An Intimate Rebuke

Female Genital Power in Ritual and Politics in West Africa

Laura S. Grillo (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

296 Seiten

2018
Duke University Press (Verlag)
9781478001201 (ISBN)

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Throughout West African societies, at times of social crises, postmenopausal women-the Mothers-make a ritual appeal to their innate moral authority. The seat of this power is the female genitalia. Wielding branches or pestles, they strip naked and slap their genitals and bare breasts to curse and expel the forces of evil. In An Intimate Rebuke Laura S. Grillo draws on fieldwork in CÔte d’Ivoire that spans three decades to illustrate how these rituals of Female Genital Power (FGP) constitute religious and political responses to abuses of power. When deployed in secret, FGP operates as spiritual warfare against witchcraft; in public, it serves as a political activism. During CÔte d’Ivoire’s civil wars FGP challenged the immoral forces of both rebels and the state. Grillo shows how the ritual potency of the Mothers’ nudity and the conjuration of their sex embodies a moral power that has been foundational to West African civilization. Highlighting the remarkable continuity of the practice across centuries while foregrounding the timeliness of FGP in contemporary political resistance, Grillo shifts perspectives on West African history, ethnography, comparative religious studies, and postcolonial studies.

Laura S. Grillo is Affiliated Faculty in the Department of Theology at Georgetown University.

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Part I. Home and the Unhomely: The Foundational Nature of Female Genital Power 19
1. Genies, Witches, and Women: Locating Female Powers 21
2. Matrifocal Morality: FGP and the Foundations of "Home" 54
3. Gender and Resistance: The "Strategic Essentialism" of FGP 81
Part II. Worldliness: FGP in the Making of Ethnicity, Alliance, and the War in CÔte D'Ivoire 117
4. Founding Knowledge/Binding Power: The Moral Foundations of Ethnicity and Alliance 121
5. Women at the Checkpoint: Challenging the Forces of Civil War 152
Part III. Timeliness: Urgent Situations and Emergent Critiques 171
6. Violation and Deployment: FGP in Politics in CÔte D'Ivoire 175
7. Memory, Memorialization, and Morality 198
Conclusion. An Intimate Rebuke: A Local Critique in the Global Postcolony 228
Notes 239
References 255
Index 275

Erscheinungsdatum	07.11.2018
Reihe/Serie	Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People
Zusatzinfo	10 illus, incl. 4 in color
Verlagsort	North Carolina
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	612 g
Themenwelt	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► Allgemeines / Lexika
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Weitere Religionen
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
ISBN-13	9781478001201 / 9781478001201
Zustand	Neuware