https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:36 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://toarcheio.org/items/urban-planning-and-revolt-a-spatial-analysis-of-the-december-2008-uprising-in-athens/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:36 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/urban-planning-and-revolt-a-spatial-analysis-of-the-december-2008-uprising-in-athens/ https://toarcheio.org/items/the-right-to-the-city-in-athens-during-a-crisis-era-between-inversion-assimilation-and-going-beyond/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:34 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/the-right-to-the-city-in-athens-during-a-crisis-era-between-inversion-assimilation-and-going-beyond/ Continued]]> 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.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/uni-conflicts-in-spaces-of-crisis-critical-approaches-in-against-and-beyond-the-university/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:30 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/uni-conflicts-in-spaces-of-crisis-critical-approaches-in-against-and-beyond-the-university/ https://toarcheio.org/items/establishing-indifference-the-affective-logic-of-neoliberalism/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:54 +0000 http://arc.local/items/establishing-indifference-the-affective-logic-of-neoliberalism/ https://toarcheio.org/items/the-golden-salto-mortale-in-the-era-of-crisis-primitive-accumulation-and-local-and-urban-struggle-in-the-case-of-skouries-gold-mining-in-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:52 +0000 http://arc.local/items/the-golden-salto-mortale-in-the-era-of-crisis-primitive-accumulation-and-local-and-urban-struggle-in-the-case-of-skouries-gold-mining-in-greece/ Continued]]> As formulated by Marx ([1867] 1990. Capital. Vol. I. London: Penguin, 200), ‘the leap taken by value from the body of the commodity into the body of the gold is the commodity’s salto mortale’. Following autonomous Marxist literature (De Angelis 2007. The Beginning of History: Value Struggles and Global Capital. London: Pluto Press; Federici 2011. ‘Feminism and the Politics of the Commons.’ The Commoner, other articles. Accessed January 28, 2017, http://www.commoner.org.uk/?p=113; Hardt and Negri 2009. Commonwealth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), the circulation of capital could be interrupted by social, class, gender or ecological struggles. In order to unsettle this view, we build on recent critical scholarship on new enclosures, land-grabbing and the permanence of primitive accumulation and we explore the inter-articulation of gold mining projects and neoliberal policies in the era of crisis. In this effort, we examine the case of Greece, a country at the epicenter of the recent financial and social crisis. During the last decade, the Canadian company Eldorado has undertaken a gold mining investment in the environmentally sensitive area of Skouries. A fruitful social struggle has emerged against this project, both in the rural site and in the urban Greek metropolis. Through this examination we investigate how the financial crisis provides an opportunity for multinational mining corporations to expand their zones of exploitation and how social resistance can reclaim common resources.

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