Early motherhood is a liminal and dangerous state for three key reasons:
1) The breastfeeding mother's body and milk exist in a transitional state that challenges ideas of a fixed boundary between self and other. Neither the mother nor child can be considered fully autonomous.
2) The semiotic relationship between mother and child, characterized by fluidity and permeability, threatens social norms that privilege individual autonomy and clear separation.
3) As a result, rituals and cultural norms attempt to impose order on the ambiguous and "out of place" nature of the early mothering experience in order to reinforce social structures. However, the transitional and "monstrous" aspects of this relationship may also offer an alternative vision of embracing fluid connections
2. Kim Kardashian – tweeted – 2010
‘I’m at lunch and the woman at the table next 2 me is
breastfeeding her baby with no cover-up’
When questioned…
My sister breastfeeds! It’s a normal beautiful thing, there’s
nothing wrong with it, but she covers herself up not w her
boobs exposed
3. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger, 1966
Dirt is essentially disorder. There is no such thing as absolute dirt: it
exists in the eye of the beholder. If we shun dirt, it is not because of
craven fear, still less dread or holy terror. Nor do our ideas about
disease account for the range of our behaviour in cleaning or avoiding
dirt. Dirt offends against order… For I believe that ideas about
separating, purifying, demarcating and punishing transgressions, have
as their main function to impose system on an inherently untidy
experience. (pp2-4)
4. Dirt is ‘matter out of place’ – Mary Douglas
• She writes about rituals around purity and pollution –
ritual pollution reinforces the structure of society,
definite boundaries of that structure
• Many events in our society are ambiguous – society has rules
to reduce or control this ambiguity. Breastfeeding is
ambiguous – the breastfeeding mother is transitional state,
‘Danger lies in transitional states, simply because transition is
neither one state nor the next, it is undefinable’(Douglas 2007:
119).
• Breastmilk is a human product that is ’out of place’ – the me
that is not me – betwixt and between. Leaky (out of control),
reaction of others (breastmilk vs formula)
• Rituals around breastfeeding clearly defined
to ensure society is under control - helps us
provide a set of tools which the early
motherhood process is easily understood
5. Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 1982
‘The me that is not me’
• The abject is ‘what disturbs identity, system and order.
What does not respect boundaries, positions, rules. The
in-between, the ambiguous, the composite’ Kristeva
(1982:4)
• Semiotic – the relationship with the maternal – before language
• Symbolic – when language starts – the paternal. The infant
starts his/her journey to autonomy.
• The abject is always linked to the maternal as we first
discover it in the semiotic stage, pre-language, when the
abject is first encountered.
• Pollution rituals are more widespread whenever
patrilinear power finds itself under threat, as a potential
defence against ‘against excessive matrilineality’ (p.77)
6. K
In the womb and breastfeeding – the border between self and other is permeable – we cannot
separate ’selves’ from what is outside us
The child’s autonomy involves separating itself from the mother’s body – when we can accept
the gift of milk as a gift – we learn we are separate from the mother - that mother / food is
‘other’ = GRIEF (Kristeva calls it physical nausea)
Therefore = food/milk = a powerful metaphor of the conflicted relationship between mother and
selves
Maternal relationship now mixed and intense and conflicting desires.
Comfort / rejection; dependence and independence = separation from the mother.
From the mother, the child learns the limits of its body and how to separate clean from unclean,
proper from improper.
7. Margrit Shildrick, Embodying the Monster, 2002
Skin with reference to the abject
• Breastfeeding challenges our cultural ideas that privilege the
individual, autonomy and separation our bodies are literally joined
to another.
• The idea of the skin gives us hope – she sees the body as positive –
mediated by touch, mucus, blood. The abject (that forces separation
between self and other) overcome by the power of attraction
between the same elements. ‘the masculinist economy of subject
and object finds no place here: “everything is exchanged, yet there
are no transactions. Between us, there are no proprietors, no
purchasers, no determinable objects, no prices.”’
• She wants an economy based on relationships between bodies, that
is better able to copy with difference that conventional models that
privilege autonomy - a fluid relationship of the feminine when
there is no binary of same/difference.
