Fasting as Commemorative Strategy: Hunger Strikes and Collective Memory in Myanmar's Contentious Politics

This article adds to the literature considering hunger strikes as performances of resistance. It presents the action of fasting not merely as a form of protest, but also as a strategy for commemorating past struggles and producing movement memory during periods of abeyance. To do so, it leverages a case study on Myanmar under both colonial and military rule. The study draws on archival records and interviews with Burmese activists who staged hunger strikes while in jail or during protest events. The ethnographic data collected suggests that despite occupying a prominent place in Myanmar's protest repertoire, prolonged hunger strikes remain a contested tactic. Rejecting ‘fast-to-death’ forms of hunger strikes, Burmese dissidents have instead performed short-term, non-life-threatening fasts to remember past cycles of protest, pay homage to deceased comrades and martyrs, and use their bodies as living memorials to strengthen collective bonds, and invoke a genealogy of past collective action.