Spatializing Radical Political Imaginaries. Neoliberalism, Crisis, and Transformative Experience in the Syntagma Square Occupation in Greece (original) (raw)
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The paper studies the textual, discursive and social practices of the Greek “aganaktismeni” (indignados) movements, which mainly took place in the public gathering of tens of thousands of Greeks in Syntagma Square, outside the Greek parliament from May to August 2011. Data come from multiple sources, including the General Assembly proceedings and resolutions, while a linguistically-informed approach is followed, which combines Critical Discourse Analysis concepts with corpus linguistic methods. It is argued that the Syntagma protests generated a new context in Greek politics, by introducing new genres and the innovative articulation of already existing discourses. It was also found that social/political identities and social/public space were co-articulated, since the identity of the movement was crucially constructed in terms of space. Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis, corpus analysis, Greek protests, identity, public space
Re-mapping ‘Crisis’, 2014
In the last few years the city centre of Athens in Greece has been the arena of an increasing number of clashes, demonstrations, insurrections and movements that caused abrupt social and political transformations. The public spaces of the city - that are the material constructions of social, cultural, economic and political realities - are mirrors of those changes. Using the example of Syntagma square which is the main statutory public space, and a number of events that took place there-events ranging from protesters burning of the Christmas tree during the urban insurrection of December 2008 to the violent police attack during the ‘indignants’ movement in 2011-I would like to investigate the idea of the emergence of a new public. This novelty is created by the rejection of the existing participatory framework of democratic political procedures set by the State as the new public is forced to actively redefine itself through the very quest for and implementation of the new models of the participatory framework. Using a number of theorists who are working on contrasting notions of democracy defined by different ways of political participation, and attributing the notion of incumbent democracy to the official state discourse and the notion of critical democracy to the emerging public and its movements I will attempt to provide a framework for examining the aims and claims of each side regarding the definition of democracy. Moreover I will draw on the importance of maintaining the expression and visibility of different political claims and projects in public space, even if they are conflicting and violent, as an essential characteristic of democratisation. Finally, the framework of conflicting political notions will be used to provide a new perspective on the new spatio-political movements, debating that the lack of stability, efficiency and representative agency that are characterising them, are in fact intrinsic and desirable characteristics that aim to empower and critically redefine the notion of the public. ISBN 10: 1780996055 ISBN 13: 9781780996059
Urban spaces and anti-neoliberal social movements: the case of Exarchia neighbourhood in Athens
In Europe there is a ‘piazza’, which is not the one of spread and financial markets but the ‘piazza’ still able to shape the urban space in the name of ‘the right to the city’. Paradoxically that ‘piazza’ is based in Greece, downgraded to PIGS by European financial institutions, specifically in Athens, a social kaleidoscope on the age of the global economic crisis. Starting from the industrial era, the development of the Greek capital proved to be ‘a story of failure’, a day scenario exacerbated for the least four years cause the economic crisis. At the same time, following the fast decline of the quality of life, Athens has been the witness of huge squares movement, that have taken place whether in a central approach (in particular localized in Syntagma, where Greek Parliament is based) or widespread through local assemblies territorialized in every neighborhood. Surely Platia Exarchia, that takes its name from the local district, is the most radical among these ‘piazzas’, holding a strong tradition as an anarchist area that continues to play a leading role for urban movements against austerity. Exarchia represents a unique place in the metropolitan European context due to the low level of acceptance to a strict urban neoliberal enforcement. A mix of different political identities and several underground styles marks the district as a political, social and cultural environment, where ‘cry and lament’ of Lefebvrian memory can be still recognized as the ‘sound of the identities’ in Castells’s meaning. The aim of this paper is to give a first ethnographic reading of Exarchia, starting from its contextualization in the Athenian metropolitan space up to the identities and practices narrative that through it.
HETEROPOLITICS, 2018
During the last years, the discussion on commons and new enclosures revolves mainly around Marxist approaches that focus on the “accumulation by dispossession” (Harvey, 2005) and conceptualize urban commons as a new version of the “right to the city” (Mayer, 2009). At the same time, during the current rising tide of urban revolts, the protestors do not just claim the urban space from the sovereign power, but they occupy and tend to transform it into common spaces. In this point it is emerged the crucial question how the spaces of commons can be circulated and go beyond the class, patriarchical, racial and other power relations. In order to unsettle my view I follow several critical scholars analyses (De Angelis, 2017; Caffentzis, 2010; Federici, 2011), who propose that conceptualizing the commons involves three things at the same time: common pool resource, commoning and community. Thus, the commons are not only physical, material or immaterial resources, they don’t exist per se but they are constituted through the social process of commoning. In order to examine and deepen the notion of commoning I am inspired by the discussion on “stasis”. Last years several scholars (Butler and Athanasiou, 2013; Douzinas, 2013; Tsilimpounidi, 2016) adopt the Greek ancient notion of stasis in order to explain the social movements. Indeed, stasis is the process by which people stand, reflecting upon themselves, recognize their strengths, contest and take position. On the other hand, the suppression of stasis can be understood as the response of systems of domination to the social emancipatory commoning. In this theoretical framework, I propose stasis as the catalyst for the circulation of commons. Based on the above theoretical context this paper explores the role of the physical, social and symbolic meanings of stasis in the processes of setting up the common space. In particular it is examined the protest camps in the Indignados movement in Syntagma square in Athens (2011), in the Gezi park occupation in Istanbul (2013) and in the refugees’ makeshift settlement of Idomeni in the Greek-Macedonia borders (2016). Through the above cases the main finding is that the protestors, through stasis, are transformed into an unpredictable and misfitted multitude that produces and circulates unique and porous common spaces, spaces in movement and threshold spaces.
Hetero-utopias: squatting and spatial materialities of resistance at times of crisis in Athens
2018
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Social and Cultural Geography, 2021
The latest encampments in public spaces, such as Occupy Wall Street, Taksim Square and Syntagma Square, have highlighted the significance of public space in shaping social, economic and political struggles around the world. In this paper, drawing on a qualitative study of Syntagma Square in Athens, Greece, we confirm that spontaneous, self-organised movements, such the Aganaktismenoi (Indignant) movement, could function as intermediaries between protest and resistance, leading to the institution of urban practices of commoning. We argue that the innovative attributes of such movements inspire and trigger the introduction of new decision-making mechanisms, social relationships and political subjectivities and the institution of solidarity and collective forms of social reproduction. We conclude that these initiatives constitute a radicalization of political struggles and have a positive effect both in terms of increased civic participation and the emergence of new collective identities and political subjectivities.
The December 2008 Youth Uprising in Athens: Spatial Justice in an Emergent "City Of Thresholds
2010
The term “urban conflict” can be taken to include all those forms social antagonism takes, when the resulting struggles happen in an urban spatial context. Is the city however simply a container of these struggles or does urban spatiality actually mold social conflicts, giving them form, affecting their meaning and their relations with specific urban rights and demands? This paper will attempt to trace the history of a specific and very recent period of urban conflicts in Athens, Greece, where a highly indicative series of phenomena seems to have taken place: What has started as a generalized expression of youth rage, triggered by the assassination of a young boy by a policeman, has evolved to a multifarious and inventive reclaim of city public space. As it is characteristic in most urban conflicts, the city was not simply involved as the setting of actions but urban space and its uses became one of the stakes of the conflict. Either explicitly or implicitly connected with demands r...