Anticipating "Hey You There!": Interpellation on the Road to the Border

Abstract

This article ethnographically explores the contrast between two episodes in which people approach inter-state borders by car. Emphasising the importance of the location of those people—certified by state-issued documents— in relation to a regime of sovereignty and mobility regulation, it stresses the importance of anticipation in those episodes. To analyse this temporal dimension, it explores the value of two concepts developed to theorise subject formation in modern social configurations—interpellation and confession. The article hopes to show that, although they originate from philosophical treatises on subject formation detached from empirical research, these concepts can be useful tools for ethnographic analyses of border-crossing episodes if deployed in a limited, precise and pragmatic-material manner that avoids the assumptions of circularity and affective investment that their use often entails.