The Silent Exception: Hunger Striking and Lip-Sewing

Border zones and detention centers are often characterized as spaces that concretize a permanent state of exception where resistance is deemed unlikely. This article explores hunger striking and lip-sewing practices of migrants and refugees as a largely neglected form of protest that takes a silent exception from the exception. Focusing on their gesture of a double withdrawal - from nutrition and from speech -, I make the case for an expanded conception of agency that is non-instrumental and expressive. Pursuing an alethurgic analysis, I situate the violent and embodied silence of these protests in Foucault's problematic of parrhesiastic practice. I examine these practices as processes of subjectivation that unmake and remake the self, call into being parrhesiastic counter-publics, and courageously critique the present.

Automated summary

This article explores hunger striking and lip-sewing practices of migrants and refugees as a largely neglected form of protest that takes a silent exception from the exception. The author argues for an expanded conception of agency through analyzing these practices as processes of subjectivation and situating them within Foucault's problematic of parrhesiastic practice.