Hunger strikes have always provoked extreme reactions, from bitter irony to deepest admiration. Many other protest practices, such as strikes and demonstrations, have now become routine; they have slowly won their legitimacy over the course of history. Yet even today it still seems incongruous or improbable to resort to a hunger strike. This might be explained by the ambivalent status of this practice, on the frontier between the individual and the collective, between violence and non-violence. The relatively low number of hunger strikes also helps reinforce their image as atypical. This uncertain status explains why scientific production on this subject is somewhat scarce.

The place and visibility of hunger strikes in the repertoire of contemporary protest can be seen in a number of examples: the deadly fast of the ten IRA prisoners in 1981; the hunger strike by the French MP Jean Lassalle in 2006 against the closing of a factory in his constituency; the one carried out by the Indian activist Anna Hazare in 2011, protesting against corruption and claiming the heritage of Mahatma Gandhi; the hunger strikes in Guantanamo Bay; or those by refugees and asylum seekers throughout the world.

My primary objective is to retrace the genealogy of the use of hunger strikes, because to date there is no historical synthesis of this practice. What are the origins of this practice, beyond the ritually invoked figures of the IRA prisoners, Gandhi, refugees or other political figures fasting to attract attention to their cause? Like all modes of protest action, hunger strikes have a history made of borrowed practices, imitation and contrasting uses.

A second objective is to reveal the very great diversity of these strikes and their actors. However, within this diversity there are typical ways in which this practice is used: anonymous individuals confronting administrative injustice, non-violent fasts, strikes by political prisoners etc. Each of these types presents specific characteristics and specific ways of connecting their demands to their means.

The third objective is to treat hunger strikes in concrete terms. By hunger strike I am referring to publically depriving oneself of food to accompany a particular demand, against an adversary or an authority able to satisfy this proclaimed demand, and most often involving putting oneself in danger.