This workshop is designed to give wider exposure to incoming Postdoctoral Research Associate in Palestine and Palestinian Studies Ashjan Ajour's work on Palestinian hunger striking. Although theoretically-informed literature on hunger strikes in Northern Ireland and Turkey exist, there is an absence of such literature about hunger strikes in Palestine and the study provides a first step towards filling this gap. By developing an in-depth account of the meanings, dynamics and experience of the Palestinian hunger strikes, it also offers a critical contribution to theories of subjectivity in terms of thinking through the weaponization of the body as a means of reclaiming dignity and humanity.
This panel will discuss how the body is employed in anti-colonial resistance and works as a site of subjectivity-production in hunger strikes to reconfigure the relationship between the colonial power and the resistant subject. The panel will also explore the question of whether hunger strikes are a violent or non–violent act and look at the techniques of resistance developed by Palestinian hunger strikers through the weaponization of the body. In particular it will explore how female bodies were transformed into sites of resistance, and explicate the way in which women constitute their political subjectivity in a coercive prison system through the practice of resistance.