Geographies of politics and the police: Post-democratization, SYRIZA, and the politics of the “Greek debt crisis”

Abstract

This paper explores the entangled dynamics of de-politicization and re-politicization in the midst of the "Greek debt crisis". Critically revisiting Jacques Rancière's political writings, it argues that, despite common criticisms to the contrary, his oeuvre foregrounds the impurity of democratic politics. Rancière, the paper contends, offers critical heuristic tools in understanding and engaging with how processes of post-democratization and democratic politics intersect, become entangled, and are mutually constituted. Simultaneously, however, it also challenges Rancière's almost exclusive emphasis on political subjectification to argue for a plural understanding of the modalities and spatialities of democratic politics. Reading the politics of the "Greek debt crisis" through this lens, the paper unpacks how post-democratization has unfolded through an uneven and contested geography articulated at multiple scales. In parallel, it also maps the diverse and impure modalities of democratic politics in crisis-ridden Greece: from the staging of disagreement through the 2011 squares movement to the articulation of everyday commoning and solidarity movements to SYRIZA's meteoric rise to power. In so doing, the paper demonstrates how post-democratization and democratic politics are being shaped in constant relationship and tension.

The Spatial Politics of Far-right Populism: VOX, Anti-fascism and Neighbourhood Solidarity in Madrid City

“…However, the 'institutionalisation moment' led to a progressive relaxation of the movements in the streets, not only in Madrid but across the indignados geographies. Karaliotas (2019) analyses similar dynamics in Greece with the experience of Syriza after the 'politics of the square'. Nevertheless, antiracism never was a priority for Ahora Madrid, who perpetuated institutional racism in the neighbourhoods.…”

“…5 Broadly, the failures of Podemos as an alternative to xenophobic populism go beyond the example of Ahora Madrid. In general, the processes of institutionalisation had a clear effect on the weakening of urban movements, provoking a shift regarding the spaces of anti-fascist struggles (Karaliotas, 2019). The main strategy of the party against the rise of VOX took the shape of advocating 'voting against VOX' together with the Socialist Party (PSOE).…”

Equals in Solidarity: Orfanotrofio’s Housing Squat as a Site for Political Subjectification Across Differences Amid the “Greek Crisis”

“…Spatialisation and the opening of spaces and infrastructures of dissensus (Karaliotas 2019) are an integral part of solidarity‐making and political subjectification. “The essential work of politics is the configuration of its own space.…”

“…Orfanotrofio, thus, serves as a living laboratory to embody and further explore how the forging of solidarities through political infrastructures shapes the emergence of collective political subjects. Simultaneously, it enables a nuanced understanding of how emancipatory migration politics encounter the police order, shaping and being shaped by it (Karaliotas 2019).…”

Afterword: They say the Centre cannot hold: Austerity, crisis, and the rise of anti-politics

“…In that sense, the articles collected in this SI advocate a "spatial turn" to read antipolitics by offering a compelling argument that spatial practices and geographical imaginaries have become strategic political devices to launch processes of repoliticization -either progressive or reactionary forms of resistance/opposition to austerity. Beverigde and Koch (2019) show how spatial practices entrenched in urban everyday challenge local state apparatus and privatization policies; Habermehl (2021) shows us how situated autogestion politics emerge during austerity in Buenos Aires, allowing everyday antagonist practices to settle in; F€ ortner et al (2021) point to the revival of the politicization of the urban-rural divide which, as the future, is not what it used to be; Featherstone (2019) discusses the entanglement of the spatial forms of austerity and the geographical imaginations of resistance, pointing to the relevance of the struggles of nations against multi-national states within the framework of an uneven geographical deployment of austerity; D€ onmez (2021) point to how austerity became authoritarian within the "borderlands" of Europe, rendering visible the core contradictions between capitalism and the liberal state and leading to a situated cycle of radical struggles; Karaliotas (2021) takes us through the squares' movement in Greece as form/moment of the political to emerge, aiming to represent a multitude that constitutes the nation against crippling austerity imposed by transnational institutions. Taken together, these analysis provide an analytical path for reading anti-systemic conflict as it is being remade through spatial-geographical categories: North versus South in the European Debt crisis; situated spaces of everyday antagonism; urban versus rural (the farright rise); urban politicized sociability against the local state; "austeritarian" governance deployed in the borderlands of liberal Europe; deindustrialized regions against service/ financialized metropoles (Brexit); squares versus parliaments and/or transnational institutions (Greece, Portugal or the Spanish 15 M).…”