Egyptian Activism against Female Genital Cutting as Catachrestic Claiming

Abstract

This paper deals with questions of the politics of location in knowledge and norm production within the context of Egyptian feminist activism for abandoning female genital cutting practices. It seeks to determine underlying schemes of international campaigning discourse and analyzes how these predicate and complicate Egyptian postcolonial activism. It draws on a broad literature study in addition to fieldwork in Cairo consisting of in-depth interviews with activists and policy makers. My focus is on the national Task Force against FGM from 1994 until 1999 and its subsequent cooptation by the National Council of Childhood and Motherhood. I argue through the concept of catachresis that location matters in setting the terms of anti-FGC discourse and its relation to religion.