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Silenced Bodies. Hunger Strikes of the Radical Left in Austria during the 1970s
| This paper discusses the reasons for the lack of memories regarding the hunger strikes of four imprisoned activists from the radical left in late 1970s Austria. Four prisoners who claimed “political prisoner” status – a female member of the German Red Army Faction and three male Austrian students who had supported the German “Movement 2nd June”– exercised their political struggle against the state by means of a series of non life threatening hunger strikes during the years 1977–79. Due to the Austrian government’s strategy of de-escalation of tension between the activists and the state, the prisoners on hunger strike were successful in achieving improvements in their prison conditions, but completely failed to mobilize public support.
Whereas the cases of Holger Meins in Germany and Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann in Switzerland received massive public attention and are both deeply inscribed into the collective memory of the radical left, the hunger strikes in Austrian prisons are not remembered. In interviews or statements about their experiences with the left wing guerrillas, the former prisoners and their supporters generally avoid the topic of hunger strikes.
Arguing that the lack of reporting and memories of the hunger strikes are a result of the former activists’ shame of having been ridiculed in sexist ways by the state authorities and the media, I aim to analyse the gendered public perception of the body politics exercised by the “political prisoners”. Furthermore, I aim to show how the radical left in Austria failed to establish its own interpretation of the hunger strikes and the hegemonic interpretation drawing mainly on gender deviances was, therefore, by and large uncontested.
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