Surplus Data/Surplus Subjects
Subtitled “Surplus Data,” the Winter 2022 issue of Critical Inquiry began by proclaiming that, “It is no longer enough to say that data is big. Data is now in a state of surplus” (Halprin et al. 197). As private and state actors rush to generate ever more surplus surveillance data about consumer-citizens and workers across domains of life, literary scholars are compelled to question how this data is made meaningful and by whom. After all, data never speaks for itself; it must be assigned value and transformed into narratives. These surveillance stories often reify “identities of suspicion” (Monahan), marking marginalized people as themselves surplus subjects.