Book chapter – To Archeio

Urban panics and black holes. Ambiguities of deceleration in the time of financialization

apostolos — Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:50 +0000

In the text I embark upon an effort to ground the possibility of a presence and new forms of fascism of our times in the process of financialization and to the ambiguities of the deceleration as a form of the tactics of resistance (or/and lines of flight) in the permanent acceleration of financialization (financialization as a procedure of permanent crisis). The work of the process of deceleration is ambiguous: on the one hand it is relates to the desire for another governmentality –“not to be govern like this” to the limit of non-governmentality, and on the other a blockage is possible, the capture of this desire in the black holes of fascism.“This temporal discontinuity of resistance, its unexpected acts, the vulnerability of its potential, and recently, its reterritorialization in parliamentary procedures, puts the critical project in a permanent starting position, or as if it is in a permanent starting position. As a result of this, the practice of critique remains constant while at the same moment it is constantly in a position of emergence. A position, which we can conceive in contiguity to the financial capital (as a “Body Without Organs”), and which is related to the production of a post-crisiac, fluctuated subject, in a position of impotent prudence and prediction of its life events. […] But we probably have to avoid this unanswered, questioning of unifying principle. Maybe it’s now time to accept the ambiguous power of the obscure position where the body as a victim of financial capital is a body of strength where capital anchors itself. Because this obscure position is the power and the weakness of the poor. Maybe now it is time to accept that the critical attitude of our time demands or presupposes inconsistency, the rupture with reasons and outcomes of action.”

«Πολιτισμικές» ερμηνείες της «ελληνικής κρίσης χρέους». Όψεις του νεοφιλελεύθερου λόγου στον ελληνικό δημόσιο χώρο

apostolos — Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:43 +0000

Race and class in German media representations of the ‘Greek crisis’

apostolos — Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:42 +0000

Research has shown that the mainstream media coverage of the EU’s economic crisis has been not only offensive and prejudiced for the people of the countries most affected by it, but most crucially, utterly relying on elite understandings of the crisis, as articulated by the political and economic establishment of the EU. Indeed, the hegemonic public framing of the Eurozone crisis followed an ‘Orientalist’ approach, through spectacular narratives stressing cultural and moral failures of ‘national characters’ and exceptional national institutions that are (supposedly) fundamentally different from the ‘European’ cannon. This way, regimes of exception were able to be publicly constructed as plausible explanations for the crisis (as a ‘self-inflicted’ problem by those not following the European norm), and equivalent exceptional policies (such as austerity regimes) to be implemented in the supposedly problematic countries. Drawing on the findings of previous research, this contribution presents the class and racist dimensions of the German mainstream media’s ‘Greek-crisis’ representations, by focusing on the ‘crisis epicenter’, Greece, a country relentlessly targeted and, slandered and shamed by the German media and the German elites in particular. The chapter concludes that both in their light and in their serious versions, the German media publicly construct the so-called Greek crisis in line with the bourgeois and post-democratic principles directing the EU.

Urban planning and revolt: a spatial analysis of the December 2008 uprising in Athens

apostolos — Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:36 +0000

The Right to the City’ in Athens during a crisis era. Between inversion, assimilation and going beyond

