Saida Hodžić’s The Twilight of Cutting: African Activism and Life after NGOs (University of California Press, 2017) illuminates the myriad state and non-state actors collaborating on campaigns against “Female Genital Mutilation” (FGM) in Ghana, where genital cutting was already on the decline. From a uniquely multi-scalar perspective, Hodžić reveals how cutting emerged as a problem to be shared by African activists, Ghanaian communities, western feminists, cut women, anthropologists, and many others. The following commentaries respond to different features of and arguments in Hodžić’s exciting book, which won the Michelle Z. Rosaldo Book Prize from the Association for Feminist Anthropology and the Amaury Talbot Prize for African Anthropology from the Royal Anthropological Institute. We hope you enjoy!

A note on terminology: throughout the book forum you will find the terms “cutting,” “female genital mutilation” (FGM), and “female genital cutting” (FGC). Our contributors use these terms differentially.

Contributions:

​Problematization as Object
​Stacy Leigh Pigg
Simon Fraser University

I Say
Claire Wendland
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Questioning the Zero Tolerance Paradigm and Legal Reform Strategies for Ending Female Genital Cutting: An Emerging Public Discourse in Africa
Bettina Shell-Duncan
University of Washington

Comment on The Twilight of Cutting
Inderpal Grewal
Yale University

Remarks on The Twilight of Cutting
Ara Wilson                                                                                   
Duke University

Reply:

Feminist Anthropology as Fugitive Practice
Saida Hodžić
Cornell University

Edited by:

Erin V. Moore
Columbia University

Download a pdf version of the book forum here.

Book Forum – The Twilight of Cutting by admin1666 on Scribd