“The longest period of fasting was fixed by his impresario at forty days, beyond that term he was not allowed to go, not even in great cities, and there was good reason for it, too. Experience had proved that for about forty days the interest of the public could be stimulated by a steadily increasing pressure of advertisement, but after that the town began to lose interest, sympathetic support began notably to fall off.”
Franz Kafka, A Hunger Artist.
On 16 April 1981, Red Army Faction (RAF) member Sigurd Debus died in a Hamburg prison as a result of sixty-eight days of prolonged self-starvation, yet leafing through thepages of history books for reference to Debus is like scratching around at the bottom of Kafka’s cage. By the time of his death, the RAF strategy of the prison hunger strikefailed to elicit the sort of response the carefully choreographed spectacle of hunger haddone during the incarceration of the first generation of the RAF from 1972 until 1977. This paper examines the construction of self-starvation in the hunger strikes of this first generation as performative moments within a broader understanding of terrorism as acomplex of representation and counter-representation. First, the investigation outlines the strikes and the factors behind the demise of the strategy. Second, it examines the networks that enabled communication both between group members within the prison system, and between the imprisoned RAF and its audience(s) on the outside. These internal and external prison communication networks made the coordination of the hunger strikes and the dissemination of the accompanying texts possible. Third, it examines the discursive role of hunger as supported by these networks, and reveals itto have served different functions internally and externally. It is argued that RAF self-starvation was constructed as ‘holy’ within the prison network and was integral tothe internal group dynamic and discipline structure. Externally, however, hunger formed the basis for an RAF strategy to counter a medicalization of terrorism and allowed RAF prisoners literally to embody their established rhetoric of ‘anti-fascism’ and ‘anti-imperialism’.
Citation: Leith Passmore, “The Art of Hunger: Self-Starvation in the Red Army Faction,” in German History 27(1), 32-59.
If you are interested in reading this article, but do not have institutional access, email me at leith.r.m.passmore_at_gmail.com.
leith passmore 