Where does an Object End? Objects, Bourdaries and Intimacy in the Donation of Human Milk

Abstract

In our article we want to explore the plastic dimension of objects, their relationality. We use the well-known notion of “boundary-objects” (Leigh Star and Griesemer, 1989) to study the way in which the relationships in which an object is inserted modify its own status, and that of the people with whom it is connected (Winance, 2019). To do this, we turn to a case we have been studying for some time: altruistic donation of breast milk to hospital biobanks and other related practices of shared or "distributed" breastfeeding. We focus on three objects that have had a significant presence in our fieldwork: breastfeeding cushions and other similar tools, such as towels or blankets; breast pumps –popularly known in Spain as sacaleches, “milk extractors”–; and new probiotic drugs. Each of these three objects redefines, through its assemblages with breastfeeding practices, the boundaries between the nursing mother and the world –the relationships with pain and the body itself; social, family and friendship networks; and even the difference between the living and the inert, between body and medication. Each of these objects also participates in a peculiar way in what we call care or intimacy. An intimacy that, contrary to what is usually argued from “naive” humanist positions, is not constituted in opposition to the technical/“artificial”, but arises instead as an effect of the way in which heterogeneous –and always more-than-human– relations are materially mediated (Mol, Moser and Pols, 2010; Latimer and López, 2019)