Morgane Billuart – Cycles, the Sacred and the Doomed Inquires in Female Health Technologies

morgane-billuart

Set Margins, ISBN 978-9083350189, English, 136 pages, 2024, The Netherlands

‘Female bodies and technologies have an ambiguous relationship’, writes Morgane Billuart in her new book Cycles, the Sacred and the Doomed. It is an auto-ethnographic journey through what is formally considered pathology, but is in fact a very common condition related to women’s periods. She debunks the ever-growing myth of chemistry and hormonal tactics that enhance and manipulate our bodies to worship the still ambitious myth of productivity, in reality denying and negating our natural rhythms and states. Billuart also analyses and explores, through the search for information about her own conditions, different frames, such as digital propaganda on the one hand, and human exchanges on the other, in horizontal forms (online forums) and vertical ones (video influencer broadcasts). She also addresses so-called FemTech, the industry dedicated to the technological ‘improvement’ of various aspects of menstruation through data harvesting and efficient predictive algorithms, and she does so in a way that many women can immediately empathise with. This book is a valuable, intimate path that is both easy to follow and also to understand. It reveals the surreal state and consequences of what Jane Ussher calls ‘the pathologisation of women’s dysfunctionality’, and it explains and shares essential knowledge and strategies in a valuable way.