Abstract
This essay provides readers with an ideological analysis of the biopolitical and thanatopolitical rhetorics that swirled around the 2013 Guantánamo hunger strikes. The author contends that these hunger strikes are examples of contemporary tactical weapons of the weak, improvised ideological tools that are used by the disempowered during times of political and social struggle. The author also notes that when the Guantánamo detainees and their lawyers mentioned “force-feeding” they were gesturing toward some well-known tropes and historical tactics that had been used by suffragettes and other hunger strikers. However, these detainees faced their own unique challenges because they had to deal with skeptical US audiences who refused to view these foreigners as aggrieved victims in distress. At the same time the US military deployed their own counter-tactics as they configured “enteral” feeding as “live-saving” measures.
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