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What Is This Thing About Female Circumcision? Legal Education and Human Rights

School of Law, University of East London, UK

Hilary Lim

School of Law, University of East London, UK

The article explores the construction of Female Circumcision as the epitome of the challenge of cultural pluralism to universal human rights within human rights peda gogy. Three particular features of this construction are investigated. First, the horror of the practice seems to render other challenges invisible. As a result, it appears that the west is the place of normality, and other peoples have instead 'culture and tra dition'. Second, it is sited in a mythical 'Africa', fixed as one place and one time, with one 'victim', which includes not only the 'passive child' but also the 'dangerous African seductress'. Third, the pedagogic construction implicitly relies on the notion of the west's rational and autonomous human being. Among the many possibilities for discussion here, the article focuses on the two most significant to the argument: the child and the body. The article concludes that the pedagogic construction of Female Circumcision undermines the whole enterprise of gaining a deeper under standing of cultural pluralism and universalism. Incorporating discussion of body practices common in the west, including male circumcision, equally presents the danger of creating simple 'objects of study'. A way forward is consciously to seek in the classroom the multilayered awareness which is necessary to recognize our own limitations.

Social & Legal Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3, 365-387 (1998)
DOI: 10.1177/096466399800700303


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