Final Seminar: Josefin Persdotter
At this seminar PhD student Josefin Persdotter presents her work-in-progress manuscript on "Menstrual Dirt". The text will be discussed and improvements will be suggested by the commentators.
In her thesis Josefin Persdotter presents a sociological study of menstrual dirt. It is an inquiry of how parts of menstrual life come into being as dirt through human-technological interactions.
It analyzes everyday practicalities of menstruation: how people roll their bloody pads, empty their menstrual cups, wash their menstrual genitals, their pubes and their finger nails, where they throw menstrual garbage, how they disinfect menstrual cups, and how they scrub blood-stains off of toilet seats, underwears, bathroom carpets and tile-grout. It sticks with the materiality and sensorially of dirt; investigating the intricacies of foul menstrusmells, discoloring of menstrual cups, the consistency of menses as it flows down the drain, and the stubborn persistence of the stains.
The aim of this research is to demonstrate and understand effects of how menstruation comes to matter as dirt. Persdotter argues that exploring the makings of menstrual dirt offers a sociological opportunity to make visible naturalized, routinized and trivialized practices and technologies in our everyday lives, opening them up as less given, and both more problematic and more possible to change.