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3 - The Meaning of Bodily Violence
- Johanna Siméant, Christophe Traïni, James Jasper
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- Bodies in Protest
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- 13 June 2016, pp 35-46
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Summary
Martyrdom, example setting, suffering and non-violence are all images associated with hunger strikes. Violence and moral blackmail are as well. Extracting ‘the’ meaning of this action would be a vain enterprise, given its myriad uses and causes. Without succumbing to the easy solution of culturalist explanations, we can still identify strong symbolic regularities in these practices.
The limits of the culturalist hypothesis
The idea that certain social groups resort more easily to this form of protest than others because of their culture, is appealing initially because we spontaneously think both of the IRA and Gandhi when we think of hunger strikes. If we return to the creditor's fast, both in Ireland and in ancient India, we can see that the efficiency of Gandhi's fasts can be connected to the validation of fasting in Hinduism, and that the martyrs of the IRA evoke a mythology of sacrifice that runs throughout Irish history. However, although the ‘cultural’ traits of these protest groups are undeniably favourable to the use of one or other form of protest, they are not sufficient explanations in themselves. We could go onto explain the more frequent use of hunger strikes by Turkish and North African immigrants by their practice of the long Ramadan fast. But the fact is that throughout the world, this form of action is often that of foreigners, in detention or not, requesting a right to residency, whatever their religion or ‘culture’ may be: Chinese, Zairian, or Haitian held in the refugee camps in the American South.
Moreover, the forms of action elaborated in specific historical and cultural contexts are often imported, re-appropriated, transformed and reinterpreted, sometimes in complete disconnection from their initial meaning. The generalisation of means of communication allows us to observe protest techniques used successfully ‘elsewhere’ and to adapt them to new contexts. Finally, the memory of forms of action used in the context of certain struggles does not necessarily exist as such. During the movement of the sans papiers in 1991-1992, we observed with surprise that many of those involved were unaware of the similar movements that had taken place in the early 1970s.
Select Bibliography
- Johanna Siméant, Christophe Traïni, James Jasper
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List of Tables and Figures
- Johanna Siméant, Christophe Traïni, James Jasper
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- 13 June 2016, pp 8-8
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2 - An Atypical and Irrational Method?
- Johanna Siméant, Christophe Traïni, James Jasper
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- Bodies in Protest
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- 13 June 2016, pp 25-34
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The distinction between individual action and collective action constitutes one of the fundamental oppositions upon which is based – often implicitly, because it is so self-evident – the sociology and social history of forms of protest. These disciplines only recognise as a legitimate object those claims that are associated with a social movement, and they reject beyond their sphere of competence and into abnormality (for example into the domain of historical psychoanalysis or social psychiatry), all physical or symbolic violence, demonstrations of revolt, or grievances of which the authors act alone, and which cannot be connected to a series with clear patterns of characteristics, or to economic regularities.
– Luc Boltanski, Yann Darré and Marie-Ange SchiltzAlthough all the banal, institutionalised and legally codified means of action – such as demonstrations or strikes – attract analytic attention, there are only a few social science texts in English or French dedicated to hunger strikes. Psychoanalytic approaches sometimes deal with the subject and some research has been done in France focused on the penal environment. But, with one exception, these are doctoral theses and articles in medicine, criminology and criminal law. Until the 21st century, Anglo-Saxon literature, which is more plentiful, essentially focused on the Irish hunger strikes and the research dedicated to specific cases were rare until very recently.
How can this lack of interest be explained? Why would hunger strikes, just 15 years ago, provoke such comments as ‘they’re not really political’, ‘it's blackmail’, ‘it's individual’, ‘it's very rare’? What ostracism strikes this decidedly ‘different’ method of action? Categorised as a form of self-inflicted violence, along with self-immolation and self-mutilation, hunger strikes are generally assimilated with the most extreme forms of protest.
An ‘individual’ method of action?
Boltanski's observation remains true 30 years on. Sociology and history do prioritise collective forms of protest. Practices which do not necessarily require prior mobilisation (hunger strikes, but also immolation, auto-mutilation, graffiti or protest letters) attract less attention from researchers, whether they are individual or collective. It is as though all these forms are considered ‘non-political’ actions, as soon as the political is envisaged as a means to construct the collective.
