Discounted bodies are thought to contain no life, as such they are, strictly speaking, bodies at the limit of life, trapped in uninhabitable worlds and in inhospitable places. The kind of life they bear or contain is not insured or is uninsurable, folded as it is in extreme and thin envelopes. Such bodies on the precipice are the most exposed to droughts, to storms and famines, toxic waste and various experiences of effacement. Their livelihoods made impossible, they are the most likely to sustain the most crippling wounds and injuries. Trapped human subjects often without escape, they are caught in the various death management systems that saturate the contemporary world. They literally bear the brunt of terrestrial life on a damaged planet, at the same time they exceed all attempts to contain them, these bodies are not simply in motion, interactive and generative, they are movements and events in and of themselves. The inside of their bodies is not separated from their outward environments. And from the perspective of discounted bodies, to be alive is, already to breach boundaries or to be exposed to the risk of the outside entering the inside.

Achille Mbembe