Conjectures (and Refutations?) on Breastfeeding: Decolonial Breast

Abstract

Breastfeeding has been a field of special silence, exclusion, epistemological constraint along the human history - generically patriarchal-. In order to subvert this situation, the main aim of this article is to address breastfeeding as a key object study from a decolonial perspective, in defending breastfeeding as transcorporality, and emphasizing lactivism as lactation culture. To this end, some classical and contemporary debates about breastfeeding are raised, namely: the nature versus culture dilemma regarding breastfeeding, the concepts of empowerment and agency regarding notions of guilt and "breastfeeding inability" and, finally, the analysis of feminist condition of breastfeeding from an expanded vision of subalternity and fundamental criticism of adultcentrism. In short, a decolonial thinking about breastfeeding is proposed.