• Why is autonomy preferable to the idea of the flesh being a crossing
point between self/other???
• While the vulnerability of the borderline is a threaten to the
integrity of the ‘own and clean self’ (Kristeva 1982:52) it can also
offer a liminal space where self and other may intermingle.
8. My argument:
• Breastfeeding mother – matter out of place – both her body and the milk
• Breastmilk – no fixed boundary, leaky, slippery, can spill – definitely not the
boundary of the symbolic – semiotic of the feminine – maternal.
• Threatens the autonomy of both mother and child – neither are just SELF they are
merged
• Breastfeeding – liminal and marginal = dangerous!
• Culturally taboo?
• Out of control? (Those with the unconscious power of disorder = contagion to society = fear )
• Not pregnant but not ‘normal’ – breastfeeding a sign of difference
• Changes in behavioral rituals while breastfeeding – renegotiation of space
• Pregnancy and breastfeeding – a transitional state – from previous self to mummy.
Also challenges the body autonomy, not just ‘self’ but joined to another.
9. Louise Bourgeois
The good mother, 2007
Gouache on paper, 5.93 x 4.55 cm
Winnicot’s good / bad breast – ideas of separation
- the paranoid-schizoid into the depressed.
Maternal body and child – still one – together,
before the split. Links to Kristeva’s ideas of the
semiotic (maternal) and symbolic (paternal)
Shildrick’s ideas of embracing the monstrous
mother – the powerful mother and also the
almost leach like children – ambiguous
Done late in life – ’the encounter with the past is
not fully complete and the future has yet to be
determined.’ (Betterton: 2016)
10. Janine Antoni
Umbilical, 2000
Sterling silver, 20.32 x 7.62 x 7.62 cm
Cast of her mouth around a family
heirloom and the negative space around
her mother’s hand
Shildrick’s idea of touch - the body being permeable – no
autonomous self – the abject is embraced
Obvious connection between food, mothering and birth.
Unpleasant, even the casting process ‘negative space’ –
obviously human but slightly monstrous –
Silver heirloom – precious family ties
Suggests ambiguity of relationship
11. Rineke Dijkstra
Tecla, Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 16 1994,
1994
C-print on paper, 117 x 95 cm
Blood / breastmilk / ‘monstrous’ body
The opposite of the smooth glossy body of fashion
photography – still an ’uneasy’ body. The female body
as a metaphor for division between surface allure and
concealed decay (Laura Mulvey on Cindy Sherman,
Mulvey 1991: 145)
Still in a transitional stage – post-natal but body not
returned to ‘normal’
Neither mother nor child fully autonomous – blurred
Breastfeeding? Cuddling? One body.
12. Conclusion
• All three art works show maternal bodies that are not ‘normal’
• Self and other – blurred
• Ambiguous – painful but precious
• Transitional state of early mother cannot avoid the abject because of
its relationship to the excretions of the maternal body
• Early motherhood is dangerous because of it’s relationship with the
liminal and abjection
• Suggests that this negotiation between body’s and relationships is on
going – until old age
13. Bibliography
• Betterton, R (1996) Intimate Distance London: Routledge
• Betterton, R (2014) Maternal Bodies in the visual arts Manchester: Manchester uni press
• Buller, RE (ed) (2012) Reconciling Art and Mothering Farnham: Ashgate
• Douglas, M (1966) Purity and Danger London: Routledge
• Hustvedt, Siri (2016) A woman looking at men looking at women NY: Simon & Schuster
• Kokoli, A (2016) The Feminist Uncanny London: Bloomsbury
• Kristeva, J (1982) Powers of Horror New York: Columbia Uni Press
• Liss, A (2009) Feminist Art and the Maternal Minneapolis: Uni of Minnesota
• Nixon Mignon (2005) Fantastic Reality Massachuetts: The MIT Press
• Schildrick, M (1997) Leaky Bodies and Boundaries London: Routledge
• Schildrick, M (2002) Embodying the Monster London: Sage
• Winnicott DW (2005) Playing and Reality London: Routledge Classics
