Breastfeeding as headwork: Corporeal feminism and meanings for breastfeeding

Breastfeeding as headwork: Corporeal feminism and meanings for breastfeeding

Recognizing that there is now a corpus of feminist work that theorizes the body, sometimes termed corporeal feminism (Volatile bodies: toward a corporeal feminism, 1994), this paper seeks to apply some of those theories in their transformative potential to the practices, policies and experiences of breastfeeding of the late twentieth century in the west. As an example of material sexual difference, the physiology of breastfeeding is examined in comparison with other cultural and institutional discourses. On the narrative level, all are found to varying degrees to characterize breastfeeding as a matter of headwork, as an activity to be learned and managed rather than embodied. Duplicating the preoccupation with and privileging of mind over matter common in western epistemology has entailed a shift in knowledge/power from mothers to professionals at a time when women’s corporeality is most active and symbolically significant. New narratives are therefore sought and tentatively applied, which involve reconceptualizing what we understand the brain to be, and ways in which we might strategically read the body (and breasts) as literate and thoughtful.

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