| Abstract: | The founding generation of the Red Army Faction (RAF), a WestGerman terrorist group, spent two frenzied years in the undergroundfollowed by five years in prison, culminating with the suicidesof the group's leaders in 1976 and 1977. This paper examinesthe prison hunger strikes of the RAF as structured acts of communicationthat together with accompanying texts were central to a sustainedmedia campaign run from within prison. It examines the internaland external prison communication networks established to enablethe coordination of the strikes as well as the discursive functionsof the self-starvation of the RAF members. Within the prisonsystem hunger was constructed as ‘holy’ and ascribeda pseudo-religious function used to support a group identityand maintain an internal group discipline. In the texts producedfor publication beyond the prison walls, however, hunger becamea central element in the RAF strategy to counter what it sawas a mainstream medicalization of terrorism. This, in turn,was the tool employed to repackage the group's established rhetoric,as self-starvation allowed RAF prisoners to literally embodytheir long-standing ‘anti-fascism’ and ‘anti-imperialism’. |
