Destabiliserande mjölkflöden

Abstract

This essay focuses on processes wherein human bodyfluids are materialized as foody and potentially edible. Influenced by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, I follow a milky rhizome (2015). This brings me to, among other things, breastmilk rings in China, breastmilk ice cream and to cows whose genes have been manipulated to produce breast milk. Scholars within critical animal studies pinpoint that animals are made absent when their bodies are transformed into edible matter. Carol J. Adams terms this the structure of the absent referent (2004, 2013). In this article however, I show that, in a similar way, the foodiness of human bodies is continuously made absent. Situations when humans appear as foody tend to generate feelings of disgust and repulsion. At the same time, I also argue that processes such as these can be interpreted in widely different ways depending on the (body and) context, and that the milky flows are considered most threatening when they are connected with – or emanate from – the bodies of Others.