The first global history of hunger strikes as a tactic in prisons,
conflicts, and protest movements. The power of the hunger strike
lies in its utter simplicity. The ability to choose to forego
eating is universally accessible, even to those living under
conditions of maximal constraint, as in the prisons of apartheid
South Africa, Israeli prisons for Palestinian prisoners, and the
detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. It is a weapon of the weak,
potentially open to all. By choosing to hunger strike, a prisoner
wields a last-resort personal power that communicates viscerally,
in a way that is undeniable-especially when broadcast over prison
barricades through media and to movements outside. Refusal to Eat
is the first book to compile a global history of this vital form of
modern protest, the hunger strike. In this enormously ambitious but
concise book, Nayan Shah observes how hunger striking stretches and
recasts to turn a personal agony into a collective social agony in
conflicts and contexts all around the world, laying out a
remarkable number of case studies over the last century and more.
From suffragettes in Britain and the US in the early twentieth
century to Irish political prisoners, Bengali prisoners, and
detainees at post-9/11 Guantanamo Bay; from Japanese Americans in
US internment camps to conscientious objectors in the 1960s; from
South Africans fighting apartheid to asylum seekers in Australia
and Papua New Guinea, Shah shows the importance of context for each
case and the interventions the protesters faced. The power that
hunger striking unleashes is volatile, unmooring all previous
resolves, certainties, and structures and forcing supporters and
opponents alike to respond in new ways. It can upend prison
regimens, medical ethics, power hierarchies, governments, and
assumptions about gender, race, and the body's endurance. This book
takes hunger strikers seriously as decision-makers in desperate
situations, often bound to disagree or fail, and captures the
continued frustration of authorities when confronted by prisoners
willing to die for their positions. Above all, Refusal to Eat
revolves around a core of moral, practical, and political questions
that hunger strikers raise, investigating what it takes to resist
and oppose state power.
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