Feeding Useless Eaters: Austerity, Institutionalization, and Disability Injustice


Amy Li, Carleton University; Megan Linton, Carleton University

Rolled in on a thousand pound reheating carts, plastic trays, and plastic utensils, food cooked thousands of kilometers away is placed in dining halls and on bed trays in long-term care institutions, prisons, and hospitals. What do we feed those society names useless eaters? As a piece of Nazi Germany propaganda, useless eaters was a label used to dehumanize and target disabled people, who were deemed as ‘life unworthy of life’. Today, the menus in prisons, long-term care homes, and disability institutions are evidence of what we feed those we continue to dehumanize. Food is powerful, in capitalist markets food and its production is used to both produce and discipline hardworking subjects, alienate our relations to the land, in order to sell more goods. For our research paper, we plan to explore the food and consumption experiences of disabled people in institutions. While we believe there are valuable intersections between food studies and disability studies, food studies has yet to fully engage with institutionalization and disability. Our paper will explore how carceral institutions utilize food as a tool for control and dehumanization, and the importance of turning towards alternative forms of care. This is a valuable area of study as there is a limited amount of research being conducted on disabled people and their experiences with food in these carceral institutions, despite how historically institutionalized disabled people have suffered immensely in these facilities, and how food has been used as a tool for punishment, control, and austerity. Autonomy is a fraught issue for disabled people and is deeply entangled with food and its consumption. This becomes especially apparent in carceral institutions such as care homes, hospitals, and prisons. While institutions like long-term care homes or prisons might provide some food, it is not “good” food in any sense of the term. Moreover, the food provided in these sites has been demonstrated to alienate people from their culture, exacerbating illnesses, and By drawing from artistic responses to the food being served in carceral institutions, we will employ an arts-based analysis to explore how food is experienced in carceral institutions. We will draw from art pieces such as Jeff Moyer’s audio documentary titled “Lest We Forget,” which details the experiences of disabled people and the staff of institutions in Ohio, “We are What we Eat” by the Pentonville Prison Art Group, and a cabaret performance by disabled artists Sick and Twisted theatre titled “Useless Eaters.” These artistic responses will enable a deeper understanding of how disabled people understand their own experiences with food in carceral institutions. Our discussion will be supplemented with an comparative analysis of different menus from various institutions to see how these institutions are portraying their food options for residents. A guiding theoretical framework for our paper is queer crip feminist understandings of food and food justice, and drawing from these understandings we will take up Hall’s (2014) call for good food that enables flourishing, whereas institutional food demonstrates what Fritsch (2016) points to as withering. From this queer crip feminist framework, it becomes clear how food is simply another mechanism of control for these institutions and how good food is central to a dignified human experience. Good food cannot exist in these institutions precisely due to their carceral nature. In demanding food we can and want to eat, we are fighting for the destruction of the systems that decide food based on production quantity and revenue. In demanding food we can eat, we are fighting for the destruction of systems of colonization that decide the food based on Euro-centric production mechanisms and desires. We are demanding interdependent relations, since food is an interdependent relationship between food, land, and people. The experiences of disabled people who have lived and survived these institutions highlights the need for interdependency and the abolishment of carceral institutions. Our paper is highly relevant to the session “Hunger Pains: Food Justice in (Times of) Crisis” as COVID-19 has only exacerbated many existing crises in care work. As our paper will demonstrate, food is a critical dimension to conversations about disability and care, and the pandemic has contributed to heightened vulnerability for disabled people in this area as well. 

This paper will be presented at the following session: