L’istituzione del genere: dominazioni e grammatiche della corporeità femminile in Rwanda

In Rwanda, the embodiment of female gender is based on a complex ritual practise called gukuna, or gukuna-imishino, which consist in the elongation of the labia minora by a massage that involved the young women each others. Women regard these practices as a positive symbolic element in their future lives, as wives and mothers. For Rwandans, male and women, gukuna is a fundamental aspect of the traditional cosmology based on the relationship between fertility and natural elements. This paper aims to describe the contemporary gukuna practice as a social construction of the female body. Gukuna, definitely, is a form of female genital modification, according to the author’s definition proposed since 2003 rather than OMS’s female genital mutilation classification.