Narrating the story of a failed national transition: discourses on the Greek crisis, 2010–2014

Abstract

Institutehttp://epublishing.ekt.gr | e-Publisher: EKT | Downloaded at 04/07/2020 16:43:17 | Narrating the story of a failed national transition 50 promemorandum discourse that has been propagated by the political establishment and mainstream media since the outset of the crisis and that interprets the current crisis as a crisis of Greek identity: Greece failed to reform where necessary due to the domination of the traditional political culture (over a "modern" one) that is to blame for the failed transition since 1974 to postwar European modernity. The second part of this article situates this dominant narrative within the broader context of scholarly literature and academic discourses that have attempted, in different periods and in diverse ways, to conceptualise and prescribe the transition to modernity followed not only by Greece, but by other societies the world over. By unfolding the creation of this "failed transition" story while examining it in relation to broader narratives and discourses, this brief study forms a vantage point from which to observe how history is experienced by societies in crisis and, thus, witness "history in the making".

A Political Economy of Heritage and the Commons: A First Sketch Focusing on Greece

“…The private sector, in the form of large philanthropic foundations, rose to dominate heritage preservation and the new cultural production (Plantzos 2018). Critique soared: the receding state proved unable to adapt to the patron/facilitator patterns of management policy (Craik 2007), while chronic, palpable pathogenies in Greek cultural management (low state budget on culture, problematic prioritisation of spending, lack of infrastructure and tools, understaffing, clientelism) were further aggravated (Kouki & Liakos 2015). The 'state deficit model' steadily became a commonplace argument in academic narratives, while 'self-explanatory' flexible models emerged as one of the dominant modalities in the relevant bibliography, focusing on profit generation, entrepreneurship and cross-sectoral competitiveness; currently, proposals float between the synchronisation of public and private sectors, synergies and the preparation of the ground for investment on culture and heritage (Gazi 2017…”

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

“…Simultaneously, however, Greece has also been one of the hotbeds for a multi-faceted and heterogeneous democratic politics developing across the continent and particularly in Southern European countries and Ireland (see Hadjimichalis, 2017; O’Callaghan et al., 2014). More than a debt crisis then, the Greek and European travails constitute a “demo-crisis” (Kouki and Liakos, 2015: np). For Kouki and Liakos (2015), this term signifies how the elites have tried to first construct and then silence the demos , the people, as an obstacle to their efforts to respond to the crisis of the neoliberal project by implementing ultra-neoliberal policies.…”

The international face of Thessaloniki: The “Greek crisis,” the entrepreneurial mayor, and mainstream media discourses

“…Mainstream media have played a key role in the dissemination of such stereotypes and discourses, which continued during the economic crisis through the attribution of the crisis' roots to Greek culture (Liakos & Kouki, 2015). International media accepted and promoted non-systemic crisis narratives (Fairclough & Fairclough, 2012) and contributed to the circulation of blame, by focusing on the inadequate regulation of the market by the state, the intellectual and moral failures of people, and their "culturally induced" striving for corruption, greed, or laziness (Bickes et al, 2014;Kutter, 2014;Mylonas, 2012Mylonas, , 2015.…”