Foucault and the Lateral Body Politics of Prison Hunger Strikes

Abstract

Over the course of the 20^th century, hunger striking emerged as the paradigmatic form of prison protest. This project draws on the work of Michel Foucault, feminist and democratic theory, and medical ethics to theorize prison hunger strikes as a form of embodied political action. I develop a theoretical approach—lateral body politics—that sees bodies as sites of force relations embedded in broader, horizontal networks of power. Against various liberal theorists and recent Foucauldian approaches that see hunger striking as a type of body instrumentalization deployed by dispassionate autonomous or sovereign subjects, lateral body politics sees hunger striking as a way to problematize and gain traction on affectively charged power relations specific to biopolitical, democratic states. My approach suggests that we should evaluate prison hunger strikes not only by the rationality and stated intentions of the protesters, but rather by the new, horizontal connections that their actions bring into being, both inside and outside of prisons. This work of generating new connections is the work of generating “active intolerance” of the present and its hierarchical divisions of race, class, and sex/gender.