Politics of the Womb: Women, Reproduction, and the State in Kenya Book

By understanding what we commonly call "Female Genital Mutilation" instead as a form of "initiation," Thomas attempts to wrest the practice free from a hundred years of Western colonial and post-colonial censure. Instead, she makes a persuasive case for initiation as residing within a complex and changing nexus of concerns about gender, generation, and class. Debates between colonial and anti-colonial interests, in this way, are marginalized and complicated, and Thomas is able to tell a more nuanced story of struggles over women's reproductive rights.

While I thought Thomas's approach to the subject matter was suitably novel, I felt her analysis didn't always match the theoretical standards she sets out in her introduction. Despite claiming to draw from Foucault and his conception of bio-power, this connection was not made explicit in her analysis; likewise for her stated concern about the problems of representing Kenyans' "voice." She name checks the right subaltern studies academics, but does not play their ideas explicitly against hers.

Nonetheless, this is an important and innovative contribution to African history that can help us better understand the complexities embedded in debates about reproduction in Kenya and Africa.