Social Transformation through Literature: Le Bistouri des Larmes
BY LINDSAY IRVINE
When Yetounde was but seven days old, Mandibou villagers sacrificed her to the fears and superstitions of the past; after only seven days of life, she became a victim of ritualized female circumcision. Had it not been for the intervention of a French missionary, Father Benoit, the dangerous procedure would have claimed her life and prevented her from later banning the practice as a high-level government official. Bagudu is a fictional village in Ramonu Sanusi’s new novel Le Bistouri des Larmes (The Scalpel of Tears) but its subject matter is very real. According to Amnesty International, over 2 million female circumcisions are performed each year, and more than 130 million women worldwide are affected.
Female genital mutilation (FGM) dates back at least 2,000 years and remains particularly common in the central African band stretching from Senegal to Somalia, and from Egypt to Tanzania. Within this region, approximately 95 percent of resident women have been subjected to the potentially fatal procedure, which is usually performed by a traditional practitioner using crude tools. It is practiced fairly openly in Africa, but it also occurs in the Middle East, where it is shrouded in secrecy; in some South American and Southeast Asian ethnic groups; and in immigrant communities currently residing in Western countries. Practicing communities frequently justify FGM as cultural heritage or a religious requirement, further complicating eradication efforts.
Cultural heritage is supposed to offer refuge from a world of rapid change, but when culture kills, how do we overcome its impediments without transforming them into tenacious symbols of colonial and post-colonial power struggles? Sanusi asserts that certain cultural practices must be redefined—and subsequently abolished—and identity refashioned through a process of internal dialogue and education, which are “vital weapon[s] for transforming society, [and] necessary for globalization to have far reaching effects.”
Le Bistouri des Larmes grapples with cultural heritage, both ancient and modern, through the language of occupation. Sanusi’s French in this novel, like that of Ahmadou Kourouma in Les Soleils des Independances or Mongo Beti in his Trop de Soleiltue l’amour and Branle-bas, is an African-French that developed as French colonialism grafted itself overtop African societies. Sanusi admits that his novel’s anti-FGM and anti-
corruption messages remain inaccessible to much of its impoverished and illiterate African audience because globalization’s benefits—from foreign investment in African oil and infrastructure—still disappear into the coffers of corrupt government officials. However, it was this very corruption that sparked his exploration of cultural debate in the novel’s fictitious Nigara nation.
Ramonu Sanusi (rsanusi@gmu.edu) is assistant professor of French (http://mcl.gmu.edu/). His novel Le Bistouri des Larmes was recently published by Les Editions du Pangolin. Lindsay Irvine is the publications and projects assistant at the Center for Global Studies.
