Full Description
This book draws on literary, cultural, and critical examples forming a menstrual imaginary—a body of work by women writers and poets that builds up a concept of women's creativity in an effort to overturn menstrual prejudice. The text addresses key arbiters of the menstrual imaginary in a series of letters, including Sylvia Plath the initiator of 'the blood jet', Hélène Cixous the pioneer of a conceptual red ink and the volcanic unconscious, and Luce Irigaray the inaugurator of women's artistic process relative to a vital flow of desire based in sexual difference. The text also undertakes provocative against-the-grain re-readings of the Medusa, the Sphinx, Little Red Riding Hood, and The Red Shoes, as a means of affirmatively and poetically re-imagining a woman's flow. Natalie Rose Dyer argues for re-envisioning menstrual bleeding and creativity in reaction and resistance to ongoing andproblematic societal views of menstruation.
Contents
Part I: What is the Menstrual Imaginary?.- Introduction: Want to Start a Pussy Riot?.- Chapter One: Revisioning the Wild Zone.- Chapter Two: Dear Sylvia; The Blood Jet is Poetry.- Part II: The Menstrual Imaginary Against-the-Grain.- Chapter Three: Dear Hélène; White Ink vs Red Ink?.- Chapter Four: Dear Julia; Writing Beyond Abjection.- Chapter Five: Dear Luce; An/Other Becoming Woman.- Part IV: Re-Imagined and New Menstrual Tales.- Chapter Six: Dear Marlene; Re-Telling The Red Shoes.- Chapter Seven: New Menstrual Tales; The Vulva Ring.- Conclusion: The Menstrual Future.
