Copyright

Katarzyna Gawlicz and Zsuzsa Millei

Published On

2024-04-22

Page Range

pp. 213–234

Language

  • English

Print Length

22 pages

9. Mysterious Cotton Pieces

Childhood Memories of Menstruation

Chapter of: (An)Archive: Childhood, Memory, and the Cold War(pp. 213–234)
This chapter explores the memories of menarche of three girls who grew up in socialist countries in the 1980s. We use Kopytoff’s theory of the cultural biography of objects and Rogoff’s theory of guided participation to intimate the girls’ ways of knowing and practising menarche in relation to objects and significant others. Objects carry cultural meanings and, as such, taught girls about practices and feelings associated with menstruation and helped them to navigate their periods. The memories analysed here demonstrate that girls’ everyday experiences in state-socialist and capitalist countries were quite similar and that children on the Eastern side acted as knowing subjects rather than passive victims of ‘indoctrination’.

Contributors

Katarzyna Gawlicz

(author)
Associate Professor at University of Lower Silesia
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1668-5393

Katarzyna Gawlicz grew up in socialist Poland, moving back and forth between a small village and a large city. As a teenager, she spent one summer at a pioneer camp in the former Soviet Union, which was for her an illuminating experience of political socialization (whose meaning she grasped only later). Currently, she works as an associate professor of education at the University of Lower Silesia, Poland. In her teaching and research, she has focused on power relations and democracy in early childhood education, children’s rights, transformative learning through action research, and, recently, on relations between childhood and nation, and education in times of climate crisis.

Zsuzsa Millei

(author)
Professor at Tampere University
Visiting Professor at University of Gothenburg
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4681-6024

Zsuzsa Millei was born in Hungary. After migrating to Australia in 2000, she enrolled in a PhD program. Her thesis focused on the history and politics of early childhood education and care in Western Australia. She had to be persuaded that there might be value in a study between the Australian system and the socialist Hungarian one, which she undertook later. She is still somewhat puzzled―although much less after the ‘Recollect/ Reconnect’ project―when researchers express enthusiasm for research on socialist childhoods. Perhaps it is due to her upbringing in a socialist country characterized by its explicit official politics (standing in line). At the same time, perhaps growing up in this context is what ignited her interest in researching children, childhood, and politics. She is also Mnemo ZIN with Nelli Piattoeva and Iveta Silova, good friends and comrades in research, art, and having fun.