Laura S. Grillo, "An Intimate Rebuke: Female Genital Power in Ritual and Politics in West Africa" (Duke UP, 2018)

New Books in Sociology · Jul 23, 2020 · 1h 19m

What if the moral guardians of West African societies are postmenopausal women? This is the argument that Laura S. Grillo makes in her 2018 book, An Intimate Rebuke: Female Genital Power in Ritual and Politics in West Africa (Duke University Press, 2018). Drawing on anthropological fieldwork in Côte d’Ivoire that spans three decades, Grillo elaborates a revolutionary argument that has significant implications not only for Côte d’Ivoire, but for the broader West African region. Postmenopausal women—the “Mothers”, as Grillo calls them—are the ultimate moral arbiters in society. They publicly…