Athens ’21: Undoing the demos in the year of the pandemic

This article is presented in the form of an illustrated memoire from the Greek bicentenary day (25 March 2021) and the way it was celebrated in Athens. As the Greek capital was under strict lockdown at the time, in view of the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the festivities were cancelled, with the exception of a military parade carried out through empty streets. The city’s desolate landscape on that most symbolic day helps rethink Greek biopolitics in the days of post-democracy. © 2021 Intellect Ltd Article. English language

Hellenistic intaglios and sealings

In 2 volsAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D178496 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo

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

Since 2009, Greece has been hit by a severe economic recession followed by harsh austerity policies, gradual impoverishment, and ultimately social collapse. This article investigates the cultural landscape of the so-called ‘Greek crisis’, focusing on Athens, the nation’s capital, and the ways the crisis discourse employs biopolitical technologies of dispossession and displacement in order to generate an intensified breed of body-politics. The article’s main case study is documenta 14, a blockbuster exhibition of contemporary art organized in Athens in 2017, seemingly elaborating on the ideas of debt – classical and modern – though in fact promoting neoliberal approaches to public economy and life. The idea of ‘classical debt’, the article concludes, continuously reiterated by both Greece’s defenders as well as its most unforgiving critics, rather than acting as an emancipatory force, ends up producing a public consisting of silent bodies, trapped in highly romanticized discourses of the past and ultimately unable to defend themselves. This tension, however, also provokes narratives and gestures made of contradictions and ambiguity, difficult to map and monitor according to established research protocols. © The Author(s) 2019

Utopian spatialities: The past as present in the films of Filippos Koutsaftis

In the documentary work of cinematographer Filippos Koutsaftis, Greece's past is reconstructed as an ever-living presence by means of its archaeological imprint. In his films, Greece is re-imaged as a transcendent archaeological landscape, cruelly violated by a deeply uncultured and thoroughly misanthropic modernity. Following the example of Theo Angelopoulos and a distinct European tradition focusing on the documentation of contemporary dystopias, Koutsaftis composes his filmic text as a contemplative gesture that rehearses cultural memory while at the same time seeking to come to terms with what he describes as “the trauma of history.” His portrayal of Greece as a utopian spatiality departs from the standard heterotopic conventions; according to Koutsaftis, the materiality of the past is imbued with a truly emancipatory force, and the experience of Greekness is restructured in his films not only as a historical or social process but also on the basis of the past's spatiality. © 2019 by The Modern Greek Studies Associatio

Crisis,austerity measures and beyond: Archaeology in Greece since the global financial crisis

This article, covering the roughly decade-long 'Greek crisis' (2008-2018), uses official statistics in order to examine the effects the prolonged recession has had on archaeology in Greece. As the data show, although revenues from museums and archaeological sites have risen considerably (a side effect of 'crisis tourism', among other factors), state spending on archaeological research is insufficient. Furthermore, the steady collapse of the state apparatus during this long decade has seriously affected archaeology and the ways it is practised in the country, ultimately leading to the loss of an entire generation of Greek archaeologists. ©The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies and the British School at Athens 2018