3 - Music and Political Tactics
- Johanna Siméant, Christophe Traïni, James Jasper
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- Bodies in Protest
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- 13 June 2016, pp 137-156
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To what extent do political institutions have an impact on the form and future of protest actions? This is a crucial question for those who specialise in the study of collective action. William Gamson is one of the first to have shown how the characteristics of protests by ‘challengers’ are dependent on the nature of their relations to the members of the polity who control the government and the means of coercion over the population. Although it appeared excessive, given this, to attribute the resources of social movements exclusively to the political structures and situations, it is nonetheless true that the different phases of contestation appear to be closely linked to the interactions established between the members of the political systems and the challengers. These multiple actors sometimes make alliances (and more often exchange blows) to create initiatives through which they oblige all the protagonists involved to act according to the definition of the situation they have managed to impose. Over the course of this new chapter, we will see in what capacity these musical performances may be involved, more or less directly and deliberately, in the use of these interdependent tactics.
Subversion and modification of musical conventions
The skill and knowledge of musicians involves being able to manipulate the recognised social conventions that define different styles (jazz, rock, reggae, rap etc.), repertoires of songs or types of performances, which respond to the expectations of their audiences. Generally, the use of traditional practices means that present situations can be linked to the past actions of previous generations. We have already seen how the production of certain musical works can participate in the construction of a historical legacy which is useful in legitimating institutions as well as encouraging protest. However, it isn't unusual for musical performances to demonstrate a certain creativity that consists in amending or supplementing pre-existing musical conventions with unusual or unprecedented elements. Three ways of approaching musical convention can be distinguished here: diversion, innovation and syncretism. Diversion is indisputably a form of ‘political coup’ in the most restrictive sense of the word. Innovation and syncretism instead seem to be exclusively dictated by concerns about musical creativity. Yet we observe that the promotion of unprecedented artistic postures sometimes contributes to the modification of perceptions of the social situation.
1 - From Fast to Hunger Strike
- Johanna Siméant, Christophe Traïni, James Jasper
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- 13 June 2016, pp 17-24
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‘Hunger strike’, ‘grève de la faim’, ‘huelga de hambre’, ‘sciopero della fame’, ‘hungerstreik’, ‘greve da fome’. This expression emerged in many European countries in the 19th century, just at the time when labour strikes were thriving. But the practice of fasting in protest already had a long history.
Fasting and protest in history
In principle, hunger strikes are different from fasts. The latter are generally of short duration and do not imply pressure on an adversary – or even the existence of an adversary other than oneself. Fasting is often associated with the idea of non-violence and the values of asceticism and self-control promoted in most religions (Lent in Christianity, Ramadan in Islam, Kippur in Judaism, along with many Buddhist and Hindu fasts). Yet there are certain similarities between these two practices. Historically, not all protest fasts have been of limited duration and, above all, the processes that have led to the hunger strikes that we know today were marked by references to religious fasts. We must try to understand what registers and mechanisms these two practices both mobilise.
The very ancient practice of ‘private’ fasting provides real prestige, as we can see in the glorification of saints who constrained themselves to extreme fasts. Associated with purification and self-control, these actions demonstrated the exemplary moral character of those who performed them. The Christian structure of European societies thus valued control over one's body and authorised the action of fasting. However, with the exception of the endura of the Cathars (a not very practical abandonment of food, with the goal of reconciling real life and perfection), it did not encourage its more sacrificial variants.
The use of fasting as a gesture of protest remained very marginal until the 19th century. Georges Duby evoked a few ‘typically feminine’ cases, such as those of young girls in the Middle Ages who threatened to let themselves die of hunger rather than be forced to marry against their will. However, he argues that these practices remained within the private sphere. The use of this method in penitential environments was also documented from the Middle Ages onwards, particularly in the Tower of London.
Contents
- Johanna Siméant, Christophe Traïni, James Jasper
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4 - Hunger strikes, media and politics
- Johanna Siméant, Christophe Traïni, James Jasper
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Hunger strikes take on a different meaning depending on whether they occur in the context of parliamentary democracy or an authoritarian regime, whether they follow urban guerrilla warfare or a sit-in, and whether they take place in prison or in a church. Their political environment is not only a question of the geopolitical opportunity structure, the presence of a state that is ‘strong’ or ‘weak’; it also involves the relationship with the media and other protest groups. It is necessary to define it in relation to other protest techniques. As historian Charles Tilly put it when he connected protest to the modes of coercion and domination in a given society, we need to analyse its status within the ‘repertoire of collective action’.
