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The Failing Body: Narratives of Breastfeeding Troubles and Shame
Author(s) -
Hanell Linnea
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of linguistic anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.463
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1548-1395
pISSN - 1055-1360
DOI - 10.1111/jola.12158
Subject(s) - shame , narrative , breastfeeding , ideology , sociology , psychology , gender studies , social psychology , medicine , political science , linguistics , politics , philosophy , law , pediatrics
This article explores the relationship between discourse and experiences of ill health. Drawing on narratives, it shows how a mother who is experiencing difficulties with breastfeeding embodies sentiments of shame over what she perceives as a failure to perform motherhood. The notions of interdiscursivity and the historical body are employed to ground the individual's experience in discursive practices, and to propose that shame is a sentiment that arises in deviations from the biopolitical ideologies that are produced and reproduced through those practices. Expressing shame becomes a resource for assuming responsibility for failed motherhood; and, at the same time, it appears to obstruct recovery to smoothly functioning breastfeeding.