Technologies of Biosurveillance: Bodily Regulation through the Lens of Ordinary Affection

Abstract

There is a growing academic literature that scrutinises the effects of technologies deployed to surveil the physical bodies of citizens. Here, we consider the role of affect - that is, the visceral and emotive forces underpinning conscious forms of knowing that can drive one's thoughts, feelings and movements. Drawing from research on two distinctly different groups of surveilled subjects, paroled sex offenders and elite athletes, this paper examines the mundane practices of biosurveillance in their lives and how their reflections reveal unique insight into how subjectivity, citizenship, harm and deviance become constructed in intimate and public ways vis-a-vis technologies of bodily regulation. 'Ordinary affects', we argue, reveal cultural conditions of biosurveillance, particularly how risk becomes embodied and internalised in subjective ways. This paper describes affective responses to biosurveillance as a mode of exploring the complexities of these regulatory tactics, which current debates, particularly in relation to civil liberties and social democracy, often negate.