Flesh made law: The economics of female genital mutilation legislation

Abstract

Every man child among you shall be circumcised. And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you. Legislation to prohibit the practices described as ‘female genital mutilation’ has become an international franchise. Laws which mark the needs, desires and demands of the subject of ‘mutilation’, together with the subject who is apparently ‘non-mutilated’, have been enacted with unprecedented enthusiasm over the last two decades, in countries we might now call the ‘coalition of the willing’. The laws are strikingly similar and most of them include the phrase ‘female genital mutilation’ to describe the many practices that are said to ..