Fasting as Commemorative Strategy
Hunger Strikes and Collective Memory in Myanmar's Contentious Politics
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7514782 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Renaud Egreteau (0000-0002-8222-6737, City University of Hong Kong, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 45 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 151-170 |
| Publication date | 2026-04-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1868-1034 • E-ISSN: 1868-4882 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/18681034251363997 |
| OpenAlex | W4413036088 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 39 |
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
Collective memory · Contentious politics · Development economics · Economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Politics of memory · Social movement · Sociology · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Cambodian History and Society · Law · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies
Bodies in Protest
How Societies Remember
Contentious Performances
Suicide, Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia
Civil Resistance
Contestations of Memory in Southeast Asia
“Appeal from this fiery bed …”
Performances of Death
Social Movement Strategy, Tactics, and Collective Identity 1
Social Movements and Collective Memory
State Practice, Nationalist Politics and the Hunger Strikes of the Lahore Conspiracy Case Prisoners, 1929–39
The Human Body as a Terrorist Weapon
Fragility as Strength
Body Politics and Boundary Work
The Art of Hunger
Renunciation and Empowerment of Buddhist Nuns in Myanmar-Burma
Irish Hunger Strikes and the Cult of Self-Sacrifice
The Politics of Irish Memory
Living Silence in Burma
Striking Differences
Profile
Protest memories and individual persistence
Our Whole History has been Ruined!’ The 1981 Hunger Strike and the Politics of Republican Commemoration and Memory
Social Movement Continuity
Contestations and consequences of deportability
From the Morality of Living to the Morality of Dying
Between Memory and History
The Prison and the Revolution in Myanmar
The Right to Hunger Strike
To lie down to death for days
British Suffragettes and the Russian Method of Hunger Strike
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |