Performances of Death: Hunger Strikes, Discipline and Democracy

Abstract

The hunger strike is a form of political protest that escapes conventional forms of political participation. I argue that as a spectacular performance of death, the hunger strike does not only draw attention to a particular cause or expert moral pressure on an opponent, but can galvanise a nascent political identity and solidarity. Drawing on the example of the hunger strike by British suffragette Marion Wallace-Dunlop in 1909, which I argue performatively constructed the identity of the disciplined ‘true suffragette’, I explain the hunger strike in terms of a political becoming. Undertaken behind bars, this protest should not be understood the free expression of an already existing member of the demos, but a way of becoming a political subject while contesting and reconfiguring political boundaries.