Hunger strike, political regimes and the state
In spite of the diversity of contexts, it is possible that this protest technique is related to forms of state domination. Could hunger strikes be the modus operandi of the weak, those oppressed by majorities – even democratic ones? This proposal is both true and insufficient. Threatening to let oneself die requires that at the very least the threat be taken seriously, and thus that equality and respect are considered fundamental values. But it also requires the existence of a ‘public opinion’ in the country, or overseas, that can appeal against the state.
Faced with the state, public opinion and humanity
For Tilly modernisation, the extension of capitalism and the growth of the state have shifted the centres of power and modified forms of collective action. Protest has shifted from communities and the local level to the national level. Public opinion has become a central principle of legitimacy. This combination of factors has encouraged the use of hunger strikes directly targeting the state, whether to demand particular statuses or rights, or to oblige non-state actors to apply them.
Hunger strikes are associated with the ‘psychological habitus’ of the nation-state, because they function on a broad network of interdependences. Even if there are no direct connections between us, we cannot let a fellow citizen die. It is ‘public opinion’ that weaves these formerly unimaginable connections.
5 - Hunger Strikers and Injustice
- Johanna Siméant, Christophe Traïni, James Jasper
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…because life – bursting with conceit over its here-and-now’, but really a most uncertain, even a downright unreal condition – pours itself into the few dozen cake molds of which reality consists…
– Robert MusilThe feeling of injustice is a powerful resource for hunger strikes. Prisoners of authoritarian regimes, activists in liberation movements, moral consciences committed to a ‘great cause’, there are so many different individuals involved in hunger strikes, so many different ways of fighting. Yet all are small and isolated in the face of the all-powerful machine of an institution or a private enterprise. These strikes can be played out in different ways, in ideal-typical forms around the link between the protestor, his or her cause and the means of action.
‘Little people’ confronting the machine
Whether faced with the justice system, the administration or the bosses, hunger strikes generally involve an image of individuals fighting alone against an unseeing machine. Victims demanding the right to be recognised as interlocutors, people fighting to preserve their social identity and for the respect of their status – or to access a status denied them.
Victims
Undertaking an analysis of daily media at the regional level is a good way of avoiding international comparisons that are often too macro and which overlook the finer details of these events because they use national-level databases. At the regional level, the press often document hunger strikes, most often by individuals or small groups. These are the ‘little people’, from poor or lower-class backgrounds, who rise up against a decision or a situation that appears unjust or inextricable. Not all these cases lead to actual hunger strikes, however, the local press often describes a desire to ‘undertake a hunger strike if necessary’ whether this final step was actually taken or not.
This compendium of anonymous miseries can be seen in our overview of the Factiva database, consulted in 2007 (see Chapter 2). There are stories of divorced fathers demanding custody of their children (or even grandparents who have been separated from their grandchildren); women begging for a divorce that is bogged down in the courts; handicapped or unemployed people demanding access to decent housing; a person involved in a complex housing affair lasting over 30 years;
6 - When Hunger Strikes Arise
- Johanna Siméant, Christophe Traïni, James Jasper
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- Bodies in Protest
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- 13 June 2016, pp 77-96
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Hunger strikes follow their own rules, much like war, according to Clausewitz's analysis. Whatever the specific contexts that brought them about, whatever the subjective or objective reasons behind them, once they are in place a specific situation unfolds, with its own constraints and its own logic.
Beginning a hunger strike
Choosing a site
Except for prisons, where the question of choosing a site is not relevant, beginning a hunger strike means finding the most appropriate site to combine publicity and security, to enable visits from the media and supporters and still ensure minimal comfort. The site will become a rallying point, including mobilisations that involve other forms of protest. The stakes are high in this decision because as the hunger strike progresses the physical condition of the striker will deteriorate. In addition to the practical aspect, there is a strong symbolic element in this choice. If Jean Lassalle chose to carry out his strike in the Quatre Colonnes room in the National Assembly, it was because his office (as an MP) was there. The access to an appropriate site is often cruelly lacking for many.
