Hi, everyone! Since we were cut short for time, I’m transferring all of my thoughts to my blog post for the week – but am happy to share in our unconference on Saturday if needed. In my previous post, I started thinking about the more aesthetic, medical side to fasting and detox spas, but have since been drawn towards fasting as political action.
I’ve been ideating about famine versus fasting versus hunger strikes. I am also interested in how countries that have experienced famine respond differently to hunger strikes due to a sense of responsibility held by the government to nourish their people. My brainstorming, which is outlined below, eventually led me to the idea of female hunger. I am seeking to understand the international and imperial networks inspiring women’s hunger strikes staged in different time periods and national contexts.
I’m interested in hunger strikes in postcolonial states and their imperial legacies. I’ve found literature on imperial Britain – connections of fasting in England, Ireland, India; connections between Russian methods on British suffragettes, and more recent civil rights movements in India and the United States. I do hope to expand beyond the British empire, but that is where I have found the most literature so far.
I’m hoping to understand intentions. What’s interesting about hunger strikes in recent history is more widespread media, and therefore more access to first-hand accounts and interviews with these activists. Hearing their intentions behind the political action, what might have inspired them, and even the language they use and finding connections between that vocabulary and previous movements – will help me trace cross-cultural interactions.
In all the literature I’ve encountered so far, women’s fasting and looking at famine through a gendered lens is always a chapter or footnote. There are really interesting references that are casually explained and moved on from that I’d love to dig deeper into. For example, Kevin Grant mentions fasting as a ‘feminine’ form of bodily protest, versus a male capability to resist authority with force. He went on to discuss how a modern liberal government and publicity of a modern, uncensored media led to successful hunger strikes in the British empire, but not so much in imperial Russia. This made me think about government systems and how their ethos affects forms of political action and the success of hunger strikes. I want to look more at the gender theory behind this political action, and the subconscious associations it might hold in our minds.
Though my focus will eventually narrow, I do not want to solely research the role of fasting in suffragette movements. There are recent events, such as Swati Maliwal’s hunger strikes as demands for justice in response to India’s rape crisis, and racial justice activists in the United States protesting the death of Breonna Taylor. I think it is important to look at the nuances of female hunger in recent decades. Moving forward in time will also allow me to question how changing attitudes towards women’s agency and bodies affect their political motives, methods, and success.
In contemporary India, hunger protest is a female-dominated affair. I’m curious about how their participation has evolved from the nationalist hunger strikes. In a review of Grant’s book, Dr. Aidan Forth asks ‘How might the feminist tactics of early suffragettes have inspired the activist Swati Maliwal’s 2019 hunger strike against Indian rape laws?’ These are the types of questions I want to ask, finding connections between cultures and over time.
To conclude, my research is in its early stages, but I’ve finally stumbled upon a subject I feel excited about and believe there will be a wealth of sources, versus my original topic where research was spare. The texts I am looking at so far are:
Sumita Mukherjee: Indian Suffragettes, Female Identities and Transnational Networks
Kevin Grant: Last Weapons, Hunger Strikes and Fasts in the British Empire, 1890-1948
Nayan Shah: Refusal to Eat, A Century of Prison Hunger Strikes
I am also reading articles on medico-historical overviews of fasting, and really trying to understand the macro context as I dive into the more specific, women’s experience and action involved with hunger strikes. Hopefully, I will be able to find good primary sources in government reports, political manifestos, published periodicals, and even oral interviews with these women.
Please let me know if you have any reading suggestions or topics to investigate! I am working this week on narrowing my scope and forming more concrete questions before turning in my proposal and meeting on Saturday.
Hi Avery! I find this project idea so fascinating, I hope I can learn more about it tomorrow in our unconference. Here are some ideas and thought that sparked from your post! I like the idea of comparing hunger strikes both within and outside of suffragette movements in various countries during various periods. I think this could really allow you to look at the evolution of hunger strikes and the transnational dimension of such a form of protest.
I also think oral interviews with women who hunger strike would be so useful to really understand why women engage in this form of protest. I know in my American public high school we were briefly taught about the suffragette hunger strikes. Maybe you could also dive into how some hunger strikes have been more “memorable” in history, meaning they gained attention that they were even taught in schools, while some are not. You could also look at where, geographically, academics/schools give attention to what kinds of hunger strikes. This could be another interesting dimension of the context of imperial legacies. I also think you could find perhaps some patterns or trends about if/when hunger strikes go in and out of fashion as a form of protest, and how this varies in different regions.
You mentioned the idea of fasting as a ‘feminine’ form of bodily protest, I think you could do so much with this idea. You could deconstruct why fasting is seen as feminine in the gender history/theory route and perhaps go from here into the gendered dimension of why there is not as much academic attention to the history of such protests compared to so-called ‘masculine’ forms of protests. I’d be fascinated to hear about this. To take it even further, you could look at media coverage of hunger strikes from a British perspective as well, if media historically presents hunger strikes as a feminine form of protest and also the colonial aspects of this coverage. I look forward to hearing more tomorrow!