Medical Interventions on Women's Genitals: Historical Texts and Contemporary Discourse

Abstract

In Italian media and professional medical discourse, medical interventions on bodies are described in non-cultural terms and are presented as necessary responses to material problems considered objectively assessed. Far from being a mere linguistic process, this categorization is dense with meaning: it removes medicine from the realm of culture, transforming it from a sociocultural process to an historical object, a given. The controversy around a proposal for a ritual alternative to FGM in a Florence clinic triggered my reflection on the aforementioned medical view that organizes human reality into two conflicting shpheres: medical practices on one side and cultural actions on the other. In the context of a reflexive perspective on biomedicine, I analyze 19th-century Italian medical journals that consider female genital surgery as a cure for a variety of ailments; this analysis gives useful insight on the contemporary debate—alive in Italian biomedical environments—on the definition of medical practices in relation to interventions on patients' bodies and on doctors' roles in Italian society.