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Soiled Identity: Memory-Work Narratives of Menstruation

75 Henry Street, Windsor 3181, Victoria, AustraliaRiverRedGum{at}bigpond.com

This article focuses on the narratives and discussion produced through a memory-work study about menstruation with a collective of eight Australian women. Unfolding to exhibit a complex and contradictory experience of the body and menstruation, the narratives show that the body of a menstruating woman has cultural meanings inscribed that function to ensure the embodied experience of a menstruating woman is unfavourably different from the embodied experience of a non-menstruating woman. These women’s reflections on and discussion about their experiences express differences in the symbolic ordering of menstrual fluid as clean or dirty. The complex relationship between the meanings ascribed to menstruation and the social consequences of menstruating, especially the changed subjectivity and associations to the body was identified.

Key Words: clean–dirty self • embodied subjectivity • memory-work • menstruation • narratives • women’s experience

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