The No Wash Protest in Long Kesh Prison: Hygiene Panic, Olfactory Rhetorics, and Infrastructural Ruination in Occupied Ireland

In response to criminalization, Irish Republican internees in Long Kesh prison began the No Wash protest, smearing shit on cell walls as an anticolonial tactic. This essay offers analysis of the olfactory rhetorics and processes of ruination generated by excrement, utilizing archival documents from the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland. While shit is often thought of as discard, excrement is a fundamental signifier of the life form from which it came. Through the excessive use of shit, No Wash protestors rendered their prison internment a failed attempt to contain their liveliness. This analysis traces the institutional management of smell and ruination, showing how protesting prisoners’ strategic use of human waste created a context where prison authorities were forced to participate in the ruination of their own colonial infrastructure via intensive sanitation processes. The effects of the No Wash protest demonstrate the need for attention to waste not just as a byproduct but as a rhetorical resource for resistance and invention.