McWilliams/Food Rules, 7. Reforming Body and Soul: Malta’s Prison Food Experience 1920–1939

Based primarily on the official Malta prison documents from 1920 to 1939, this research explores the confluence between institutionalized food, rituals, and the prison experience. The evidence presents us with three broad categories: issues related to food quality and quantity, expressions of a culinary identity, and forces of resistance. Institutionalized food formed part of a more comprehensive set of prison ritualized practices intended to reform the inmate’s body and soul. With hardly any opportunity to express one’s identity, food catered simply as a means to keep the prisoner alive. Therefore, to what extent does institutionalized commensality reform the Foucauldian ‘social body’? How far could institutionalized food rituals influence the bond between use value and identity value?