Erothanatos: A Peer-Reviewed Quarterly Journal on Literature

Food is one of the most fundamental coordinates of human existence. It nurtures bodies, shapes cultures, anchors rituals, and sustains the rhythms of daily life. Yet its absence—whether enforced, self-chosen, or imposed—opens a complex field of meanings tied to suffering, resistance, sanctity, identity, and mortality. From the ascetic fasts of saints to the hunger strikes of political prisoners, from famine narratives to mythic depictions of divine hunger, from the symbolic politics of eating to the philosophical implications of starvation, the relationship between food and life, including the intervals of non-eating, reveals profound tensions between survival and transcendence, selfhood and society, eros and thanatos. This special issue seeks to explore how literary, cultural, philosophical, and artistic traditions conceptualize nourishment and deprivation, framing them as sites of meaning, conflict, and transformation.