apostolos — Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:34 +0000

Ever since the book of Henri Lefebvre “The right to the city” was published in 1968 it served as a great inspiration for several scholars, researchers, academics and activists. Being the point of departure for various urban movements, it contributed to a wave of resistance and destabilization of sovereignty in many parts of the western world during the turbulent decades of the 60s and 70s. While it has become extremely popular or even fashionable, it often appears detached from its original meaning. Various forms of sovereignty used its revolutionary and innovative rhetoric in an attempt to grand radical contexts in their political agendas. Forty five years after the first publication of Lefebvre’s book, the Athenian metropolis, a city in the (epi)center of the crisis turmoil, is governed by a municipal authority party that goes under the name of “Right to the City”. The party adopted much of Lefebvre’s revolutionary rhetoric, such as “the city as oeuvre”, in order to form its political agenda and win the municipal elections of 2010 and 2014. Ever since, a political program is applied based on a rather distorted interpretation of “the right to the city”. In this chapter two approaches of “The right to the city” (‘TRTTC’ from now on) will be confronted. On the one hand the Lefebvrian notion of the 1960s and on the other hand Kaminis’ (the Athens mayoral candidate) appropriation of 2010 and 2014. The first approach is considered as an effort to introduce the Marxian thought in spatial thinking in order to contribute to the emerging emancipatory movements, and the second as a fine example of distortion of contexts in favor of gaining power and promoting neoliberal policies. In this direction, we unfold the political program of Kaminis and examine its applications versus its title and theoretical context. By examining urban policies and tactics that are applied under the cloak of “TRTTC” and form the everyday life in Athens we intend to demonstrate that divisions between form and content can often lead to the complete inversion of primal meanings. By lifting the veil of propaganda it becomes visible that the assimilation of radical contexts on behalf of municipal authority does not lead to emancipatory urban policies but aims to cover up sovereignty. Bringing to surface neo-interpretations of Lefebvre’s analysis, though, does not only enlighten the subversion of the original notions or highlight them as stolen contexts from sovereignty. In fact, not only is it a great opportunity to explore once again and rethink what Lefebvre was teaching and writing during the 60s but also a motive to question, think beyond and challenge it in the contemporary contexts of urban uprisings and revolts. Inspired by the work of several radical scholars like Harvey, de Souza or Pasquinelli we make an argument on the perspectives beyond the Lefebvrian notion and an attempt to approach Athens as an emerging rebel city. During the crisis years various struggles and acts of solidarity have been taking place in the city area, thus several spaces of resistance and commoning have emerged. In this regard, we deal with the transition from demanding the city to occupying the city as a contemporary space of resistance.

The Ecumenical ‘Right to the City’: Urban Commons and Intersectional Enclosures in Athens and Istanbul

apostolos — Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:29 +0000

The collective volume is an outcome of the international conference ‘Contested Borderscapes. Transnational Geographies vis-à-vis Fortress Europe’ that took place in Mytilene (Lesvos), September 28 – October 1, 2017.

“Refugee tv” and “Refugees got talent” projects. Affective and decolonial geographies of invisible common spaces

apostolos — Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:27 +0000

Anger management and the politics of crime in the Greek crisis

apostolos — Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:23 +0000

In 2008, Greece was plunged into recession. A full-blown financial crisis developed in 2009, from which point onwards the Greek economy shrank with persistence unmatched by current comparisons. The onset of financial crisis triggered a major realignment in the configuration of political power in the country, with a collapse in support for the left pillar of a centrist two-party system that had been in place for over 30 years, and the entry to Parliament of an extreme far-right group with a reputation for engaging in physical violence. The political ramifications of the crisis have continued to evolve under the socio-economic pressures of the ongoing recession, the austerity measures adopted to meet the conditions of successive bailouts, and the asymmetrical impact of both upon the country’s citizenry.

Beyond hope: prospects for the commons in austerity-stricken Greece

apostolos — Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:17 +0000

From 2009 on, Greece has become a laboratory of implementation of neoliberal austerity policies but has also seen fierce resistance and a surge of creative alternatives. In the ensuing years of strife, “hope” has been the notion around which political movements attempted to rally their supporters against the neoliberal restructuring. “Hope” in the blochean sense of evoking the “not-yet” existing through prefigurative politics (apud Dinerstein 2014:59) but also “hope” as an empty signifier (Laclau 2000: 56, 84) a catch-all term to unify all different aspirations for overcoming the crisis under the common hegemonic project of Syriza (Katsambekis 2015:158). This article aims to outline the central political imaginaries of overcoming austerity that arose in this period –Plan A of reform and redistribution, Plan B of national economic reconstruction outside the Eurozone and Plan C of a bottom-up reorganisation of politics and economy around the commons– and the interplay between the three in the context of anti-austerity politics. It especially focuses on the abandonment of Plan A by the political forces that expressed it and the challenges faced by adherents of the third imaginary (“Plan C”) in subverting the capitalist market and in addressing the question of power and the state.

Debt Society: Psychosocial aspects of the (Greek) crisis

apostolos — Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:16 +0000

no abstract