The list of possible hunger sites is long: places of worship or other sites linked to religious organisations, political party offices (or more rarely union offices), offices of dissident newspapers in authoritarian regimes (for example, Ben Tunisia), but also administrative buildings squatted for the occasion. Sometimes strikes are even held on the steps or forecourts of buildings housing the adversaries of the strike, when it is impossible to enter. Sometimes they are held in tents and caravans in front of such buildings when they are locked. Of course the choice of the site is even more delicate when there are a number of strikers and the police are liable to intervene to prevent the strike.
As we can see in this brief statistical overview, Catholic places of worship and the striker's place of work are among the most frequently chosen sites for hunger strikes in France.
Although Catholic churches and workplaces appear to be the most popular choices overall, the sans papiers overwhelmingly choose to strike in churches.
Frontmatter
- Johanna Siméant, Christophe Traïni, James Jasper
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Conclusion
- Johanna Siméant, Christophe Traïni, James Jasper
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- Bodies in Protest
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Harmonies and cacophonies
This research will have attained its goal if it has managed to convince the reader of the complexity of the relations between music and protest. We have examined numerous properties which allow musical devices to support processes that are necessary for collective mobilisation: communalisation, conflictualisation, historic legacy, undermining authority, calling for support, fundraising etc. Yet we have also seen that this level of analysis is insufficient and that we must also observe how musical performances can participate in the exchange of ‘blows’ between protest actors and protagonists of conventional political competition. Finally, it is clearly necessary to take into account the plurality of social uses of music but also the effects of the professionalisation of its practice. In this, the vocation of music for protest appears even more inevitable because it seems divided, torn between competing objectives that are more or less compatible with a critique of the social order.
When critical objectives take precedence over other alternatives for artistic practices, musical performances appear as powerful auxiliaries to protest action. Yet a convergence of this kind is far from self-evident. Refusing all overhasty generalisations, the analysis proposed over the course of this book argues for observations on a case-by-case basis, of the complex, equivocal, often spontaneous and fluid relations between music and protest. Ultimately, it is up to the observer to specify, in light of detailed and well-defined research, the conditions and procedures that effectively manage to transform certain musical devices into vectors for protest. Of course, under certain conditions, protest objectives and musical performances are unable to find a harmonious congruence and mutual reinforcement. However, it is not unusual for their proximity to instead reveal a multitude of approaches, divergences in motives, uncontrolled effects of the interdependence of the actors, vague and porous borders in the value systems they proclaim, and, finally, frequent discordances between practice and discourse. In other words, the study of the protest aspects of music provides an important point from which to observe the complexities of the social – and more specifically, the collective – action which aims to weigh on the social and political order.
1 - Protest Put to Music
- Johanna Siméant, Christophe Traïni, James Jasper
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- Bodies in Protest
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- 13 June 2016, pp 105-110
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A definition of the word ‘music’ might seem like stating the obvious: at first glance the word refers to nothing more than the art of combining sounds in a melodic, rhythmic and harmonic fashion, following different rules depending on the period and civilisation. This definition is too laconic, however, to enable us to understand how this singular art form can also be used as a tool for protest. From this perspective, certain characteristics that are specific to musical communication must be examined more closely.
The weapons of musical polysemy
Music cannot be reduced to its mathematical and physical foundation, even though this foundation is real. Humanity has always granted it an expressive function. Indeed, by producing certain sounds, musicians deploy a sort of conventional language that communicates meanings perceivable by those who listen. But what does the music express? Suggestive emotional content rather than well-articulated statements with precise semantics. In Antiquity, authors such as Plato, Aristotle or Aristoxenus recognised in music the rare ability to express and provoke feelings and moods. It is true that musical communication is based on a certain foundation – mode, tempo, pitch, rhythm, harmony, volume – which are capable of evoking and provoking varied affective states (see Table 1). This is further accentuated by the fact that the instruments used may be culturally assimilated to specific emotional characters: brass suggests a triumphant or grotesque nature, strings indicate sadness, piano implies introspective tranquillity, wind instruments lend an air of melancholy or awkwardness, and so forth. In fact, the cheerful, exalted, aggressive, bellicose, solemn, sad, or melancholic nature of any music is immediately grasped by its auditors.
However, music suggests not only specific affective states but also bodily postures. Jean-Jacques Rousseau liked to remark that music is ‘capable of physically acting on the body’. Certain musical arrangements can encourage you to dance, want to have fun, to click your fingers; others may provide a feeling of well-being, relaxation, provoke serenity and make you abandon yourself; others might give you goosebumps, a lump in your throat, a tremble in your voice and tears in your eyes. Still others might excite or exasperate listeners, call them to arms, to parade or encourage solemnity and reverence.
