Memory, counter-memory and resistance: notes on the ‘Greek Debt Truth Commission’

Abstract

This chapter seeks to understand the social and political significance of the Greek Truth Committee on the Public Debt (TCPD), a process set up by SYRIZA in June 2015 to contest the dominant ‘common sense’ of Greece’s sovereign debt. Affirming its value, this chapter analyses the TCPD as an important, strategic response to post-crash neoliberalism. Lazzarato has argued that contemporary neoliberalism relies on a mnemotechnics of debt, a project of memory, which does the crucial work of legitimising and sustaining recourse to austerity policies by making citizens ‘guilty’ and thus deserving of them. Set against neoliberalism’s mnemotechnics, I examine the TCPD as a memory-making project, showing how it produced a counter-memory of the debt which demonstrated the innocence of Greek citizens and thus freed them from guilt. With its capacity to reverse the common sense of debt, I conclude that the TCPD’s memory-making strategy remains an important precedent for resisting post-crash neoliberalism.