The biopolitics of CFS/ME

This paper argues that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) constitutes a biopolitical problem, a scientific object which needs to be studied, classified and regulated. Assemblages of authorities, knowledges and techniques make CFS/ME subjects and shape their everyday conduct in an attempt to increase their supposed autonomy, wellbeing and health. CFS and CFS/ME identities are however made not only through government, scientific, and medical interventions but also by the patients themselves, a biosocial community who collaborates with scientists, educates itself about the intricacies of biomedicine, and contests psychiatric truth claims. CFS/ME is an illness trapped between medicine and psychology, an illness that is open to debate and therefore difficult to manage and standardise. The paper delineates different interventions by medicine, science, the state and the patients themselves and concludes that CFS/ME remains elusive, only partially standardised, in an on-going battle between all the different actors that want to define it for their own situated interests.