Paper long abstract:

During my adolescence and my days of anthropological training, I was curious about the social connotations that underlie the restrictive rituals associated with menstruation in Assam (my birth place). This was triggered by the processes I myself had to submit to. My first academic discussion on menstruation was a Masters project where I engaged my own self as a case study to scrutinise various forms of treatments and therapies, both social and physical. Subsequently, for my MPhil, I studied women of my own urban neighbourhood (Uzan Bazar) to decipher the nuanced social experiences of menstruation. During my PhD, I extended my investigation and researched women of rural Assam in a village named Simlitola.

In this paper, I will explore how the self can be used to critically discuss concerns that are vital to anthropology. Studying one's own culture need not be deemed "sentimental". Through examples from my research, I plan to assert that inquiry into the ethnographic self can lead to knowledge of larger social and political meanings. It is incorrect to presume that examining the self leads to creation of a knowledge which is inferior to "scientific knowledge". Analysing one's own culture can be as revealing to the native, participant researcher as studying the "other". I will also focus on the assumptions of gender in my study of menstruation. Combined with ideas of cultural reflexivity, I plan to methodically utilise my own subjectivity to garner knowledge about my Self in the space that birthed my physical notions of identity.