Introduction: Well-orchestrated Protest
- Johanna Siméant, Christophe Traïni, James Jasper
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Summary
On 23 March 2006, crowds of people took to the streets in France to demand the withdrawal of the Villepin government's proposed ‘First Job Contract’ (Contrat Première Embauche [CPE]). Passers-by saw long processions of demonstrators brandishing placards and yelling slogans, while sound systems mounted on the backs of trucks provided a constant musical accompaniment. Groups sang ‘Motivated, Motivated! Must get motivated!’, a line that the band Zebda had recently added to the ‘Chant des partisans’, the famous anthem of the French Resistance during the Second World War. Further on, younger demonstrated made a show of anger by raising their clenched fists whilst the Diam's rap song ‘La Boulette’ echoed in the background: ‘so yeah, we f*ck around / yeah yeah, we shock you / nah nah it ain't the school that dictates our rules / nah nah, generation nah nah’.
This musical accompaniment to a protest march is nothing new. No revolt, no significant social mobilisation, seems to have been able to do without musical and choral practices. The nationalist movements and revolutions of the 19th century, for example, the result of the entry of the masses into politics, cannot be dissociated from the large repertoire of romantic anthems and other operatic songs. As for the ideologies that clashed in the first half of the 20th century, such as fascism, Nazism and communism, they were all just as hungry for fanfares and drum rolls. They were often staged with pomp and grandiloquence, involving forceful and virile choirs.
In the United States, the Civil Rights Movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century was marked by the resurgence of gospel music, the emergence of soul, and the support of white American protest singers. During the boycott of the segregationist busses in Montgomery in 1955 (one of the high points of the movement), the long, exhausting marches took on an even more political dimension because they were accompanied by the spiritual song ‘Walk Together Children’: ‘Walk together children / Don't get weary / […] There's a great camp meeting in the promised Land’.
This book seeks to explore the complexity of the relations between protest and the musical forms that accompany its different situations.
Bodies in Protest
- Hunger Strikes and Angry Music
- Johanna Siméant, Christophe Traïni, James Jasper
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Research on social movements has historically focused on the traditional weapons of the working class, especially labor strikes and street demonstrations-but everyday actions, such as eating or singing, which can also be turned into a means of protest, have yet to be fully explored. Originally published as La gr ève de la faim by Johanna Siméant and La musique en colère by Christophe Traïni, Bodies in Protest is an interdisciplinary and comparative history of these modes of action that reveals how hunger strikes and music ranging from gospel songs to rock anthems can efficiently convey political messages and mobilize the masses. Common to both approaches, the chapters show, is a direct appeal to the emotions and a reliance on the physical, concrete language of the human body.
4 - Protest, art and Commerce
- Johanna Siméant, Christophe Traïni, James Jasper
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- 13 June 2016, pp 157-170
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Many studies have demonstrated the need to consider protest as a continual process which is prolonged beyond the simple phase of the action itself. Militant activism reveals itself as more or less durable depending on a number of very variable connections that mean that it is either congruent with or opposed to commitments in professional, affective and family life. At the level of militant organisations this phenomena can be seen in the permanent toing-and-froing of those who join, leave or maintain their involvement in protest movements. It is therefore important to study how these militant careers are marked by successive phases of intensification or retraction of membership, according to the duration of involvement and the social and professional trajectories of different individuals. In this last chapter we will see to what extent the use of musical devices particularly encourages these intertwining memberships and detachments. Because of the multitude of ways in which music is used for protest, its exploitation is part of a series of concurrent alternatives, of which some are not so much to do with subversion as the subordination of pre-existing social norms. Careful examination of the logics that characterise these different alternatives will lead us to shed light on a fact that initially appears paradoxical. Although, under certain conditions, music may contribute to challenging the social order, it can also tend to neutralise or nuance the criticism that is necessary to the development of collective conflict and mobilisation.
Musical outlets and youth ‘moratoriums’
Specialists of collective action tend to examine the pre-existing conditions that facilitate individuals’ involvement in protest movements. In this respect Albert Hirschman has demonstrated that protest is simply one of three possible alternatives. On one hand there is also ‘loyalty’ to institutions, which annihilates all possible temptations of criticism, and on the other hand there are the various forms of ‘exit’ which prevent the expression of discontent which might provide resolution (for example, in the form of emigration out of a tyrannical country, resignation from a disappointing organisation, membership to other organisations etc.). However, the work of Norbert Elias on the trajectory of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart invites us to consider affective involvement in musical composition as an additional alternative to this trio.
