Naminata Diabate, Naked Agency: Genital Cursing and Biopolitics in Africa

Two keywords in the title— agency and biopolitics –bespeak the analytical tendencies followed, and the third announces the site of investigation. This review responds mainly to the book’s theory beckoning from a standpoint situated in Africa. Naked Agency analyzes a set of gynocentric (speaking anatomically), activist, motions grouped together as genital cursing. The public, gestural, parts of these activities that are mobilized to force political and social changes when fully realized include disrobing in public, dancing in different degrees of undress, waving sanitary pads, including menstrual clothes. Spectacles of bare femaleness created with these acts do not signal seduc-tion or sexual availability to admired others. To the contrary, they are belligerent acts mounted on behalf of aggrieved political communities, consisting of males and females, for which other means of gaining remediating attention on well known issues have failed to yield desired results. The range of grievances for which such gestures could be deployed is limitless: ecological devastation in Niger Delta, electoral partisanship in Ivory Coast Gambia, low-income housing protests and anti-tuition fee increases at state in South Africa, sabotaged entertainment a grand state function They be the Saignantes when spirit and