Hunger strikes and differential consciousness: Impure contestation, hunger, and the building of symbolic futures

ABSTRACT Hunger strikes appear to occupy a liminal position within the literature of power and resistance, constituting a contradictory means of empowerment — weakening the body while politically strengthening the subject. As such, this tactic eludes classification, in fact operating as an impure form of contestation. Scholars have also revealed that food refusal operates as a primarily symbolic form of resistance. I extend these conclusions to understand how hunger strikers use impure and contradictory discourse to frame their food refusal, a tactic understood best through Chela Sandoval’s (2003) the notion of differential consciousness. Just as hunger strikes constitute an impure means of resistance, they also appear to prefigure opportunities for dynamic and impure modes of discursive contestation. Through analysis of social media communications, detainee letters, and press releases, I unpack efforts to engage and challenge the dynamic, overlapping, and seemingly contradictory hegemonic discourses of deservingness, rights, and family. I also elucidate how differential consciousness allows incarcerated hunger strikers and their supporters to build legitimate authority within recognizable relations while building space for alternative logics — drawing on hegemonic discourses to construct alternative possibilities. Hunger strikes offer unique insight into how the study of carceral foodways is not only about consuming food, but also about refusing it.