Purity, cleanliness, and smell: female circumcision, embodiment, and discourses among midwives and excisers in Fouta Toro, Senegal

Abstract

AbstractSince the 1980s, a multiplicity of medical, social, and anthropological research has looked into different aspects of female genital cutting (FGC), with outcomes that are used as justifications for, or objections to, different forms of intervention on a global level. Yet there is limited research looking at local indigenous medical knowledge, and how potential health problems resulting from cutting are understood and treated by those who perform female circumcision as a profession. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Fouta Toro, Senegal, this article shows that despite some medical professionals’ genuine commitment to stop FGC, their aesthetic notions of cleanliness and repulsion often still conform to dominant discourses and beliefs around purity. This article explores contradictory conceptions of female anatomy, purity, and olfactory differences between excised and unexcised women. It shows that instead of there being a one‐dimensional opposition between different forms of knowledge (local/indigenous vs biomedical), as frequently implied in public health messages, people can assimilate seemingly contradictory viewpoints that correspond to their social identities, embodied manners, and the sensory and olfactory perceptions of their social environment.