Abstract
In 1997, ten years after the Goiânia Radiological Disaster, a group of police officers claims their 1987 work on the Cesium-137 contaminated areas as the cause of their illnesses. Based on the body contamination representations and on the police officers everyday experiences of power confrontation, this paper examines the notions of radiation illness and resistance engendered in disaster context. I argue that the police officer’s everyday practices of resistance through the symbolic use of their body point out to the disclosure of new forms of the “political body”. Thus, I review the Foucauldian assumption of biomedical control of bodies in context where there is individuals’ struggle against the power of the medical knowledge.