Index
- Johanna Siméant, Christophe Traïni, James Jasper
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Angry Music
- Johanna Siméant, Christophe Traïni, James Jasper
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Conclusion
- Johanna Siméant, Christophe Traïni, James Jasper
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Summary
A method of action that is ‘not quite like others’ because of its moral connotations and the risk of death that it implies, hunger strikes have progressively become a part of the protest actions of the 20th century. It has become possible to envisage this form of protest both individually and collectively.
Today, hunger strikes have a prominent place in the protest arsenal of low-resource groups, such as prisoners and undocumented immigrants. It is typically a weapon of last resort, used with urgency; a weapon of indignation, refusal of cooperation. It is often a weapon of extreme action in deadlocked situations. We might be tempted to consider it the weapon of the weak, but it is also used by those who are famous, well-known and respected, who see it as a way to add their weight to the balance.
Nor are hunger strikes a method of protest reserved for democratic countries, a reflection of humanitarian feeling and the weight of the media in Western democracies. They have shown their effectiveness in authoritarian regimes and their prisons; they have brought dictatorships to their knees. This technique reveals the minimal room for manoeuvre opponents have in the most repressive regimes; but also the variable tolerance of authorities in democratic countries regarding certain protest groups. When each and every person can protest or strike without fear, the groups who use hunger strikes are often those who have the most difficulty mobilising more ‘traditional’ methods of action.
The place hunger strikes have come to occupy in the repertoires of protest action does not contribute to its banalisation, nor to its perception as a legitimate form of protest ‘like any other’. The emotion (and sometimes the irony) that this method provokes is proof of this, as are the accusations of moral blackmail it often attracts.
Other forms of protest action are similarly criticised when they interrupt the ordinary course of things to establish a power relationship and propose an alternative voice to that resulting from the ballot box. The risk of death is not sufficient in itself to set hunger strikes apart.
So what can be said of unease felt by many observers when faced with hunger strikes with apparently far-fetched or superficial motives? It is true that it is possible to undertake a hunger strike to obtain the replacement of a faulty vehicle, or because one's business is in financial straits.
Introduction
- Johanna Siméant, Christophe Traïni, James Jasper
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- Bodies in Protest
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- 13 June 2016, pp 15-16
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Summary
Hunger strikes have always provoked extreme reactions, from bitter irony to deepest admiration. Many other protest practices, such as strikes and demonstrations, have now become routine; they have slowly won their legitimacy over the course of history. Yet even today it still seems incongruous or improbable to resort to a hunger strike. This might be explained by the ambivalent status of this practice, on the frontier between the individual and the collective, between violence and non-violence. The relatively low number of hunger strikes also helps reinforce their image as atypical. This uncertain status explains why scientific production on this subject is somewhat scarce.
The place and visibility of hunger strikes in the repertoire of contemporary protest can be seen in a number of examples: the deadly fast of the ten IRA prisoners in 1981; the hunger strike by the French MP Jean Lassalle in 2006 against the closing of a factory in his constituency; the one carried out by the Indian activist Anna Hazare in 2011, protesting against corruption and claiming the heritage of Mahatma Gandhi; the hunger strikes in Guantanamo Bay; or those by refugees and asylum seekers throughout the world.
My primary objective is to retrace the genealogy of the use of hunger strikes, because to date there is no historical synthesis of this practice. What are the origins of this practice, beyond the ritually invoked figures of the IRA prisoners, Gandhi, refugees or other political figures fasting to attract attention to their cause? Like all modes of protest action, hunger strikes have a history made of borrowed practices, imitation and contrasting uses.
A second objective is to reveal the very great diversity of these strikes and their actors. However, within this diversity there are typical ways in which this practice is used: anonymous individuals confronting administrative injustice, non-violent fasts, strikes by political prisoners etc. Each of these types presents specific characteristics and specific ways of connecting their demands to their means.
The third objective is to treat hunger strikes in concrete terms. By hunger strike I am referring to publically depriving oneself of food to accompany a particular demand, against an adversary or an authority able to satisfy this proclaimed demand, and most often involving putting oneself in danger.