Douzinas - Philosophy and Resistance in the Crisis: Greece and the Future of Europe

Copyright Costas Douzinas 2013

The right of Costas Douzinas to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2013 by Polity Press

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ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-6968-7

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The strange story of this book

I was born in Greece. I have lived most of my life in Britain. Dual identities create tensions. When I arrived in London in July 1974, after the fall of the Greek dictatorship, I was told in no uncertain terms, by an elderly gentleman walking his bulldog in a park, that Britain does not belong to Europe or indeed to any other continent. Britain stands on her own beyond geographical classifications. By contrast, the Greeks used to be supremely Europhile. Most would have gladly moved their government from Athens to Brussels. The gentlemans denunciation of Europe was part of Britains post-imperial tristesse. Greeces love for the European Union was part of its post-dictatorship search for identity. I could not have predicted that some forty years later the policies of the Union would bring my two home countries close.

My early experiences as a graduate student and young lecturer in my adopted home were positive. Familiarity with the classics and the history of philhellenism, visits to the Aegean islands and the antiquities, and the hospitality and warmth of Greeks had contributed to the welcoming of the young graduate. As soon as my accent betrayed my provenance, people volunteered stories of appreciation for the culture, memorable holidays and strong relationships. I thought that we Greeks enjoyed something approaching positive discrimination: I was treated everywhere much better than my Italian, Turkish or German colleagues.

Suddenly, in 2010, a different cold and hostile Britain emerged. Newspapers and broadcasts kept talking about the cheating corrupt lazy Greeks, a nation I did not recognize. Every aspect of life had failed, every Greek was immoral. The debt and deficit had metamorphosed a whole people overnight. It was a line of argument propagated by the then Greek government in its attempt to attract sympathy and loans from the European leaders. In lectures and seminars, in conferences and pubs, friends and strangers became distanced, occasionally aggressive. I was trying to explain that many criticisms and attacks were based on ignorance of facts, that the media and the government were presenting a distorted view, that austerity was liable to fail, to no avail. For the first time, I felt a racism-lite affecting me. It was ideological not ethnic.

When, early in 2010, the Guardian asked me to write about the austerity measures that Premier Papandreou had announced I responded eagerly. On 4 February 2010, Comment is Free published an article entitled Greeks must fight the neo-liberal European Union. It condemned the injustice and ineffectiveness of these early voluntary measures, which were a gentle slap compared with those that have been imposed since by the European Union and the IMF. The article predicted their failure, their disastrous effects, the unravelling of the social bond. It concluded: The future of democracy and social Europe is in the balance and the Greeks are called to fight for all of us. Most responses below the line expressed versions of the emerging anti-Greek feelings. Some celebrated the fact that the pending exit from the Eurozone would make holidays in Rhodes and Zante cheaper. Intellectuals could not believe how modern Greeks, descendants of the founders of philosophy and democracy, could deteriorate to such a degree. Greece had become the black sheep of Europe and the bar of legitimate attacks had been lowered considerably. The hostile reactions as well as a growing number of supporters of the Greek resistance made me continue the writing. Some thirty articles appeared in the Guardian and other newspapers, charting the trajectory of the Greek tragedy. The early articles were translated into many languages and led to a series of public lectures and conferences in Europe, Latin America, Asia and Greece. Without wishing it, I became an unofficial representative of suffering Greece.

In the process, I reconnected with my country of birth and with friends I had not met since the days of the Colonels dictatorship. Talking to them, I was shocked by the large number of parties, groups, tendencies and groupuscules on the Left. This acronym soup often expresses ancient enmities and small ideological oppositions. It is the result of the defeats of the Left and the hardening narcissism of small differences that followed it. People from different groups have a broadly similar analysis of the crisis and of the response to it. When I pointed out this fact, they became hesitant, embarrassed, unclear: You may be right but you dont know how wrong these people were in 1981/1989/2001. I tried to organize joint events with the groups that agreed on the basics. I was soon disappointed. As someone who had no link with any of the parties and groups, I was viewed by many with suspicion.

When I was asked to publish a collection of articles and speeches in Greek my response was initially negative. Two events convinced me that I should go ahead. On 25 February 2011, I gave a press conference in Athens in a building called Hepatia where 300 undocumented immigrants were staging a hunger strike. I was also an immigrant a very different luxury immigrant of course, since I came to London for graduate studies with a scholarship. When I was asked to come to Greece to help the struggle of the sans papiers I did not hesitate for a moment. The governments inhuman treatment confirmed my view that human rights are often used to legitimize power while excluding large groups of vulnerable people from protection. The Hepatia strikers demanded a humanity different from that of rights, courts and government commissions. Meeting the strikers, I recognized in their bright but exhausted faces the dual nature of homo sacer: they were hostages of the state of exception without legal rights or safeguards; playthings and sacrificial victims in the hands of the sovereign. But these legally non-existent people had removed the sovereigns ultimate weapon, which was to control life and let people die. They were the last free men of Athens. The second invitation came from Stasis Syntagma, as I called the movement of aganaktismenoi, who occupied Syntagma and many other squares in 2011. On 17 June, speaking to thousands alongside Manolis Glezos, the man who lowered the swastika from the Acropolis in 1941 and is a world symbol of resistance, I gave the most emotionally charged talk of my life. The thirteen minutes given to each speaker were not enough to explain how the occupations had transformed the political stage, reviving the direct democracy of classical Athens; how they had changed the power balance, thus creating a possibility of victory for the resistance; how the future of Europe depended on the outcome of the Greek resistance. Yet I was able to say all that and more in the limited time dictated by the axiom of equality of the squares. When equality becomes an axiom, public speaking becomes aesthetic performance and political praxis.