Review of Saida Hodzic. The Twilight of Cutting: African Activism and Life after NGOs. Oakland: Univeristy of California Press, 2017.

Authors

Tobe Levin von Gleichen, Harvard UniversityFollow

Abstract

With considerable fanfare, in Adieu !'Excision. Histoire et fin d'une tradition (Raymond Hounsa, 2009), Christa Muller rejoices in having saved Benin from FGM, the French text lauding eradication. The effort instigated by a Saarbrucken-based NGO, it has banned blades from the vicinity of vulvae. In 1996, on a state visit, Muller, then married to Saarland's governor Oscar Lafontaine, was asked by Benin's First Lady Rosine Vieyra Soglo¹ to assist her Inter-African Committee (IAC) chapter by creating an association. This she did, launching I(N)TACT, e.V. and securing 300,000 Euros for the movement, a sum with strings, however. Berlin insisted on success -- an excision-free Benin. Hence, to close its three-year contract, the project staged a spectacle and published a book. But one unintended consequence emerged. Other sources of funding dried up despite the IAC's managing director showing that it continued, albeit less than before.

Recommended Citation

von Gleichen, Tobe Levin (2022) "Review of Saida Hodzic. The Twilight of Cutting: African Activism and Life after NGOs. Oakland: Univeristy of California Press, 2017.," Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies: Vol. 23: Iss. 1, Article 18.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.cortland.edu/wagadu/vol23/iss1/18