Abstract
A Psychoanalysis of Milk: The Case of Alfred Hitchcock
Highlights
What in its innermost being is milk? What is the alchemical significance, so to speak, of this chemical composite consisting of fat and protein particles dispersed in a fluid containing, among other things, water, sugar and minerals? What is the secret of this secretion? On several occasions, a couple of which I will canvas in more detail in a later section, Sartre alludes to a shocking phrase he takes from a poem by Jacques Audiberti: ‘the secret blackness of milk’
It is this ‘secret blackness’, materialized in the poison that the viewer assumes is present in the glass taken by Johnnie to Lina in Hitchcock’s Suspicion, that provides in concentrated form a sense of the ontological truth of milk
‘Hare told me one day,’ Sartre reports in the final paragraph, ‘that he wanted to render by properly sculptural means natures analogous to the one Audiberti reveals in his famous phrase, “the secret blackness of milk”.’
Summary
What in its innermost being is milk? What is the alchemical significance, so to speak, of this chemical composite consisting of fat and protein particles dispersed in a fluid containing, among other things, water, sugar and minerals? What is the secret of this secretion? On several occasions, a couple of which I will canvas in more detail in a later section, Sartre alludes to a shocking phrase he takes from a poem by Jacques Audiberti: ‘the secret blackness of milk’ (la secrète noirceur du lait).
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