Madame Thursday

Jul. 6, 2012 at 1:13pm with 40 notes

There is a dopiness in analysis happening here and i don’t want to derail that .

I however feel the issue here is much more…… basic.

The issue here is focus and activity and humanity and sentence structure.

I always think in concepts of ” visual sentences” ( TM) and I won’t go to deep but it applies in multilayered ways.

The woman is the subject of that photo of that sentence.

If she is the way we read that sentence, see that picture CAN NOT be understood without her context, her story and her origins.

If we are HONEST, then there is something so AWFUL about it that it’s hard to bear.This woman’s body which produces milk meaning :

she’s had kids

she’s had sex

she’s being asked to display that fact for posterity

in a time when exposure took minutes LONG minutes to accomplish

she is being asked to do so while breast feeding/using her body to comfort a child which may or may not be heres but probably is not

she’s black in a 19th century photograph probably from the south( by style of dress):

she’s probably a slave

if she’s not she’s a nurse or a house worker in horrific conditions for someone of her race

If that child is hers? It’s the product of a relationship so UNBALANCED willingness is almost certainly a coping mechanism and consent impossible

She was probably raped . Period at some point.

If that is not her child. She is being DENIED time with her child for this picture.

The disagreement is not about anything but:

Can that woman can be the subject of the sentence rather than an object.

If she can then anything we “like” about this picture is at her expense.

If she CAN’T then it doesn’t matter.

All of it , the baby, the feeding, center around can she be seen as human and the commuter of action.

To the folks who took these pictures…

No. Which is HOW SHE GOT THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

…………

So please think on that when you say I just wanna concentrate on the breastfeeding.

If you mean it as a verb you are talking about what SHE is doing

But you mean it as a noun. As a subject and she’s just the thing involved.