From the subject of the crisis to the subject in crisis: Middle voice on Greek walls

Abstract

As a grammatical mode in which the subject remains inside the action, the middle voice has been said to unsettle binary distinctions between active/passive, or perpetrator/victim. This article revisits theorizations of the middle voice by Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Hayden White, Dominick LaCapra and others, and explores its potential in fostering alternative accounts of the contemporary Greek subject against the backdrop of popular discourses on the Greek ‘crisis’. The middle voice takes centre-stage in a currently popular Greek wall-writing featuring the word vasanizomai (‘I am in torment’) – a wall-writing that also plays an instrumental role in the recent novella by Sotiris Dimitriou Konta stin koilia/Close to the belly (2014). In the face of hegemonic discourses that narrativize the Greek crisis as krisis (judgement and distinction) between perpetrators and victims, vasanizomai signals a different kind of crisis: it unsettles dominant accounts of the Greek subject that either hold Greek people responsible for the crisis (e.g., the stereotype of the ‘lazy Greek’) or cast them as disempowered victims of a political system or of uncontrollable global forces. By enabling an agency grounded in the subject’s publicly shared vulnerability, vasanizomai de-centres the notion of the liberal ‘willing’ subject but also of the subject as fully determined by ideology. While a middle voice discourse harbours political pitfalls, the article lays out the conditions under which it could constitute a critical tool, able to accommodate voices of dispossessed individuals.

Appraising the “Greek Truth Committee” in the Age of Debt: Counter-Expertise, “Battle Truths,” and the Struggle Against Post-Crash Neoliberalism

“…One can subsequently agree with Maria Boletsi that the discourse of collective blame somewhat paradoxically seems to make 'Greek citizen almost individually responsible,' whilst also 'projecting' the individual as responsible for solving the crisis by taking on a more entrepreneurial existence. 35 The discourse of responsibility, then, is marked by a 'transversal' quality inasmuch as guilt is neither entirely collectivised nor completely individualised but operates by making connections and thus mediating between them. That Pangalos set up a website to crowdsource individual stories of Greek excesses from concerned citizens as 'proof' of his hypothesis attests to this connective logic and the movement between individual and collective it authorises.…”

Narrating into Europe: Female Migrant Writers’ Voice and Representation

“…Jesse van Amelsvoort University of Groningen T he need for a, potentially new, narrative for Europe is fuelled by a sense of crisis, as the editors of this special issue make clear in their introduction (see also Boletsi, 2016;Van Weyenberg, 2016). In these times, it is unclear what are or can be the legitimacy and affective force of the European Union (EU).…”

We owe ourselves to debt: Classical Greece, Athens in crisis, and the body as battlefield

“…3. See, though, a number of publications where the cultural impact of the crisis is explored: Gourgouris, 2011;Panourgia, 2011;Papailias, 2011;Papanikolaou, 2011;Douzinas, 2013;Liakos, 2013;Theodossopoulos, 2013;Triandafyllidou et al, 2013;Rakopoulos, 2014;Tsilimpounidi & Walsh 2014;Knight, 2015;Kouki & Liakos, 2015;Plantzos, 2015;Boletsi, 2016;Glynos & Voutyras, 2016;Hamilakis, 2016;Herzfeld, 2016;Kalantzis, 2016;Knight & Stewart, 2016;Gumpert, 2017;Tziovas, 2017b;Plantzos, 2017(and most other articles in Tziovas, 2017a; Dalakoglou & Agelopoulos, 2018.…”