Best regards, Andrew Stewart
Begin forwarded message: > From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW <[email protected]> > Date: April 19, 2021 at 12:19:37 PM EDT > To: [email protected] > Cc: H-Net Staff <[email protected]> > Subject: H-Net Review [H-Environment]: Siegel on Grant, 'Last Weapons: > Hunger Strikes and Fasts in the British Empire, 1890-1948' > Reply-To: [email protected] > > Kevin Grant. Last Weapons: Hunger Strikes and Fasts in the British > Empire, 1890-1948. Oakland University of California Press, 2019. > 232 pp. $85.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-520-30100-9; $34.95 (paper), ISBN > 978-0-520-30101-6. > > Reviewed by Benjamin Siegel (Boston University) > Published on H-Environment (April, 2021) > Commissioned by Daniella McCahey > > In July 2016, the Indian activist Irom Sharmila sat surrounded by > journalists and licked a finger which she had coated in honey. > Sharmila had spent sixteen years refusing to eat food, kept alive by > an involuntary nasogastric intubation while imprisoned on charges of > attempted suicide for her protest against India's security laws in > its restive northeast. India's most celebrated hunger striker of > modern times ended her protest for the chance to participate in > formal electoral politics. But other hunger strikers' fates have been > harsher. Five years after India's independence, in October 1952, a > veteran Indian freedom fighter, Potti Sreeramulu, embarked upon a > fast in an effort to cleave out an independent state for the > Telugu-language speakers of southern India. After two months, > Sreeramulu succumbed to his fast, becoming only the second person in > modern Indian history to actually die from a hunger strike. > > The idiom of the hunger strike in postcolonial India is a powerful > one--and it owes much, of course, to the formative influence of > Mohandas Gandhi, with whom the form of protest is universally > associated. Yet as Kevin Grant reminds us in his elegant and incisive > _Last Weapons_, the hunger strike and the fast are "performances of > death" whose power was apparent long before their deployment in > anti-imperial campaigns in the late British Empire. Yet Grant > contends that it was as a prison protest in the United Kingdom and > the British Empire that the hunger strike and fast were transformed > into global phenomena, ready for deployment in other campaigns from > apartheid-era South Africa to ICE (US Immigration and Customs > Enforcement) processing centers in California's Central Valley. > > In a slim and exceptionally readable volume, Grant pieces together > what is likely the first comprehensive account of the hunger strike > and fast in modern times, and his book offers a riveting account of > changing techniques, ideologies, and practices as the fast moved from > Russia to Ireland to India. Women, in Grant's account, were often key > agents in bringing the practices of fasting to political prominence. > But beyond this compelling and wholly new narrative, Grant also > offers a forceful reassessment of the philosophy and practice of the > hunger strike itself. The hunger strike has often been framed as a > deliberate and clear strategy--a definitive gambit rooted in a clear > political vision. This gloss is particularly strong in the > postcolonial historiographies of both India and Ireland, where the > strategic acumen of Mohandas Gandhi or Bobby Sands is taken as > emblematic of hunger strikers writ large. But hunger strikes, Grant > shows, were frequently undertaken on less considered grounds, and > with no direct expectation of an outcome--they were indeed last > weapons as opposed to first flush strategies. > > Moreover, beyond their muddled philosophical stances, which often > substituted red-hot fury for calculated action, hunger strikes were > uncertain in their very physiological dimensions. As Grant > demonstrates in this book's first chapter, the actual course of a > hunger strike and the effects of starvation on the human body were > essentially unknown. Historians of Africa and South Asia have > documented the late colonial "discovery" of nutrition and notions of > malnutrition through imperial experimentation. Yet missing in these > accounts is the fundamental difficulty that nutritional scientists, > prison officials, and others faced in trying to trace the course of > starvation when experimentation was ethically impossible. Well until > the 1940s, "the medical profession in general remained unable to > measure a starving subject's approach to the danger zone" (p. 40) > where death would be inevitable. This uncertainty complicated > jailers' approaches to hunger strikers, who themselves were unable to > predict the course and outcome of their protests. > > Grant's account of the fraught science of starvation precedes a > transnational genealogy of the hunger strike. In _Last Weapons_'s > second chapter, he locates the origin of the modern political fast > outside of the political fast's origin beyond Britain, among Russian > revolutionaries in the prisons of czarist Russia. British > suffragettes, in the first decade of the twentieth century, drew upon > hunger strikes which revolutionaries had undertaken in Russian and > Siberian prisons. Suffragettes learned of the "Russian method" of > self-starvation