Breastfeeding and Bodily Transformations

Abstract

The first tier makes possible and calls for a new means of probing conceptualizations of the lactating body existing before and alongside biomedicine's present day interpretation of it. The second tier, taking up this challenge, investigates pre-modern European medical representations of the lactating body and recent autobiographical writings of breastfeeding women in terms of their positioning of the lactating body as a locus of social expression, renewal, and change---an active agent in the reproduction and transformation of social members and forms.