“The savage reduction of the flesh”:1 violence, gender and bodily weaponisation in the 1981 Irish Republican hunger strike protest

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between performativity, the body and violent identity politics in HMP Maze from 1976 to 1981. In it, I outline a theory of ethnic violence that highlights the exposure of the body to abjection, focusing specifically on the violence against the bodies of Irish Republican hunger strikers during the protest of 1981. I pursue two lines of argument. First, that self-starvation was a means by which the hunger strikers could turn their bodies into weapons, rather than serving as the site of a passive or non-violent protest. Second, while the sexualised abuse of prisoners sought to feminise them, I conclude that the Hunger Strike Protest not only weaponised the bodies of the strikers, but also re-constituted them as masculine.