We owe ourselves to debt

Classical Greece, Athens in crisis, and the body as battlefield

Bibliographic Data

ID3085197
AuthorsDimitris Plantzos (0000-0002-7674-1062, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume58
Issue3
Pages469-492
Publication date2019-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Science Information (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0539-0184 • E-ISSN: 1461-7412
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0539018419857062
OpenAlexW2949792527
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited37

Since 2009, Greece has been hit by a severe economic recession followed by harsh austerity policies, gradual impoverishment, and ultimately social collapse. This article investigates the cultural landscape of the so-called 'Greek crisis', focusing on Athens, the nation's capital, and the ways the crisis discourse employs biopolitical technologies of dispossession and displacement in order to generate an intensified breed of body-politics. The article's main case study is documenta 14, a blockbuster exhibition of contemporary art organized in Athens in 2017, seemingly elaborating on the ideas of debt - classical and modern - though in fact promoting neoliberal approaches to public economy and life. The idea of 'classical debt', the article concludes, continuously reiterated by both Greece's defenders as well as its most unforgiving critics, rather than acting as an emancipatory force, ends up producing a public consisting of silent bodies, trapped in highly romanticized discourses of the past and ultimately unable to defend themselves. This tension, however, also provokes narratives and gestures made of contradictions and ambiguity, difficult to map and monitor according to established research protocols

Ambiguity · Art · Austerity · Debt · Debt crisis · Economics · Economy · Exhibition · Keynesian economics · Literature · Narrative · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Recession · Sociology · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Gender, Feminism, and Media · History · Law · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub