Introduction—Uncertain Visions: Crisis, Ambiguity, and Visual Culture in Greece

Visual Regimes of Mobility Photographic Exhibitions on Refugees during the Financial Crisis in Greece

“…In my discussion of photographic vignettes that visually orchestrated the refugee crisis in ways that conditioned the national imagination, I argue that these works have crafted new moral selves and constructed new ethnopolitical moral fantasies in Greece. The aestheticization of destitution and dissent that characterized the Greek crisis, already an object of political engagement, abruptly changed in 2015 with leftist and rightist interlocutors exchanging positions: the first fiercely denying that the crisis could be seen and the latter seeing it everywhere (Kalantzis 2016a). Refugees became part of the visualization of crises, enhancing Greece’s neo‐Orientalist fascination with world misery and national desires to resist powerful Others (Kalantzis 2016a, 7).…”

“…The aestheticization of destitution and dissent that characterized the Greek crisis, already an object of political engagement, abruptly changed in 2015 with leftist and rightist interlocutors exchanging positions: the first fiercely denying that the crisis could be seen and the latter seeing it everywhere (Kalantzis 2016a). Refugees became part of the visualization of crises, enhancing Greece’s neo‐Orientalist fascination with world misery and national desires to resist powerful Others (Kalantzis 2016a, 7).…”

‘The past is a promise to the future’: stories, persons, and the devil in Greece

“…However, to return to the ethnographic literature, there are similarities between my argument and work that ‘describes “the new” as building on pre‐existing attitudes’ (Kalantzis : 7). In an intriguing argument that moves beyond the assumed objectivity of historical events and the way they may be remembered, Charles Stewart explores dreams of religious icons in Island Greece as elaborations of previously unknown episodes from the past, as ‘novel histories’ rather than ‘memories’ (: 215).If we were to conflate ‘novel histories’ and ‘memories’ in order to think about ‘novel memories’, we would have a good approximation of the way my informants foreground the devil and interpret the signs of his presence.…”

“…Like Christos's story, the history of the crisis is read backwards, foregrounding the devil. This emphasis on the devil problematizes the idea that there is anything new to the current crisis – an idea which dominates most of the ethnographic literature that explores its significance (for examples, see Kalantzis : 7).…”