Levan Institute for the Humanities Book Chats—Nayan Shah, Refusal to Eat:  A Century of Prison Hunger Strikes

A discussion of Nayan Shah's new book, Refusal to Eat:  A Century of Prison Hunger Strikes (University of California Press, 2022). The author will be joined in conversation by Antoinette Burton (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) and Lisa Hajjar (University of California, Santa Barbara), moderated by Ange-Marie Hancock Alfaro (USC). 

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About the Book: 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 Guantánamo 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 Guantánamo 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.

About the Author: Nayan Shah is Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and History at USC.  Shah's research examines historical struggles over bodies, space and the exercise of state power from the mid- 19th to the 21st century. His scholarship advances our understanding of comparative race and ethnic studies, LGBTQ studies, and the history of migration, public health, law, and incarceration. Shah is the recipient of fellowships and grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, NEH, Mellon Foundation, van Humboldt Foundation and Freeman Foundation.

 

Open to attendants outside of USC. An excerpt of the book will be made available to registered attendants. Registration before the event is required. 

This event is part of the Levan Institute for the Humanities' “Book Chats” series, conversations about new books published by USC scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. To see more events in this series, including recordings of past events, visit https://dornsife.usc.edu/levan-institute/book-chats/.

 

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