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Public Memory
CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS

BreastWork: Reading Breastfeeding as Cultural Practice. by Alison Bartlett

This project applies literary, critical and cultural analysis to the complex and often contradictory discourses which compete to make meaning of breastfeeding in particular, and maternity in general, in contemporary Australia.

It relies on discursive texts as holders of public memories about breastfeeding, and seeks to trouble the usual narratives of being a mother's duty, right, or natural instinct by bringing into play the constitutive effects of gender performance, media events, political and legal acts, erotic and economic tales, religious and writing traditions, visual conventions and celebrity icons, through the specificity of bodies in their raced, classed, sexual, and lactation histories. The meanings of breastfeeding that can be recovered from public narratives are rich in their imaginative and ideological seams, and can be traced back to other public memories over place and time. For example, New York celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz's famous image of Jerry Hall breastfeeding her son Gabriel, which appeared on the front cover of the Australian's weekend magazine a few years ago, both contains and challenges the conventions of portraiture that were current in the Renaissance in oil paintings of the lactating Madonna. Particularly when it comes to visual conventions, dominant public memories of breastfeeding imagery are redolent with Christianity's values of the Virgin Mother as ideal.

This project advances a compelling argument for considering breastfeeding not as an individual choice or practice, but as a cultural practice infused with public memories, histories and narratives which individuals must constantly negotiate in their private and public lives. Contesting the dominant idea that breastfeeding is innate or natural, it argues that it is more meaningful to consider it an act or performance that is constantly monitored and socially regulated over time and place. The project ranges over cultural texts as divers as television sit-coms to renaissance art, biomedical narratives to newspaper scandals, public health rhetoric and poetry. Moving from the usual modernist rhetoric of duty and discretion to a postmodern understanding of contradictions and desires, this book seeks ways to make breastfeeding more meaningful and valid in contemporary culture.

Outcomes from this project so far:
Publications
Hecate 2003 'Breastfeeding Bodies and Choice in Late Capitalism.'
Fresh milk: the secret life of breasts (Allen&Unwin) 2003. 'Thinking Through Breasts.
Habammen Zeitschrift (German Midwifery Journal) 2003 'Stillen als Kopf-Arbeit.'
Women's Studies International Forum 2002 'Breastfeeding as Headwork: corporeal feminism.'
Continuum: J Media & Cultural Studies 2002 'Scandalous Practices and Political Performances: breastfeeding in the city.'
Network Narrative News 2002 'Narratives of Breastfeeding.'
Campus Review 2002 'From here to maternity.'
Feminist Theory 2000 'Thinking through Breasts: writing maternity.'
Conference papers
ARM's Mothering, Religion and Spirituality conference, York University, Toronto 2003
Other Feminisms Aust. Women's Studies Assoc Int Conf, University of Queensland, 2003.
Spilling the Milk: cultural studies approaches to breastfeeding University of Sydney Aug 2003
Performing Motherhood: Ideology, Agency and Experience conference, La Trobe Univ, 2002.
Mothering: Power/Oppression, University of Queensland, 2001.
Women in Philosophy conference, University of Queensland, 2000.
Cultural Studies Association of Australia conference, University of Western Sydney, 1999.

Forthcoming
Cultural Studies Assn of Australia conference. 'Reading Rachel's Breasts: Scripts and meanings from Friends.' Murdoch U. Dec 2004
Stella Magazine, Canada 2004 'Milky Tales: erotics of breastfeeding'
Australian Feminist Studies 2004 'Black Breasts, White Milk? Ways of Representing Indigenous breastfeeding in Australia'.
Australian Feminist Studies 2004 Guest Editor, thematic edition, with Fiona Giles.
Australian Feminist Studies 2004 'Introduction: Taking Our Breasts to Work' with Fiona Giles.
Sex Education 2005 'Maternal Sexuality and Breastfeeding'