Creating Spaces: Challenging Conventional Discursive Norms Surrounding the Marking of Womens' Bodies.

This paper, which is a part of a larger dissertation project, focuses on the practices of female genital cutting and breast implantation. In particular I examine the results of six months field research involving nearly ninety interviews conducted in Senegal in 2005. One of my main goals in carrying out these interviews was to create the space for the inevitable issues of power and agency to be challenged or over-turned in the relationship between white, Western academic interviewer and black, Senegalese interviewee. What I mean by this is that after listening to the men and women providing their viewpoints, stories and opinions on the topics under examination, I turned the tables and asked for their judgment on my American society. I presented each interviewee with photos of breast implantations, before and after pictures of women's bodies undergoing the procedure and of the actual silicone implanted in the breasts. After showing the Senegalese women and men these photographs, I then asked several questions regarding the practice. This was done with the hope of allowing them, for once, to be the entities passing judgment on Western culture and to hold the position of power that is capable of critiquing a practice in another culture rather than constantly being restricted to the category of judged and critiqued. The responses I received were nothing short of incredible. What I want to accomplish with the continuation of this research is to stress the idea that the oppression of women through the control, manipulation and the mutilation of their bodies should not, and must not, remain on the level of discourse and action that pits powerful and influential Westerners against Africans and others (in both senses of the word) concerning their respective practices. Rather, all sides must first recognize that there is a larger umbrella of oppression and control that is continually occurring which constantly restrains and harms women, and then must fight together against this oppression, regardless of which form it takes. The broader fight against the corporeal control of women, be it on an absolute physical level, or a more ideological or psychological level, must be won if either practice is to permanently end, particularly without simply having a new oppressive practice there to take its place. Finally, this paper directly speaks to several of the questions asked in the Call for Papers. One in particular, 'What are our responsibilities to our research subjects for whom we profess to speak but whose voices we my co-opt?' is addressed by the research I carried out. My responsibility to my 'subjects' was to firstly not speak for them, nor co-opt their voices, but rather to simply act as a vehicle for their voices to travel to places normally restricted. Secondly, I attempted to reverse the subjectification so that the academic 'interview' transformed into a dialogue among women that challenged conventional norms and structures. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]