Towards commoning institutions in, against and beyond the 'Greek crisis'

No abstract available

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

This paper explores the entangled dynamics of de-politicization and re-politicization in the midst of the “Greek debt crisis.” Critically revisiting Jacques Rancière’s political writings, it argues that, despite common criticisms to the contrary, his oeuvre foregrounds the impurity of democratic politics. Rancière, the paper contends, offers critical heuristic tools in understanding and engaging with how processes of post-democratization and democratic politics intersect, become entangled, and are mutually constituted. Simultaneously, however, it also challenges Rancière’s almost exclusive emphasis on political subjectification to argue for a plural understanding of the modalities and spatialities of democratic politics. Reading the politics of the “Greek debt crisis” through this lens, the paper unpacks how post-democratization has unfolded through an uneven and contested geography articulated at multiple scales. In parallel, it also maps the diverse and impure modalities of democratic politics in crisis-ridden Greece: from the staging of disagreement through the 2011 squares movement to the articulation of everyday commoning and solidarity movements to SYRIZA’s meteoric rise to power. In so doing, the paper demonstrates how post-democratization and democratic politics are being shaped in constant relationship and tension

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

This paper explores the entangled dynamics of de-politicization and re-politicization in the midst of the “Greek debt crisis.” Critically revisiting Jacques Rancière’s political writings, it argues that, despite common criticisms to the contrary, his oeuvre foregrounds the impurity of democratic politics. Rancière, the paper contends, offers critical heuristic tools in understanding and engaging with how processes of post-democratization and democratic politics intersect, become entangled, and are mutually constituted. Simultaneously, however, it also challenges Rancière’s almost exclusive emphasis on political subjectification to argue for a plural understanding of the modalities and spatialities of democratic politics. Reading the politics of the “Greek debt crisis” through this lens, the paper unpacks how post-democratization has unfolded through an uneven and contested geography articulated at multiple scales. In parallel, it also maps the diverse and impure modalities of democratic politics in crisis-ridden Greece: from the staging of disagreement through the 2011 squares movement to the articulation of everyday commoning and solidarity movements to SYRIZA’s meteoric rise to power. In so doing, the paper demonstrates how post-democratization and democratic politics are being shaped in constant relationship and tension

Infrastructures of dissensus: repartitioning the sensible and articulating the political through the occupation of Greece’s public broadcasting service

This article engages with contemporary debates around the politics of space and the spatiality of politics by exploring how the fabrication of emancipatory infrastructures shapes the articulation and reconfiguration of the (urban) political. Moving beyond the prevailing emphasis on urban uprisings, the article focuses on the occupation and self-management of Greece’s Public Broadcasting Service (ERT) in response to New Democracy’s government decision to dismantle it in June 2013. In this juncture, ERT workers and multiple movements and activists in solidarity occupied the Service’s buildings across the country and recuperated its infrastructures to broadcast TV and Radio programmes. ERT’s buildings became key political spaces and nodal political infrastructures in the struggle against austerity. Drawing on Jacques Rancière’s conceptualization of politics as a world-making activity, the article reads these occupations as the opening of new spatialities for politics through the fabrication of infrastructures of dissensus. In this, it foregrounds the spatial and infrastructural dimensions of urban politics, explores how such infrastructure spaces reconfigure the partition of the urban sensible and traces the challenges and limitations that emerge from their encounters with the police order

Equals in solidarity: Orfanotrofio’s housing squat as a site for political subjectification across differences amid the “Greek crisis”

This article engages with the political struggles staged by illegalised migrants and activists in solidarity amid the long summer of migration and the “Greek crisis”. Grounding its analysis on Orfanotrofio’s housing squat in Thessaloniki, it narrates how such struggles are articulated to politicise migration and stage the equality of newcomers—migrants and refugees—and locals. Drawing on Jacques Rancière’s political writings and contemporary geographical work on solidarity, the article argues that such struggles not only disrupt the exclusionary ordering of our cities but also construct political spaces and infrastructures of dissensus wherein equals in solidarity discuss common political problems and devise common political strategies. Through the notion of equals in solidarity, the article investigates how the performative enactment of equality can form the basis for solidarities across differences and analyses how some of the tensions that emerge around collective political subjectification are negotiated. Building on this, it explores some of the challenges and limitations that these struggles face in their efforts to transform the existing order of the city

The spatialization of democratic politics: Insights from Indignant Squares

This article departs from accounts that either deify Indignant Squares as a model for 21st century political praxis or demonize them as apolitical/post-political crowd gatherings. By performing a closer ethnographic reading of the Indignants’ protests at Athens’ Syntagma Square, we depict the Indignant Squares as a consensual and deeply spatialized staging of dissent, which nevertheless harbours in its underbelly internally conflicting and often radically opposing political imaginaries. A closer reading of the organization, practice and discourses that evolved at Syntagma Square unearths the existence of not one, but two distinct Indignant Squares, both at Syntagma, each with its own topography (upper and lower square), and its own discursive and material practices. Although both squares staged dissent, they nevertheless generated different (opposing, even) political imaginaries. The ‘upper square’ often divulged nationalistic or xenophobic discourses; the ‘lower square’ centred around more organized efforts to stage inclusive politics of solidarity. The paper suggests that, rather than focusing on the homogenizing terms Indignants’ movement/Indignant Squares we should instead be trying to develop a more nuanced theoretical understanding and a more finely grained empirical analysis of the discursive and spatial choreographies of these events. This, we argue, would allow us to go beyond either celebrating them as new political imaginaries, or condemning them as expressions of a post-political era. Talking of ‘Indignant Squares’ in the plural helps one explore in more grounded ways both the limitations and the possibilities that these events offer for opening up (or closing down) democratic politics

Urban resilience, the local and the politics of the anthropocene:reflections on the future of the urban environment

No abstract available

Challenging the spatial politics of the European crisis: nationed narratives and trans-local solidarities in the post-crisis conjuncture

This paper explores the potential for the formation of political solidarities across the spatial divisions being intensified by dominant responses to the European crisis. In doing so it takes inspiration from Doreen Massey’s thinking around the contested terms on which space and politics are articulated and her engagement with the 2008 crisis through projects such as the Kilburn Manifesto. We argue that her book World City powerfully articulates a way of thinking about the spatial politics of a particular conjuncture. The paper traces the ways in which various political interventions in post-crisis politics have been shaped by distinctive ‘nationed’ geographical imaginaries. In particular we explore how left-wing nationed narratives impact on the discursive horizon and unpack their implications for the articulation of solidarities and emancipatory politics in the context of the ‘European Crisis’. Building on this, we reflect on how trans-local solidarities and alliances might be articulated across socio-spatial divisions and contest the decidedly uneven, racialised, gendered and classed impacts of dominant European politics. We argue that such solidarities and alliances can form a crucial intervention in challenging the dominant spatial politics of crisis and articulating left political strategies on different terms

Populism

Populism refers to forms of politics that put ‘the people’ at their centre, but the way ‘the people’ is understood varies widely. Questions of left populism have gained significant traction and engagement in the last decade - and this is a key focus of this article. While recognising the importance of Ernesto Laclau’s analysis in On Populist Reason, the authors argue that his work is hindered by an overly formalist account of the political. Stuart Hall’s writings on Thatcherism offer a more contextual and situated engagement with particular populist strategies, and have continuing relevance for understanding right-wing populism. Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece offer actually existing experiences of left populism. The authors discuss three limitations in their strategies: their ‘nationed’ narratives of the crisis; the relationship between the parties’ leadership and grassroots politics; and the nature of their engagement with internationalist political projects