I stumbled upon a blog written by kjmitchell715 who, according to the posted bio, is a graduate student at New York University working on a Master of Arts centered on Infectious Disease in Film and Literature. Her main areas of study include: Global Public Health, Anthropology, Art and Public Policy, and Bioethics. She writes, in a blog titled, “My re-introduction and “viral mothers”:
It’s Paula Treichler’s idea that “cultural interpretations of biomedical phenomena and biological catastrophes are important to the understanding of disease in a social world” – and this is truly the knot of my various strands of study. It’s where the vampires and zombies can roam freely with Foucault and Haraway living dis-harmoniously, wreaking havoc in society’s imagined boundaries of disease. It’s my job to blur those boundaries, to help raise the questions about hard science and disease and disaster that don’t get asked enough in scientific contexts. I’m taking my cue from Paula Treichler, Brad Lewis and Bernice Hausman, (my adviser, his friend who teaches at Virginia Tech, who is also my friend’s teacher–small world), Donna Haraway, Sandra Harding, etc.
While the broader agenda of our course focuses on queer mobility with contagion narratives serving as one facet of overarching exploration, it is clear that there is a larger discourse that attends to this subject. Likewise, as we have discussed in class at length, the influences of media and film have incited concerns and discussions related to the construction of race, gender, sexuality, and nationalism that the contagion narrative but creates and destroys. As Patricia Wald in her chapter, “The Columbus of AIDS,” emphasizes, “The emphasis on discovery and consequent obscuring of invention explains how the epidemiological construction of an outbreak narrative reproduces conventions that shape perceptions” (219). Within this conceptual framework we can begin to examine contemporary concerns with the relationship between the outbreak narrative and constructions of identity.
I am specifically interested in a concern kjmitchell715’s blog, “The Contagious Narrative,” raises regarding the maternal body and subsequently the viral body. This is a concern we have not explicitly discussed in the course but it is one that is inevitably linked to constructions of race, gender, sexuality, and nationality. She states:
Medical journals have authors battling out whether to recommend to mothers that they breastfeed their infants or give them formula. For years in the United States, breastfeeding has been viewed almost as a “medicine.” We’ve read about the reported benefits of breastfeeding over formula feeding: not only is it supposed to help with development of the infant’s mind and body, the mother’s breast milk contains natural vaccines, as well. The aspect of breastfeeding that is typically left out of medical journals (likely because it is a cultural connotation) is the mother/infant bonding that occurs through this process. However, medicalization of breastfeeding is not common in all parts of the world. Specifically in areas of the world where HIV/AIDS is more rampant, and the likelihood of mother to child transmission is greatly increased. Hausman conjures the image of the “viral mother” stating that “mother’s bodies are understood as both a location of and vector for HIV contagion” (138). In this context women are not only seen as the carriers of contamination, also the means of spreading the filth from one human to another.
This concept of the viral mother fits nicely into the construction of the contagion narrative. The “infected” is situated in a position of both nourishment and contamination. What is important to note here is the use of the body as a transmitter. The child’s sustenance is dependent on the physical body of the mother—or any female body that has recently been pregnant. When the female body is queer within this narrative structure, what complications arise? If the body is already considered “sick” by means of association with deviant sexuality, what then is the value of the medically prized breastmilk of that body?
If the mother “indulges” in deviations of the normative practices of race, gender, sex, and nationality then, within this narrative, she is considered “at risk” as Wald and Treichler acknowledge. When this body is linked to the viral infections of HIV/AIDS, the mother is then elevated to a level of contamination that has both medical and social repercussions. Wald recognizes “The embellishments…added with the word indulged and the characterization of the patients’ sexual comportment offer insight into how stereotypes and cultural narratives subtly infuse scientific hypothesis” (221, original emphasis).
A question of privilege also arises when thinking about the viral mother. On one level, as previously discussed in class, access to healthcare, education, and treatment for diseases are largely a factor of economic, social, and class distinctions. To push this further, how does access to baby formula complicate these concerns—specifically in a context of an environment where clean drinking water is also scarce? Wald touches on the notion of privilege in her article in relation to the HIV/AIDS epidemic: “The epidemic dramatically changed the prestige and funding of medical specialties. The belief that communicable disease would cease to threaten the health of the North in the late twentieth century had made it difficult for the area of infectious disease to draw the top researchers” (214). How does this carry over to concerns with the viral mother?
These concerns over motherhood, breastmilk, and disease are ones being debated currently. By applying the structure and language of the outbreak narrative we can begin to dissect social constructions resulting from its medical relevancy. Fear of the invisible is ever-present in this depiction.
Here is a of the trailer for The Invasion (2007, dir. Oliver Hirschbiegel) starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig.
As we can certainly see, this narrative has been re-made in numerous films—seemingly, a film for every generation. Related to this post, Nicole Kidman assumes the role of a mother who battles, along with her child, against the invasion. [SPOILER ALERT] A specific narrative point to address is the sequence in which a neighboring child is absent a mother because of that mother’s inability to protect herself—she succumbs to the invasion. What is important to recognize is the race of the mother and child; they are both Asian. Nicole Kidman, (a white, heterosexual female) becomes a substitution for the child’s deviant mother by the end of the film.
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=194329
I have also linked the cover image of Bernice L. Hausman’s book, Viral Mothers
Breastfeeding in the Age of HIV/AIDS, who coins the term and explicitly deals with the notion of the “viral mother.” The cover art suggests a vulnerably present in infants that must rely on the mother’s body. As an extension of this, there is a lack of power or control on behalf of the infant which can be argued in a larger case for the lack of power or control of contagious bodies both medically—against the virus—and socially—against public borders.
