Territory-object-body: material-discursive entanglements of the menstrual cup in Colombia

This thesis traces the material-discursive relations woven through and around a small, seemingly trivial object, the menstrual cup. In Colombia, the menstrual cup moves across multiple spaces: the market, municipal programs, development and humanitarian projects, feminist and activist networks, by word of mouth. This study focuses on the cup’s extra-institutional circulation through encounters between menstrual educators/entrepreneurs, and territorialized communities. The primary site of this research is the coastal Caribbean village of Brisas del Mar where Dorkas, a community leader, utilizes the act of surfing as a claim of mutual belonging between women and the sea to establish a wider claim regarding the centrality of knowledge(s) and balanced socionatural relations to ensuring her community’s survival and thriving. In following Dorkas’ plans for introducing the menstrual cup to the surf club, this thesis draws on relational epistemologies, notably body-territory onto-epistemic frameworks commonly mobilized in menstrual activisms and education in Colombia. Working through and with the body-territory as a heuristic framework, the chapters examine, alternately but also interdependently, the territorial, embodied, and material dynamics involving the menstrual cup both in Brisas del Mar, and in engagements with activists, educators, entrepreneurs, and people who menstruate across the country. Weaving between the local and national scales and situating the object sociohistorically, this thesis demonstrates how examining the menstrual cup through its material-discursive relations reveals engagements in everyday practices of knowledge production as worldmaking practices.