Vigilant Subjects, Risky Objects: "If You See Something, Say Something"

Abstract:"If You See Something, Say Something": individuals detect the warning signs of an attack and notify authorities before it is too late. Yet, rather than a permanent state of alert, these vigilant subjects are only ever provisionally activated upon discovering risky objects: seeing something is to draw risky objects from a dangerous indeterminacy, while saying something is to affirm vigilant subjecthood. Offered is a processual account of these emergent subject-object relations, an account which extends security governance into incipient experience—before the self of self-government—and onto affectivities that strike the body—before calculations on how best to respond.