Works Cited
Hausman, Bernice L. Viral Mothers: Breastfeeding in the Age of HIV/AIDS. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2011.
The Invasion. Dir. Oliver Hirschbiegel. Prod. Joel Silver. By David Kajganich. Perf. Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, and Jeremy Northam. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2007. DVD.
Kjmitchell715. “My Re-introduction and “viral Mothers” « The Contagious Narrative.” The Contagious Narrative. Word Press, 1 Mar. 2010. Web. 02 June 2011. <http://contagiousnarrative.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/my-re-introduction-and-viral-mothers/>.
Treichler, Paula A. “AIDS, Homophobia, and Biomedical Discourse: An Epidemic of Signification.” How to Have Theory in an Epidemic: Cultural Chronicles of AIDS. Durham: Duke UP, 1999. 11-41.
Wald, Priscilla. “The Columbus of Aids.” Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative. Durham: Duke UP, 2008. 213-63.
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This is a really interesting topic. I had never considered the scary possibility of the natural, and mostly positively portrayed topic of breast feeding in furthering this epidemic. Especially since Africa has the largest population living with HIV, and similarly vast impoverished areas, it seems reasonable that mother’s would need to use breast feeding as a way to nourish their infants. Thinking about how this furthers popular tropes is interesting: a (dark skinned) mother unfit to raise her children in a safe and healthy way, the backwardness of largely impoverished areas, the idea that “they have too many children for the issues going on over ‘there.’”
However, I did have a question regarding the following part of your post:
“If the mother “indulges” in deviations of the normative practices of race, gender, sex, and nationality then, within this narrative, she is considered “at risk” as Wald and Treichler acknowledge. When this body is linked to the viral infections of HIV/AIDS, the mother is then elevated to a level of contamination that has both medical and social repercussions.”
Although I realize you don’t attempt to answer this question here, how does the “gay” narrative that is popular in many developed countries fit into poorer and less developed areas. Because a main concern rests in how mothers will feed their children when a grocery store (and money) are not practical answers, and the breast milk meant to naturally feed infants is contaminated, are gay men an issue that is put on the back-burner so to speak? According to a video we watched in intro to feminist theory, there is a strong negative rhetoric surrounding lesbians in some parts of Africa. How does the gay man fit into this picture of contaminator? Also, are men looked at as possible sources of contagion as well because of infected sperm that contributes to conception?
Really great post, I loved reading about this interesting topic!
Loved this post. I have always heard of the positive benefits to breast feeding: such as passing on the good nutrients and natural immunities that our bodies build as we grow that can be passed to infants instead of them having to build the immunities themselves. It’s scary that they press the good sides of breastfeeding but that they don’t also advise on the risks of breast feeding, such as passing HIV. I also was shocked that HIV could be passed through breast feeding. I knew that one of the risks of getting of pregnant with HIV/AIDs is passing it on to the infant but never heard of it being passed through breastfeeding.
T
So. My computer got excited when I tried to post a comment and I see no delete stupid comment feature.
This post if very fascinating to me, because while I had considered the hypocritical stance of inviting “good”, American (read white) bodies to breastfeed while excluding “bad” (read colored) bodies from this very natural food source, specifically in a place already suffering from a lack of food, I had never so eloquently pieced together the puzzle of contagion, women’s bodies, and breastfeeding.
I wonder if both stances, practically forcing, though advertising and peer pressure, women in the United States to breastfeed while at the same time excluding mothers on another, foreign continent, are reflections of man’s superiority over women. I know that in the second-wave of feminism in white, middle-class America, there was an anti-breast feeding movement, a push away from the masculine influence of doctors. I wonder if this circulating.
This is such an interesting way to look at the contagion narrative! It seriously kind of blew my mind. The first thing I thought of when I read it was the Nestle boycott (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9_boycott) which was a Western response to Nestle’s promotion of its own baby formula over natural breastmilk in impoverished countries. Western consumers grew concerned that Nestle was depriving the babies in these impoverished countries of the nutrients which they would have gotten from natural breastmilk by promoting its product. The wikipedia page does a better job of explaining the issue than I could, so I encourage you to check it out.
I think it is interesting to look at the economic issues that surround the health-related concern of breastmilk vs. baby formula. Corporations that make baby formula have economic incentives to push their products, which are not as healthy as, or healthier than, natural breastmilk in all situations (for example, if the formula is not prepared properly or with clean water). However, when the choice is between possibly contaminated baby formula or possibly HIV-contaminated breastmilk, what should mothers do? In addition, if mothers do not even know all the risks associated with both choices, how can they make the best choice? Could we even go as far as applying the contagion narrative to contaminated baby formula?
I always thought this back and forth between the “doctor recommended” method of baby feeding was interesting. I feel like it has a lot to do with the social climate at the time, including the notion of whether it’s acceptable or not for women to breastfeed in public. I’m just interested to know what you think about the questions you asked:
“When the female body is queer within this narrative structure, what complications arise? If the body is already considered “sick” by means of association with deviant sexuality, what then is the value of the medically prized breastmilk of that body?”
I think they’re interesting points and I’d have liked to see what you thought about them.
I remembered reading your post this weekend and while watching Good Morning America they did a story this morning about mothers selling their breast milk online!
Here’s this link:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/moms-sell-excess-breast-milk-cash-internet/story?id=13768179
Just sort of something to think about with this idea of viral mothers: how does one know the breast milk they are getting is not infected with HIV or something else? The screening process is on an “honor” system. We can go back to the story about the origin to the AIDS epidemic: where Patient Zero was malicious and did it on purpose: will a mother upset that her child caught HIV from her, maliciously target mother with healthy children by sending tainted breast milk?
Just saw the story and thought it was interesting.