Menstrual Cosmology As Alma Gottlieb

In discussing taboo, the focus is often on specific acts and practices which are conceptualised as taboo. Many of these practices—human sacrifice and incest, for example—touch on aspects of viewing the body itself as taboo. However, the body itself as taboo is a boundary which is focused on less, often because the acknowledgment of bodily taboos is in itself forbidden. In our cultural experience, it is common to cover up and dismiss taboo phenomena of the body, whether those involve menstruation, the deterioration of the body, or infection. There are many aspects of taboo that only our human bodies can perform, and these aspects range from small-scale, everyday secret annoyances to large-scale ostracisation. Using the readings “Menstrual Cosmology

However, she was soon surprised to find that this was not the case for the Beng, and that she had originally simplified the issue greatly. In fact, several of the rules served the exact opposite purpose; in the case of touching corpses, the Beng prevent menstruating women from physically interacting with the dead not because a menstruating woman pollutes a corpse, but because “the corpse […] pollutes the menstruating woman” (Gottlieb 67). To examine this concept, two phenomena must be explored: the properties of the menstruating woman, and the infectious and harmful nature of the corpse. Gottlieb posits that the main danger a menstruating woman presents is that of polluting the Earth; if several of the rules are broken, then menstruation risks ruining the crops or affecting the weather in some way. However, while living without following these rules can harm the Earth, symbols of death can harm them and put them at risk in Beng

Many of our small, everyday taboos rely on a fear of infection—sitting on an already-warm toilet seat, sharing drinks with strangers—and many of them aren’t entirely rational. For example, toilet seats are nowhere near the amount of harmful bacteria as restaurant menus. While we might consider many of our own taboos surrounding infection to serve preventability and safety, many of them serve no hygienical purpose whatsoever. There are some places which ride the line in terms of preventability, like hospitals. Hospitals create an environment which both houses bodies which are medically taboo in some way and seeks to remedy those taboo features. While they have often been a place of easily transmitted illnesses, hospitals create a space which is depicted as hyper-hygienic, dispelling cultural fears of taboo and maintaining an illusion of a lack of infection. For the dead body, there are cultural practices which achieve similar effects; people afraid of the deterioration, decay, and disease of a dead body may prefer methods like embalming or cremation, which culturally sanitise the body and remove the ‘infectious’ aspect. While dead bodies are only very rarely able to transmit disease, like in the case of Ebola, many people still associate them with their own potential demises. While Corpse and zombie viruses involve the dead and undead infecting the living and bringing them