Cabinet 62: Milk

One of only a handful of substances produced in nature expressly as food, milk is fundamental for infant mammalian nutrition, but is also foundational in human myth and religion. Cabinet issue 62, with a special section on "Milk," includes Renata Salecl on the psychoanalytical implications of the recent death of a child solely breastfed for the first five years of his life; Jeff Dolven on milk and luminosity; Esther Leslie and Melanie Jackson on the ways in which milk is transformed from primary material to metaphorical excess; and Melanie Tyson on the colonial history of condensed milk. Elsewhere in the issue: Daniel Rosenberg on Maurice Sendak's beloved "Nutshell Library" and the fantasies of book classification; Richard Cooke on the history of live sex shows in Europe and their sudden decline in the 1980s; and an artist project by S. Billie Mandle exploring the varieties of Catholic confessionals.