“The Cultural Body’s Death by a Thousand Cuts: Why Society Is No Longer a Body and Why It Can Be Cut to Pieces,” is my article for the Journal of Visual Culture titled CUT. This themed issue poses questions concerning financial cuts and their impact on contemporary society and the arts. It presents a collection of perspectives, in particular from Greece, in order to examine artistic and aesthetic practices. It explores how society is being transformed into a post-democracy and how citizens are becoming post-citizens. These transformations will have implications in the redefinition of both post-democracy and post-citizenship as two oppositional forces, which may no longer be reconcilable and could lead to insurrectional and repressive politics. The role that art plays and will play in shaping these discourses by presenting alternative imaginaries to the narratives of the body politic will have to be evaluated in a context of aesthetic concurrence and conspiracy of art. But if the artists are transformed into post-citizens – it may be safe to assume that as post-artists their contributions will be more free – or totally freed – from the restraints and bonds of national and supranational institutions, leading de facto to the production of counter narratives and imaginaries that will be perceived by the post-democracies’ body politic as insurrectional art.
