X. In 1935, Erwin Schrdinger devised an insidious thought experiment. He imagined a box with a cat inside, which could be killed at any moment by a deadly mixture of radiation and poison. Or it might not be killed at all. Both outcomes were equally probable. 01/10 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBut the consequence of thinking through this situation was much more shocking than the initial setup. According to quantum theory, there wasn’t just one cat inside the box, dead or alive. There were actually two cats: one dead, one alive – both locked into a state of so-called superposition, that is, co-present and materially entangled with one another. This peculiar state Hito Steyerl lasted as long as the box remained closed. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊMacrophysical reality is defined by either/or situations. Someone is either dead or alive. But Missing People: Schrdinger’s thought experiment boldly replaced mutual exclusivity with an impossible Entanglement, coexistence – a so-called state of indeterminacy. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBut that’s not all. The experiment becomes Superposition, even more disorienting when the box is opened and the entanglement (Verschrnkung) of the y dead and the live cat abruptly ends. At this point, c a and n i either a dead or a live cat decisively emerges, not m r because the cat then actually dies or comes to e t e life, but because we look at it. The act of Exhumation as d n I observation breaks the state of indeterminacy. In f o quantum physics, observation is an active s e Sites of t i procedure. By taking measure and identifying, it S s interferes and engages with its object. By looking a n at the cat, we fix it in one of two possible but Indeterminacy o i t a mutually exclusive states. We end its existence m u as an indeterminate interlocking waveform and h x E freeze it as an individual chunk of matter. d n ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊTo acknowledge the role of the observer in l a r , e n actively shaping reality is one of the main y o e i t t i achievements of quantum theory. It’s not S s o o t radiation or poison gas that ultimately decides p i r H e Ê the fate of the cat, but the fact that it is p 2 u 1 S identified, seen, described, and assessed. Being 0 , t 2 n r subject to observation provokes the second e e b m death of the cat: the one that ends its state of o e t l c g limbo. o n a t — n 8 E 3 : X. # e l l p According to common logic, a missing person is a o n e r either dead or alive. But is she really? Doesn’t u P o g j n this only apply at the moment when we find out x i u s l s f what happened to her? When she turns up or i - e M when her remains are identified? ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBut what, then, is the state of missing itself? Does it take place inside Schrdinger’s box, so to speak? Is it being both dead and alive? How can we understand its conflicting desires: to want and to dread the truth at the same time? The urge to both move on and keep hope alive? Perhaps the state of missing speaks of a paradoxical superposition that cannot be 10.18.12 / 11:05:52 EDT understood with the conceptual tools of Garzon had no jurisdiction. He found himself in a Euclidian physics, human biology, or Aristotelian legal deadlock: he had to assert that the dead logic. Perhaps it reaches out to an impossible were still alive in order to investigate whether coexistence of life and death. Both are materially they were dead in the first place and guilty in the interlaced in limbo – as long as no observer second. opens the “box” of indeterminacy. Which is, in ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThis is where superposition comes into play, many cases, a grave. since a potential legal argument in this case can 02/10 be derived from Schrdinger’s paradigm. Garzon X. could have argued that one had to get to the In 2010, Spanish prosecutor Baltasar Garzon point of being able to open Schrdinger’s box. brushed up against the state of superposition.1 Only then could one determine whether the Two years prior, he had brought charges against defendants were dead or alive, and until this leading officials of the Franco regime, including happened, a state of superposition between life General Franco himself, for crimes against and death had to be assumed. Franco, for humanity. He opened investigations into the instance, had to be proven dead. If not, it had to disappearance and suspected murder of around be assumed that he was in a state of 113,000 people – mostly Republicans from the superposition, until proper observation and Civil War period – as well as the forceful measurement could take place. As long as appropriation of 30,000 children. Many of the Franco was at least potentially alive, disappeared ended up in mass graves around the investigations into the crimes of the Franco country, which at that time were being patiently period could continue. dug up by relatives of the disappeared and ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBut the state of superposition not only volunteers. None of the thousands of affected the accused perpetrators. It also kidnappings, disappearances, summary determined the legal status of many of the executions, and killings by starvation or disappeared. As lawyer Carlos Slepoy argued, exhaustion had ever been prosecuted legally in any disappeared person, regardless of the date Spain. And total impunity had been made legal of disappearance, had to be assumed to be alive. by a so-called amnesty law in 1977. As long as he or she was in a state of having been ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊGarzon’s case was the first to challenge this kidnapped and not yet found, the crime was situation. Predictably, it ran into immediate ongoing. It could not fall under any statute of controversy. One of the many points on which he limitations. As long the victims weren’t proven was challenged was that many of the accused, dead – as long as they were still missing – they including Franco himself, were dead. And were in a state of superposition and according to the law, if they were dead then indeterminacy. While the crime was lingering, The metaphor of film can illustrate the two possible states of Schrdinger’s cat in time. 10.18.12 / 11:05:52 EDT Schrdinger’s box remained closed and both a possible from the roughly 250 people suspected potentially dead missing person and a potentially to be buried there, who were summarily shot by living missing person were entangled in a Francoist militias. Funding was going to be cut paradoxical legal quantum state. This state of off within days, so every volunteer was given indeterminacy enabled the cases to remain open equipment to participate in the excavation. I was and investigations to proceed. assigned a grave in which a baby’s coffin sat on top of the bones of a person, who was most likely X. 03/10 executed. The arm bone of this person revealed Schrdinger’s mental exercise in indeterminacy perimortem trauma – a wound sustained around echoes another famous thought image: the idea the time of death and an indicator of a violent of the two bodies of the king. In 1957, historian demise. Ernst Kantorowicz described how the bodies of ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBut why would a baby be buried on top of a medieval kings were split into a natural body and murdered Republican? The archaeologist a body politic.2 While the natural body was explained that babies who died unbaptized were mortal, the body politic, which represented the (or even still are) believed to go to limbo. The mystical dignity and justice of the realm, was limbo of infants has been a subject of discussion immortal. While the king was in power, both in the Roman Catholic Church since the days of states were superimposed on his body. He Augustine. The question is whether unbaptized incorporated the nation in a body politic that was infants can be granted salvation, since their immortal and immaterial. original sin isn’t purged by baptism. On the one ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn addition, the king also possessed a hand, unbaptized people are supposed to go to natural, material body that was subject to hell after they die. On the other, deceased babies passion, foolishness, infancy, and death. The haven’t had time to commit many sins, so it was idea of the twin body of the king became one of thought that their punishment should be rather the defining factors in developing the concept of y mild. The solution was the limbo of infants. c a n sovereignty – ruling power incorporated within a i ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe limbo of infants – an intermediary state m body, in which death and eternal life are r between salvation and damnation, bliss and e t superposed. e torture – is thus not just a place of eternal d n I ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊNeither Schrdinger nor his numerous boredom and hopelessness. In limbo the children f o interpreters took into account the fact that in the might even ascend to a state of ultimate s e t twentieth century, his thought experiment was i happiness by establishing a different vision of S uncannily echoed by new experimental forms of s things – being unresolved things themselves, a asserting sovereignty. The result was a state that n dumped onto the bodies of people shot as o i t no quantum physicist could foresee.