Menstrual temporality: Cyclic bodies in a linear world

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Sarah Pawlett Jackson of the University of London and St Mellitus College, UK Abstract: In this paper I will explore a phenomenology of the menstrual cycle, focusing on the cycle’s rhythm as a form of lived temporality. This is an underexplored area of phenomenological and philosophical analysis yet is of far-reaching empirical and social significance. I will consider ways that the subject can be alienated from this rhythm as a result of a dominant cultural narrative of ‘linear time’. Whilst most phenomenological analyses of temporality have majored on Husserl’s ecstatic time-consciousness, Henri LeFebvre focuses on a conceptual and phenomenological analysis of temporality as rhythmic, where this is ‘founded on the experience and knowledge of the body’ (LeFebvre 2004, 78). In a similar vein, Thomas Fuchs (2018) lays out a series of ways that human embodiment is cyclically rhythmed. This fundamental cyclicity, he argues, finds itself in discordance with ‘the linear conception of time [that] finds its shape in the scientific-technological advances of modernity’ (Fuchs 2018, 48). Neither LeFebvre nor Fuchs look specifically at the embodied rhythm of the menstrual cycle. Nor do they look in any significant detail at how different bodies may disclose different rhythms. Building on their insights, I will consider aspects of a variable but identifiable rhythm through the lived experience of the ‘seasons’ of pre-ovulation, ovulation, pre-menstruation and menstruation. In this I will draw on the insights of the ’menstrual cycle awareness’ movement – a practice of attending to the lived experience of moods and energies in each quadrant of the cycle (Pope & Hugo Wurlitzer 2017). I will argue that the lived rhythm of the menstrual cycle is a specific form of Fuchs’ ‘cyclical time of the body’ that finds itself in tension with modernity’s ‘linear time’. I will argue further that this dissonance between the menstrual body and the social and political world tends to be compounded by a lack of ‘menstrual literacy’ in education and culture. This analysis therefore hopes to bring phenomenological analysis into conversation with normative and socio-political issues, contributing to the idea that the phenomenology of temporality is a feminist concern (Schües, Olkowski & Fielding, 2011). Biography: Sarah Pawlett Jackson is a Tutor at the University of London and a Lecturer at St Mellitus College. She has also lecturers and tutored at Heythrop College, The Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford and the University of Roehampton. Her primary research to date has been on the phenomenology of intersubjectivity. Her other research interests include embodiment and 4E cognition, phenomenology of emotion, ethics and philosophy of religion. Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds. The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast. About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/ About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/