Suspect Subjects: Affects of Bodily Regulation

Abstract

There is a growing body of academic literature that scrutinises the effects of technologies deployed to surveil the physical bodies of citizens. This paper considers 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 � it examines the effects 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-�-vis technologies of bodily regulation. Specifically, we argue, their narratives reveal cultural conditions of biosurveillance, particularly how risk becomes embodied and internalised in subjective ways.