Frontmatter and Editorial

In lieu of an abstract, here is the first pararaph of the editorial: Cliteridectomy denotes the partial or complete amputation of the clitoris. It is one of three variants of Female Genital Mutilation. Female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female genital cutting and female circumcision, is the ritual removal of some or all of the external female genitalia. The practice is found today in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and elsewhere within immigrant communities from countries in which FGM is prevalent. UNICEF estimated in 2016 that 200 million women living today in 30 states had undergone the procedures (UNICEF). The applied procedures differ according to the country or ethnic group. They include removal of the clitoral hood and clitoral glans; removal of the inner labia; and removal of the inner and outer labia and closure of the vulva, called infibulation. Here and in this special issue, we will primarily address cliteridectomy, i.e., the removal of the clitoral hood and clitoral glans. We shall not deal with the removal of the inner and outer labia or with infibulation since both procedures were rare in the West. By “West”, we refer to an imagined culture that is “absolutely different” from the “Orient,” that Edward Said described in Orientalism (Said). The “West” therefore necessarily is a form of essentialism since it reduces complex entities (Carrier 3). The “West” is a simplification that we conscientiously use as a “strategic essentialism” or “mimesis” (Abraham, Gaard, Irigaray 76) since in the literature on FGM the discussions revolve primarily around the alleged ‘non-Western’ practice of female genital cutting. The ‘pre-history’ of cliteridectomy in the West, however, shows that a clear distinction between the Occident and the Orient is impossible since systems of knowledge about the body were free-floating between these abstractions. ‘Western’ doctors had learned from Arabic sources what they supposedly knew about female bodies. Arabic sources, in turn, went back to Greek antiquity.