Materializing: Period-tracking with apps and the (re)constitution of menstrual cycles.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Standard
Materializing : Period-tracking with apps and the (re)constitution of menstrual cycles. / Andelsman Alvarez, Victoria.
In: MedieKultur, Vol. 37, No. 71, 2021, p. 54-72.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Harvard
APA
Vancouver
Author
Bibtex
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
T1 - Materializing
T2 - Period-tracking with apps and the (re)constitution of menstrual cycles.
AU - Andelsman Alvarez, Victoria
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - The present article explores how cycles are brought into being through the practices and affordances involved in period-tracking with apps. Based on thirteen in-depth semi-structured interviews with period-tracking app users living in the Netherlands, it expands on literature discussing the relationship between embodiment, apps, and quantification. The contributions of this article are two-fold. Theoretically, it argues for the use of Karen Barad’s notion of apparatus to understand how bodies are (re)configured in relation to self-tracking technologies (1998). Empirically, it exposes how bodies emerge in localized period-tracking practices, within material-semiotic arrangements that both resist and reproduce cultural ideals about menstruating bodies. Period-tracking with apps, this study finds, brings the body’s interior processes into being in a “systematic” way, (re)configuring the cycle as either a series of phases or an interval with a certain (normative) duration. In all cases, periodtracking with apps becomes a means for users to access their internal body and to materialize the invisible processes of the cycle in ways that can be acted upon.
AB - The present article explores how cycles are brought into being through the practices and affordances involved in period-tracking with apps. Based on thirteen in-depth semi-structured interviews with period-tracking app users living in the Netherlands, it expands on literature discussing the relationship between embodiment, apps, and quantification. The contributions of this article are two-fold. Theoretically, it argues for the use of Karen Barad’s notion of apparatus to understand how bodies are (re)configured in relation to self-tracking technologies (1998). Empirically, it exposes how bodies emerge in localized period-tracking practices, within material-semiotic arrangements that both resist and reproduce cultural ideals about menstruating bodies. Period-tracking with apps, this study finds, brings the body’s interior processes into being in a “systematic” way, (re)configuring the cycle as either a series of phases or an interval with a certain (normative) duration. In all cases, periodtracking with apps becomes a means for users to access their internal body and to materialize the invisible processes of the cycle in ways that can be acted upon.
U2 - 10.7146/mediekultur.v37i71.122621
DO - 10.7146/mediekultur.v37i71.122621
M3 - Journal article
VL - 37
SP - 54
EP - 72
JO - MedieKultur
JF - MedieKultur
SN - 1901-9726
IS - 71
ER -
ID: 300692752