Abstract

In this chapter I explore the relationship between school lunch and the eating body. In particular, I argue that two technologies of power apposite to the practice of lunch have effectuated docile, disciplined bodies—viz. the architectonics of practice and the spectacularized status of food. Concerning the architectonics of lunch, I examine these technologies as a microphysics of power that operates in constant, uninterrupted applications on the body and its movements at lunch. Concerning the second technology of power, I argue that over-production and a reification of the surface of things has resulted in an ineluctable march of hyperreal foodstuffs—in commercial foods unmoored from former meanings, food institutions, and dining experiences. As an ameliorant, I begin to theorize what I call alimentary freedom—a reconstitution of the raison d’être of lunch and a repositioning of the eater.