Title
Single Narrative: Obscuring Difference in “The Guardian” Campaign Against Female Genital Cutting
Abstract
Female genital cutting (FGC) has become an indisputable atrocity in Western public discourse. Many argue that popular Western advocacy against the practice tends to denigrate FGC cultures and to reduce genitally cut women to voiceless victims. In 2014, the British newspaper The Guardian joined the fight against FGC with the launch of its End Female Genital Mutilation Global Media Campaign. Drawing on postcolonial criticism and political scientist Sanjay Seth’s theory of liberalism’s intolerance of difference, I argue that The Guardian campaign authorizes only one condemning narrative of FGC that obscures all others. Through this narrative model, the campaign usurps the agency of the same women it seeks to liberate.
Faculty Sponsor
Heather Hayes
Sponsor Department/Programs
Rhetoric Studies
Tracks
Rhetorical Studies: Interventions
Terms of Use
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Location
Reid G02
Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Single Narrative: Obscuring Difference in “The Guardian” Campaign Against Female Genital Cutting
Reid G02
Female genital cutting (FGC) has become an indisputable atrocity in Western public discourse. Many argue that popular Western advocacy against the practice tends to denigrate FGC cultures and to reduce genitally cut women to voiceless victims. In 2014, the British newspaper The Guardian joined the fight against FGC with the launch of its End Female Genital Mutilation Global Media Campaign. Drawing on postcolonial criticism and political scientist Sanjay Seth’s theory of liberalism’s intolerance of difference, I argue that The Guardian campaign authorizes only one condemning narrative of FGC that obscures all others. Through this narrative model, the campaign usurps the agency of the same women it seeks to liberate.
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