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Experimental Futures
Plastic Bodies: Sex Hormones and Menstrual Suppression in Brazil
Duke University Press
Copyright:
This content is made freely available by the publisher. It may not be redistributed or altered. All rights reserved.
ISBN electronic:
978-0-8223-7419-0
Publication date:
2016
Book Chapter
Managing the Inside, Out: Menstrual Blood and Bodily Dys-Appearance
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Published:April 2016
This chapter details local understandings of menstruation. It provides an ethnographic account of the situations in which menstrual blood generates disgust. The chapter critically engages with the work of Mary Douglas, where emphasis is put on the way bodily or social integrity is breached by the circulation of “matter out of place.” Here, the problem is taken the other way and issues concerning bodily boundaries are seen as making, rather than unmaking, bodies. The chapter provides ethnographic data on how menstruation is experienced by women, rather than by focusing on how it is symbolized. Drawing on extensive interview data on...
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