An Intimate Rebuke: Female Genital Power in Ritual and Politics in West Africa - Couverture souple

Grillo, Laura S.

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1478001550 ISBN 13 : 9781478001553

Editeur : Duke University Press, 2018

Synopsis

Throughout West African societies, at times of social crises, postmenopausal women--the Mothers--make 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 Côte 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 Côte 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.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

Laura S. Grillo is Affiliated Faculty in the Department of Theology at Georgetown University.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Duke University Press
• Date d'édition: 2018
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1478001550
• ISBN 13: 9781478001553
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 296
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible