Fragility as Strength: The Ethics and Politics of Hunger Strikes*.

The coercive threat of a hunger strike is maximized, first, where it is deployed against states which derive their claims to legitimacy, in relation both to their own populations and other states internationally, from their protection of the rights to life and health of those subject to their coercive power. It counteracts institutional dehumanization and attacks the modern state's claim to legitimacy through a distinctive form of cost-levying, subverting the duties the state has towards those under its coercive power. In the case of asylum-seekers, authorities have dismissed hunger strikes as an attempt to interfere with the power of the properly constituted immigration authorities to determine people's appropriate legal statuses. In some cases, authorities in liberal states have resorted to threats of deportation, solitary isolation, and - in detention centres in the US and elsewhere - force-feeding in an effort to stop them. [Extracted from the article]

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