Abstract
AbstractFor survivors of Ireland's Magdalene Laundries, food is a sensory embodiment of the punishment and powerlessness they experienced while contained within the institutions. As part of the Irish Free State's architecture of containment, the relationship between the Laundries and the state is unique: the Catholic‐run institutions operated outside of state bureaucracy, yet they were central to its attempts to consolidate sovereignty as a fledgling nation. For historians, the sensing body is one of the few avenues to understanding the Magdalene institutions and their place in twentieth‐century Irish history. This article uses memories of food as a point of access to the subjectivities of survivors, and in doing so reveals the affective imprint of institutional power on embodied experience.
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