in prison, known as _golodovka_, from exiles in > Britain. While the political and cultural connotations of this > practice were poorly understood by suffragettes, and very few of the > Russian fasters were in fact women, the practice came to be seen as a > form of protest which was strongly, if only temporarily, feminized. > Meanwhile, in spite of widespread beliefs that hunger strikers in > Britain required jailers to undertake practices of forcible feeding, > prison medical officials themselves were divided about the wisdom of > attending to hunger strikers at the expense of their other custodial > duties. > > These protests, Grants shows in his third chapter, moved in the next > several decades to Ireland, where dozens of imprisoned women and > thousands of imprisoned men undertook self-starvation in British and > Irish Free State jails, seeking reclassification as political > prisoners, release, or better conditions. The rise of the hunger > strike in these circumstances did not merely represent a change of > context, nor just a shift from women strikers to men. Rather, it was > among Irish women and men striking that the hunger strike emerged as > a true "last weapon through which to challenge the practical > capacities of their prisons and to push warders and prison medical > officers beyond their professional duties into the violation of law" > (pp. 71-72). The hunger strike was a culturally mediated practice in > Ireland, but its symbolism was, Grant contends, a double-edged sword. > Strikers' linkage of hunger striking with Catholic practices of > abnegation alienated Ireland's Protestants, presaging a similar > alienation of Muslims in the context of colonial India. And hunger > strikes after the Anglo-Irish War served to divide those who > supported the partition of Ireland and those who supported an > undivided republic. With the "Russian method" of fasting long > forgotten, the hunger strike had become, by the 1940s, a wholly Irish > practice, sutured to the broader mythopoesis of modern Ireland > itself. > > Grant moves from Ireland to India in the book's fourth chapter, > forwarding a complex typology of the hunger strike on the Indian > subcontinent. Drawing from recent interventions into India's > nationalist historiography, Grant shows how the hunger strike in > India was both more widespread than traditionally seen, and more > multivalent. Hunger striking could speak to different currents of > Indian nationalism and anticolonial protest, from the militant to the > pacifist and from notions of Indian unity to the conceits of communal > division. Taking cues from the communal nature of fasting in Ireland, > Grant explores the different religious and regional genealogies of > political starvation in India and shows how the idioms of Gandhian > fasts, sutured to notions of Mother India personified, served to > advance notions of a cohesive nation-space while also aggravating > communal division. > > These regional studies are scaffolding for Grant's final chapter, and > perhaps his most methodologically significant one. Scholars of the > British colonial world (and the French colonial world, to a lesser > degree) have shown how liberal claims of just rule were turned > against imperial administrators. Grant achieves something similar by > looking to the prison, where officials' (and politicians') efforts to > create uniform policies to counter hunger strikes met up against the > confounding realpolitik of their management. The "rule of exceptions" > in the British prison laid bare both the power of the hunger strike > and the hollow quality of Britain's claims to uniform justice. > > _Last Weapons_ is a satisfying and fulsome account of a powerful > political tool in late imperial Britain. It unpacks the symbolic > resonance of the act of the hunger strike or fast, while also > demonstrating how complicated, and frequently mundane, the reasons > for the hunger strike often were. It is a welcome and large > contribution to the growing body of literature on hunger and the > politics of food in the imperial world, even if it does not wrestle > deeply with questions of the political economy of food provisioning > in the empire, beyond some descriptions of the new "duty to feed" (p. > 14) that emerged toward the turn of the twentieth century. It is a > panoramic account that is both revelatory to the scholar of food and > hunger, and also accessible enough that a motivated undergraduate > might tackle it in its entirety; no doubt, it will be a keystone > reading in seminars on food, hunger, and the politics of provisioning > in empire. And those who take up its charge--linking later and > powerful campaigns of hunger striking to their heyday in the early > twentieth century--have a panoramic account of a complex, fraught, > but uniquely potent political tool. > > > > Citation: Benjamin Siegel. Review of Grant, Kevin, _Last Weapons: > Hunger Strikes and Fasts in the British Empire, 1890-1948_. > H-Environment, H-Net Reviews. April, 2021. > URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55306 > > This work is licensed under a Creative Commons > Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States > License. > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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