eBook - PDF
An Intimate Rebuke
Female Genital Power in Ritual and Politics in West Africa
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF
About this book
Throughout West African societies, at times of social crises, postmenopausal womenâthe Mothersâmake 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 CĂ´te 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 CĂ´te 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.
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Yes, you can access An Intimate Rebuke by Laura S. Grillo in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Theology & Religion & African History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I. Home and the Unhomely: The Foundational Nature of Female Genital Power
- Part II. Worldliness: FGP in the Making of Ethnicity, Alliance, and War in CĂ´te dâIvoire
- Part III. Timeliness: Urgent Situations and Emergent Critiques
- Conclusion. An Intimate Rebuke: A Local Critique in the Global Postcolony
- Notes
- References
- Index
- Photographs