Hunger Strikes by Irish Republicans , 1916 - 1923

The hunger strike is a strange technique of civil war. Physical suffering—possibly even death—is inflicted on oneself, rather than on the opponent. The technique can be conceived as a paradoxical inversion of hostage-taking or kidnapping, analyzed by Elster (2004). With kidnapping, A threatens to kill a victim B in order to force concessions from the target C; sometimes the victim is also the target. With a hunger strike, the perpetrator is the victim: A threatens to kill A in order to force concessions. Kidnappings staged for publicity, where the victim is released unconditionally, are analogous to hunger strikes where the duration is explicitly