https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:09 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://toarcheio.org/items/paradoxes-of-polarization-democracys-inherent-division-and-the-anti-populist-challenge/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:09 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/paradoxes-of-polarization-democracys-inherent-division-and-the-anti-populist-challenge/ Continued]]> This article carries out a theoretical analysis of the relationship between democracy and polarization. It utilizes examples from a variety of premodern and modern societies to argue that difference and division are inherent to a vibrant democratic life and to representation itself. At the same time, a stable and pluralist democratic culture presupposes the establishment of a common ground required for reflexive democratic decision making. To take into account both requirements, this must be a special type of common ground: an agonistic common ground. Agonism, as opposed to both the politics of raw antagonism and the postpolitics of consensus, values the existence of real alternatives and even ideological distance but aims at sublimating their pernicious effects. However, an agonistic outcome is always the result of a delicate balancing act between oligarchic and populist tendencies. In modernity, it predominantly took the form of a paradoxical blend of the democratic and the liberal tradition. The current crisis of liberal democracy and its postdemocratic mutation obliges one to ask whether democratic crisis may cause polarization, rather than the other way around, and puts in doubt the ability of the “moderate center” to deal with it in ways consolidating democracy. The article illustrates its theoretical rationale with examples from populism/antipopulism polarization in contemporary Greece, where elite-driven antipopulist discourse has consistently employed dehumanizing repertoires enhancing pernicious polarization.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/dangers-of-an-urban-crisis-within-the-european-union-fueling-xenophobia-and-undermining-democracy/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:45 +0000 http://arc.local/items/dangers-of-an-urban-crisis-within-the-european-union-fueling-xenophobia-and-undermining-democracy/ Continued]]> The global economic and financial crisis of 2007-08 has further intensified a social and urban crisis that undermines democracy and economic institutions internationally. Specifically, the economic crisis and the consequent austerity measures have resulted in greater exploitation in the labor market and job discrimination, in capital flight and undermined political and social institutions that provide for citizens. Xenophobia becomes again a burgeoning problem that is plaguing the European Union (EU) and needs to be addressed thoroughly for it can again undermine the democratic tradition of the region. This article concentrates on perspectives on the current migration crisis within the region of the EU that has spurred a spiral of xenophobic tendencies and a neo-liberal nationalist narrative. Particular emphasis is placed in the situations in Greece (the much attested “guinea pig” of the democratic experiment) and Italy.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/from-bad-to-worse-reflections-on-the-crisis-in-greece-and-in-europe/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:27 +0000 http://arc.local/items/from-bad-to-worse-reflections-on-the-crisis-in-greece-and-in-europe/ What are the consequences of the radical measures taken in Greece since the beginning of the crisis? thile discussing the positve and negatve efects of the Troika therapLJ in Greece, this essaLJ gives an overview of the politcal situaton in Greece and Europe, and discusses the dangers for democracLJ in the EU.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/towards-a-regime-of-post-political-biopower-dispatches-from-greece-2010-2012/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:26 +0000 http://arc.local/items/towards-a-regime-of-post-political-biopower-dispatches-from-greece-2010-2012/ Continued]]> This article makes the case that Greece has witnessed a transition from a ‘post-democratic’ condition in the ’90 s and the early 21st century to a regime of ‘post-political biopower’ in 2010–12 that can bid democracy farewell. To adequately theorize this modality of power in a way pertinent to contemporary Greece, the paper takes its bearings from Agamben’s take on biopower, the homo sacer and the endless state of exception. But the analysis fills in Agamben’s theoretical skeleton by drawing on Naomi Klein’s account of the ‘Shock Doctrine’, which captures a particular technique of biopower deployed by neoliberal hegemony, Deleuze’s insights about the ‘society of control’ and Lazzarato’s elaborations of these insights with reference to the ‘indebted man’, which can shed light on the political implications of the Greek debt crisis. Yet popular responses, initiatives and electoral politics, as well as the intricacies of dominant power relations, upset any monolithic and quasi-totalitarian account of sovereign rule, disclosing cracks, imbalances and dispersion in its edifice.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/athens-in-the-mediterranean-movement-of-the-piazzas-spontaneity-in-material-and-virtual-public-spaces/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:14 +0000 http://arc.local/items/athens-in-the-mediterranean-movement-of-the-piazzas-spontaneity-in-material-and-virtual-public-spaces/ Continued]]> Mediterranean cities are carrying Gramsci’s concept of spontaneity into the 21st century through massive social movements after the ‘Arab Spring’. This paper explores the ways in which the material and virtual cityscape interact with socio-political transformation during the ‘movement of the piazzas’ in Athens, Greece. After a discussion of the importance of urban informality, porosity and land-use mixtures for social cohesion, of creeping ghettoization in some enclaves and of the perils of urbicide, we proceed to an analysis of grassroots action in Athens in comparison with different cities of the Mediterranean and beyond. Social movements are placed in their respective local and global context—their recurrent material landscapes and their cosmopolitan virtual spaces of digital interaction. This analysis leads to reflections on the possible role of popular spontaneity in democratization and in European integration at the grassroots level, against the onslaught of neoliberalism and accumulation by dispossession.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/chaos-our-own-gun-on-their-table/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:13 +0000 http://arc.local/items/chaos-our-own-gun-on-their-table/ Continued]]> In October 2011, George Papandreou, the then Greek Prime Minister, announced he was planning to hold a referendum in order for the Greek people to decide whether to agree to the bailout plan prepared by the International Monetary Fund, the Central European Bank and the European Commission. This intention was aborted due to intense pressure by Papandreou’s European partners, especially Germany and France. This interference clearly shows the problematic relationship between the so-called ‘markets’ and national-popular sovereignty. This article raises the question of why this interference happened in the first place, why the global markets felt such a big threat before the possibility of a vote taking place in a small country of 10 million inhabitants. And also, importantly, what this means in terms of potential for political agency by those who are usually considered to be lacking such agency, as having ‘no other alternative’ than to follow the one-way course of neoliberalism.

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