ABSTRACT

Reinterpreting Menopause brings together a number of reflections from a broad range of areas including feminism, cultural studies, clinical medicine, sociology, philosophy and political science and includes the voices and experiences of menopausal women themselves. In an innovative series of essays, current thinking about medicine, society and the body is critically examined. Particular attention is given to the medical representations of menopause, biology and aging, the history of medical approaches to women and the tensions between bio-medical models and other explanations of menopause.

Contributors include: E. Ann Kaplan, Emily Martin, Mia Campioni, Fiona Mackie, Roe Sybylla, Wendy Rogers, Kwok Lei Leng, Margaret Morganroth Gullette and Robyn Gardner.

part |14 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|12 pages

Mapping Menopause

Objectivity or Multiplicity?

part |60 pages

Menopausal Bodies

chapter 2|15 pages

The Left Hand of the Goddess

The Silencing of Menopause as a Bodily Experience of Transition

part |81 pages

Politics of the Symbolic

chapter 5|23 pages

Revolting Women

Women in Revolt

chapter 6|27 pages

Resisting Pathologies of Age and Race

Menopause and Cosmetic Surgery in Films by Rainer and Tom

chapter 7|29 pages

Gynopathia Sexualis

Theories of Decline in Biology and Aesthetics

part |65 pages

Discursive Strategies

chapter 8|17 pages

Facing Change

Women Speaking about Midlife

chapter 9|24 pages

Menopause as Magic Marker

Discursive Consolidation in the United States and Strategies for Cultural Combat

part |50 pages

Metaphors and Mutations

chapter 13|18 pages

Menopause and the Great Divide

Biomedicine, Feminism, and Cyborg Politics