She says, “I got
married and from the first day, I suffered. After giving birth, like the rest
of women, I demanded re-infibulaiton… Now, I only have sex on Thursdays” (9).
From her story it seems that she married young and after not desiring sex, used
her FGS as an agent in securing that goal.
Conversely, Suaad used the practice
for increased sexual pleasure. She says, ”When the vaginal opening is narrow
and tight, the woman enjoys the friction, and the man enjoys a long
intercourse…” (10). Abusharaf’s article does a great job of presenting the many
complex ways in which women narrate their navigation through their cultures,
oppressions, lives while asserting agency. Women use FGS in asserting their
power in their married life, and in their communities.
I completely agree. The film presented one extremely Eurocentric point of view that focused on the imposition of genital “mutilation” within a Western context of patriarchy and female powerlessness and victimization. This point of view was extremely uncomplicated and surface-level, not leaving any room for contestation.
ReplyDeleteI also picked up on the extremely sarcastic and condescending tone that Walker took during the interviews. For example, when interviewing the woman whose daughter was about to have the surgery, she said “it’s a very special day for you” in an extremely sarcastic tone, which belittled the woman.
I also feel that Walker deliberately presented this uncomplicated, one-dimensional view by avoiding any social and cultural contexts that might have complicated or contradicted it. For example, when the women interviewing Walker asks what she thinks about the fact that most of the people performing the surgeries are women, she agrees that this is true and responds that she thinks “it’s the most cruel part,” without going into any of the social and cultural value that Abusharaf highlights. This seemed to deliberately avoid any complications with the patriarchal inscription of female genital surgery that the film presents.
Furthermore, Walker’s ethnocentrism was present in the film when she equated her childhood story of being shot in the eye by her brother and when she equated female genital surgery to slavery in the U.S. Additionally, the film also solely used the term “genital mutilation” instead of “genital surgery” and mostly interviewed and only sympathized with women fighting against the surgery.
Another thing I noticed was that Walker said that women from outside of Africa and women originally from Africa that had lived in the West “will have a big impact on Africa.” This seemed to point to Africa’s primitiveness and its need for help from the West, and the West’s overall superiority. As though even African women could only have an impact if they had lived outside of Africa/been influenced by Western culture. This also creates the Africa and “The West” dichotomy as Gunning points out.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree with your post! The films focus on the genital mutilation mad it seem as though the women were powerless. I feel like this act of staying pure was just another way to keep control of the women in their society. They say it is a special day as if it is something to be proud of but how can that be since they are putting the women in a tremendous amount of pain and suffered and taking parts of them that they can't get back. I see this practice as shameful, i don't see how the sowing of women is supposed to assure they are pure. How do they know the men aren't out doing the things they preach to be against.
Walker used very impactful scenes that shoed just how much pain and suffering these women seemed to be facing. The future saw the genital surgery as tradition and every women should have it to be seen as clean because no man wants to marry a "dirty" woman. Which I thought was ridiculous that in order to see that they are clean they must be violated in the worst way. And seeing these young children go through such a thing made it that much worse.
I really enjoyed this documentary it was very real and based on things that get over looked here in the US. It was very informing of what was taking place outside of our nation. It was a good reality check and showed how a sense of independence and power can be easily taken from women without any real reason.
I agree with your analysis of Gunning’s essay as a way to critically discuss the ‘eurocentric’ lens of the film. In addition to your argument concerning the western world’s right to even conduct research on other cultures, I also questioned Gunning’s point of ‘combatting’ FGS. Like you, I agreed that Gunning did acknowledge western First World privilege, but then towards the end of the essay, she comes back to writing that “we as feminists ought not become paralyzed in the face of the need to combat and eradicate FGS and all culturally dictated mutilations of women” (219). Gunning broadens the scope of the feminist lens to investigate all cultures that contain mutilation of women, but this statement still seems problematic to me. The point of Gunning’s work seems to still be focused on eradicating all forms of FGS, while just framing it in more intersectional terminology. Unlike Abusharef’s essay, which as you says investigates the complexities of FGS, Gunning seems to only be interested how to represent FGS in terms of both First and Third World feminism with the same end goal of eradicating it, yet still without an understanding those complexities.
ReplyDelete