struggling bodies in capitalist societies (democracies) was an experimental symposium about discipline, asceticism, body images and political constructions of the “self”. struggling bodies in capitalist societies (democracies) debated the body as the place of the political, with experimental set-ups in different spaces and spacial settings, as lecture, dialogue and roundtable. two days of discussion took place on “body concepts” – from the disciplined body to the body as battle ground of economic and social duties; from bioethics to the machineries of desire in connection to religious and political orders; and as a space and constellation for fragile thoughts and perhaps new methodologies.

struggling bodies in capitalist societies (democracies) as the first issue of CHEAP METHOD EDITION collects the texts and documents of gerald siegmund, elke van campenhout, marina gržinić, alice pechriggl and hrvoje jurić, as well as fragments of the transcribed discussions, photos of the symposium with the same title as the issue hold in december 2012, the performance of guenther auer, as well as photos of the performance “designed desires” of claudia bosse. the order of the texts follows the structure of the symposium and offers a parallel reading of thoughts developed through spoken language in confrontation with constructed texts. it also gives an outline of the topic’s blind spots, proposing a dialogue of divergent viewpoints and thought models on the main subject: “struggling bodies in capitalist societies”.