Lives of circumcised and veiled women: a global-Indian interaction of discourses and stories
By Debangana Chatterjee
Routledge2024
Dr. Debangana Chatterjee’s 2024 book builds on the established IR feminist understanding that “the personal is the international” (Enloe, 2014, p. 343). Dr. Chatterjee offers a rich and complex analysis of the multiple levels – “family, community, state and international politics” (p.2) – at which the discourses surrounding the two cultural practices of female excision/circumcision (FGM/FC) and the Islamic veil are constructed and overlapped. The book offers a detailed history of these practices and the formation of global discourses surrounding them, as well as their unique manifestations in India in the form of Khafz And Purdah respectively. In doing so, the book explores both questions of women’s agency and choice, and attempts to understand the interaction of global discourses with local discourses, as well as the ways in which cultural practices are rendered “unintelligible” ( p. 4) in this process, seen from the public’s point of view. the prism of any universal discourse (in this case, that of “human rights”). The book results in a nuanced analysis of these multiple hierarchies at play within IR.
This easy-to-follow book is divided into six chapters. The first chapter lays the theoretical foundations of the book. The following four chapters are divided equally into an analysis of both practices, paying equal attention to global and local levels. Thus, chapter 2 traces in depth the historical development of the international (legal/social) conversation around what has been called “FC/FGC”. The following chapter first contextualizes the practice of Khafz in India, before moving on to narrative analysis constructed through interviews on the practice, to understand the procedure and the Indian public discourse surrounding it. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the Islamic veil. Chapter 4 traces the evolution of multidirectional discourse on practice internationally, and Chapter 5 focuses on the practice of Purdah and the discourse surrounding it in India – using interviews and group discussions. The concluding chapter begins to reconcile the findings of the previous four chapters, expanding on the study’s contributions in terms of pushing the boundaries of knowledge production and IR as a discipline. The author presents his own analysis of understandings of “choice” and “action” with respect to cultural practices such as Purdah And Khafzhighlighting the need for a nuanced conversation between international and local discourses. As such, the book is well structured and takes the reader through every step, providing ample context before moving on to detailed analysis.
Dr. Chatterjee focuses on the narratives of the women themselves and “women’s experiential narratives remain at the helm of the discussion” (p. 13). The book uses in-depth interviews and focus groups to gather participants’ perspectives. This provides a rich account of the different facets of the conversations surrounding the two practices – from practitioners, activists, supporters, etc. Here then, as she herself suggests, Dr Chatterjee responds to Spivak’s (2013) call to make silenced voices heard. heard. This is where his objective of highlighting “marginalized knowledge” shines through (p. 5).
Particularly noteworthy is the book’s emphasis on legal and sociopolitical discourses and their interactions. As the book itself says, it is truly interdisciplinary and covers a lot of bases. For example, in the case of the Islamic veil, he tries to understand its implications in education, fashion, professional development, sports, etc. This ensures a comprehensive, layered and multifaceted view emanating from different sections of society, the state and the international community.
Here, the book also opens up important conversations around the Other. Discussing the ideas of the “male” and “colonial” gaze, and how they overlap, he explains how “coloniality doubly marginalizes women when women’s bodies become the primary site of politics” (p. 219 ). Thus, growing Islamophobia, associated with the persistent colonial imaginary of the Other, interacts with culture and tradition to determine women’s position and choices.
It is in these strengths themselves that the book could have gone further. It would have been interesting to carry out a more in-depth analysis of how international discourses find their way and manifest distinctly within or alongside Indian discourses. It was possible to discuss in greater depth the implications (or lack thereof) of such international discourses on Indian politics. Likewise, it would have been interesting to see more where the two discourses converge or diverge, and what this means for building global and local conversations. The conclusion begins to move in this direction, but the chapters divided into “international” and “local” levels sometimes seem to exist in isolation.
Secondly, the notion of “gaze”, implemented in a very interesting way in the theoretical foundations, could have been integrated more explicitly throughout the chapters. This could have been discussed at different levels – the colonial gaze, the male gaze, the state gaze, the majority gaze, the Western (Eastern) gaze in contemporary periods. The chapters have alluded to this analysis throughout, but could have benefited from a more explicit and up-front discussion of it.
Finally, some methodological questions arise in the reader’s mind. On the one hand, the book often mixes positivist and post-positivist language, in which the vocabulary of “variable” often enters into what appears to be an overarching, non-causal interpretivist discourse analytic study. Second, future research could complement current research by broadening its scope, for example, to rural women’s stories in the case of Purdah in India. Likewise, in the case of KhafzWould integrating the views of health professionals further enrich the study? Would a parallel study of the wearing of the Hindu veil in India perhaps help to better understand the differences and cultural specificities that the book is interested in?
Overall, the book is important and timely, opening the door to more crucial conversations about how we understand and perceive cultural practices, whether we hear the voices of those affected by these practices, how we judge and let us qualify these practices as foreign, and What are the ways to put global discourses in synergy with local discourses? It adds to the existing literature on gender and IR, by giving space to the voices of women themselves, and by identifying how global (orientalist) discourses on cultural practices must take contextual factors into account. In doing so, the book takes a look at the importance of an intersectional lens when attempting to address the centrality of gender in IR. Thus, Dr. Chatterjee’s simultaneous zooming out and zooming in provides a significant case study of how women and their agencies are enmeshed in the interplay of global and local discourses surrounding their lives, making them “sites of politics » (p. 219). ).
References
Enloé, C. (2014) Bananas, beaches and bases. 2nd ed. University of California Press.
Spivak, GC (2013) “Can the Subaltern Speak? », in P. Williams and L. Chrisman (eds.) Colonial discourse and postcolonial theory : A reader. New York: Routledge, pp. 66-111.
Further reading on international electronic relations