This study focusses on discourses on menopause through a critical reading of a selection of nine self-help books on the topic in the context of Dutch-speaking Belgium and the Netherlands. The aim is to explore whether self-help books constrain or facilitate the development of emancipatory discourses on menopause. We combine feminist critiques that identify the experience of menopause as a site of potential for revolt with insights from queer and critical new-materialist theorisation to probe the books’ emancipatory capacity. Our analysis (...) identifies three prominent discursive repertoires: a medical, psycho-therapeutic and spiritual repertoire. Anger and erotic power emerge as important themes, albeit differently framed dependent on the discursive repertoires that the books employ. We conclude that none of the books succeed in disrupting prevailing oppressive discourses that devalue ageing women. There are two important constraints, notably the books’ individualistic and depoliticised stance and their reductionist view on the biological body. As a way out, we propose a gaga feminist reading of menopause that looks at anger and erotic power as sites of ‘biopossibilities’ that may open space for overthrowing oppressive models of gender, sexuality and desire. (shrink)

Discourse in EuroAmerica in connection with menopause is selectively naturalized, with specific consequences for practice, deflecting attention away from non-biological aspects of ageing. The medicalized discourse of North America is compared with that of contemporary Japan, where emphasis is focused predominantly on social rather than biological change. Following Latour and Haraway, it is argued that culture and nature are not dichotomous. Further, both biology and culture are contingent. `Local biologies', that is, subjective experience constituted from culturally informed knowledge, expectations and (...) practices, are in part shaped by physical sensations and symptoms, that differ quantitatively in Japan and North America. This difference influences - but does not determine - the production of discourse and medical responses to this stage of the life cycle. Situated cultural practices of creating culture/nature boundaries are sites for moral and political disputes, which in turn influence subjective experience, the discourse of medicalization and the politics of ageing. (shrink)