Juliet Rogers: Law’s Cut on the Body of Human Rights

Abstract

The anxieties of Australians of European descent over immigration and the construction of an ‘Australian identity’ have, in recent years coalesced around the issues of veiling by Muslim women and female genital mutilation (Aly and Walker 2007, 203–214). These customs have often been portrayed by politicians and the media as being threats to liberal democracy in Australia. Mainstream debates on the question of female genital mutilation (FGM) or female circumcision especially have been dominated by arguments similar to those made by Geraldine Brooks (1995), whose work portrays those subject to FGM as hapless victims in need of rescue by stringent legislation. Juliet Rogers’ book comes as a valuable intervention in these debates. Rogers does not explicitly state that her writing emerges from the Australian context, but it is an important frame by which to better understand her work. For those unfamiliar with the Australian context, Paula Abood (2002) is helpful in explaining the discourses regarding the question of Arab women’s identity and activism in Australia and the public obsession with Arab, African, Muslim Australian women’s private lives. Rogers’ book attempts to use psychoanalysis to examine the depiction of FGM and torture as scenes of violence which, according to the author, informed the demand of pressure groups for changes in legislation. Initially, Rogers draws the reader’s attention to the disturbing and graphic images of small girls undergoing circumcision, which are circulated in the media by anti FGM activists. Her primary argument, which derives from the work of Sigmund Freud, is that there is an inherent anxiety of castration in the mind of the subjects, who in this case are anti-FGM activists (6).