Down for the Count: Before the Myth of Sanctuary, after Transits, and below Ground

This essay reflects on the biopolitics of counting bodies under the conditions imposed by capitalism and state violence. It argues that war, refugee and migrant labor dislocations, and indeterminate zones of sovereignty have rendered bodies disposable and states unaccountable. It looks to countersovereign and aesthetic practices that attempt to account for the dead, the disappeared, and the noncitizen and to widen the range of possibilities for calculating loss and gain, for giving a proper, unsettling account of the here and now.