Pain as a Counterpoint to Culture: Toward an Analysis of Pain Associated with Infibulation among Somali Immigrants in Norway

Abstract

This article focuses on how some Somali women experience and reflect on the pain of infibulation as a lived bodily experience within shifting social and cultural frameworks. Women interviewed for this study describe such pain as intolerable, as an experience that has made them question the cultural values in which the operation is embedded. Whereas this view has gone largely unvoiced in their natal communities, the Norwegian exile situation in which the present study's informants live has brought about dramatic changes. In Norway, where female circumcision is both condemned and illegal, most of the women have come to reconsider the practice--not merely as a theoretical topic or as a "cultural tradition" to be maintained or abolished but, rather, as part of their embodied and lived experience.

In Their Own Words: The Health and Sexuality of Immigrant Women with Infibulation Living in Switzerland

“…In our study, migration represents a transition at which point memories of infibulation and cultural background are reviewed. As previously described in the literature [45][46][47], our study confirms that social class and social context have a major impact on how women understand and recall their FGM experiences. This is particularly true for women infibulated in rural setting using rudimentary tools (such as in Samya's case) or belonging to the lower social class living in rural region (Nadia's case) when compared to women from upper social class, living in the capital or urban region and infibulated under anaesthesia in private clinic (Anita's case).…”

Undoing female genital cutting: perceptions and experiences of infibulation, defibulation and virginity among Somali and Sudanese migrants in Norway

“…Though they are few in number and tend to keep it a secret, this can be interpreted as the strongest evidence of abandonment as defibulation not only threatens the woman's social reputation and standing but also renders the suffering caused by the original infibulation useless (Johansen 2002).…”

“…This is most striking in communities practicing infibulation, where the physical covering of the vulva can be described as a culturally construed virginity (Boddy 1998;Gele, Sagbakken, and Kumar 2015;Johansen 2006bJohansen , 2002Talle 1993), which is associated with virtue, femininity and morality (Abdalla 1982;Boddy 1998;Talle 1993). This understanding is interlinked with a social structure where biological paternity is important to secure patrilineal decent, which in turn is linked to lineage and clan as the guiding principles for overall social organisation (Boddy 1989;Talle 1993).…”

Porous masculinities: agential political bodies among male Hamas youth

“…Scheper-Hughes 2004). Johansen (2002) and Talle (2007) have also discussed the body's ability to act in relation to the pain of infibulation, and Good (1992) in relation to chronic pain. Talle claims that extreme, intense 12 Mahmood (2005) followed the women's mosque movement in Cairo from 1995 to 1997, focusing on how female agency is formed by the conscious subject in a specific historical context with the help of bodily practices.…”

“…and unbearable pain is the body's indirect way of protesting against cultural hegemony through physical agency and intentionality. The agency of the body in relation to intolerable pain has, as Johansen (2002) suggests, the potential to "explode" the cultural universe. The body makes sense of the various acts of violence through a conscious self, but it also reacts against overwhelming and traumatic experiences.…”