Motokupan: Cassava disease and menstruation

Discover the third session of the 2025–2026 Americanist Anthropology seminar: "Motokupan: Cassava disease and menstruation among Makushi women in Guyana."

"Drawing in part on the Makushi concept of motokupan, the intervention incorporates analysis of menstrual blood, prenatal care, childbirth, and reproductive processes in a broad sense. Motokupan is a disease that affects cassava plants and is caused by menstruating women treading on the plantations. It is accompanied by taboos that exclude these women from working with cassava, even though it is emblematic of the reproductive life of Makushi women.

We will examine the aversion expressed by some of them to menstrual blood and the techniques they use to mitigate its manifestations. However, menstruation is unstable: this will become apparent when exploring the implications of motokupan, both in terms of experience and representations, when menstruation becomes a routine rather than an exception. This will ultimately lead us to examine the negotiations that take place in the formation of young women's bodies and to question the various possibilities that arise throughout this process."

Charlotte Hoskins – University of Oxford, School of Anthropology & Museum Ethnography/LAS

Discussant: Andrea Zuppi – Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, University of Bonn