A refusal to participate

Earlier this year I interviewed John Oakes about his fascinating and extremely well-researched book The Fast: The History, Science, and Philosophy of Doing Without. In part the book investigates hunger strikes as a tool of resistance in cultures throughout world history including in Ireland during The Troubles. Considering a recent episode of the very well done FX series Say Nothing deals with the hunger strike – and brutal force-feeding – of IRA member Dolours Price I asked Oakes if he'd adapt some of his research into a piece with that period in mind.

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The River of Kings

by John Oakes

“Power depended upon public obedience, a will to submit.” — Vladimir Bukovsky, To Build a Castle (1978)

Sometimes an activist’s best weapon is a refusal to participate: a hunger strike. When applied in certain situations, the simple act of not eating becomes jiu-jitsu politics that inverts the power structure and can undermine authority more effectively than a bomb. The hunger striker signals that she has been pushed into a situation where she is not being heard, or is being heard and ignored. She may not control how those who claim authority treat her: but she can assert agency over her own body. 

The principle is ever-present, and has an ancient, cross-cultural pedigree that seems part of the human psyche. When a more physically powerful adversary pushes us to extremes, we still retain a weapon within the tiny realm of our bodies. I was reminded of this recently when watching the series “Say Nothing,” featuring the historical figure Dolours Price, a volunteer for the IRA who was imprisoned by the British in the 1970s. Together with her sister Marian, Price went on a hunger strike for more than 200 days and endured 165 days of force-feeding. 

At any one time, there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of people undertaking hunger strikes around the world. Many of these strikes go unremarked, but the fasts are a binding agent within the groups that undertake them. The line between fasting-as-protest and a hunger strike is largely one of semantics. A hunger strike draws on the language of labor movements to evoke a work stoppage, an action by community members. A fast suggests a moral goal. But in reality, there is little difference between the two. More than a protest against conditions or a call for attention, fasting in protest can express solidarity, and solidarity means trouble for the powerful.

At this moment, sixty-eight year old mathematician Laila Soueif is entering the third month of a hunger strike on behalf of her son Alaa Abd el-Fattah, held in an Egyptian jail for his writing. After a five-year sentence, he was due to be released this past September—and when he was not, his mother began her fast. “I am willing to go as far as it takes. I don’t think the Egyptian authorities react to anything unless there is a real crisis,” she told The Guardian.