Hostname: page-component-76d6cb85b7-lcgwf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-07-15T08:43:11.044Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Fak Germani”: Materialities of Nationhood and Transgression in the Greek Crisis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2015

Konstantinos Kalantzis
Konstantinos Kalantzis*
Affiliation:
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thales Program
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay explores Greek responses to the debt crisis, particularly middle-class Greeks and their current experiences of Greece's putative subordination to Germany in particular, and IMF and EU monitoring generally. I focus on the sphere of materiality and embodiment, while also exploring the role of desire and pleasure in Greeks’ responses to their growing sense of subordination. Graffiti, popular protests, hip-hop expressive culture, and sexual joking are lenses through which I examine these themes. I also scrutinize my own positionality as a way of understanding the bitterness and ambiguity entailed in Greek reactions to the crisis. The essay illuminates how Greeks experience subjugation and respond to it through explosive resort to historical comparisons, sexual metaphors, and ill-mannered jokes.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 57 , Issue 4 , October 2015 , pp. 1037 - 1069
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Adorno, Theodor W. 2005 [1951]. Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life. Jephcott, E.F.N, trans. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Alloula, Malek. 1987. The Colonial Harem. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Argyrou, Vassos. 2002. Tradition, Modernity and European Hegemony in the Mediterranean. Journal of Mediterranean Studies 12, 1: 23–42.Google Scholar
Athanasiou, Athena. 2012. I Krisi os Katastasi Ektaktis Anagis. Athens: Savvalas.Google Scholar
Belting, Hans. 2009. Image, Medium, Body: A New Approach to Iconology. Critical Inquiry 31, 2: 302–19.Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi K. 2004. The Other Question: Stereotype, Discrimination and the Discourse of Colonialism. In Bhabha, Homi K., The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 94–120.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Richard Nice, trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bowman, Glenn. 1989. Fucking Tourists: Sexual Relations and Tourism in Jerusalem's Old City. Critique of Anthropology 9: 77–93.Google Scholar
Bucher, Bernadette. 1981. Icon and Conquest: A Structural Analysis of the Illustrations of De Bry's Great Voyages. Basia Miller Gulati, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Buck-Morss, Susan. 1987. Semiotic Boundaries and the Politics of Meaning: Modernity on Tour—A Village in Transition. In Raskin, Marcus G. and Bernstein, Herbert J., eds., New Ways of Knowing: The Sciences, Society and Reconstructive Knowledge. Totowa: Rowman & Littlefield, 200–36.Google Scholar
Cabot, Heath. 2014. On the Doorstep of Europe: Asylum and Citizenship in Greece. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Carrier, James G. 1995. Introduction. In Carrier, James G., ed., Occidentalism: Images of the West. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1–32.Google Scholar
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 1992. Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for “Indian” Pasts? Representations 37: 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Claussen, Detlev. 2008. Theodor W. Adorno: One Last Genius. Livingstone, Rodney, trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Clifford, James and Marcus, George E., eds. 1986. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Dalakoglou, Dimitris. 2012. Beyond Spontaneity: Crisis, Violence and Collective Action in Athens. City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action 16, 5: 535–45.Google Scholar
Edwards, Elizabeth. 2012. Objects of Affect: Photography beyond the Image. Annual Review of Anthropology 41: 221–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Faris, James. 1997. Comment on James Weiner, Televisualist Anthropology: Representation, Aesthetics, Politics. Current Anthropology 38, 2: 211–13.Google Scholar
Faubion, James. 1993. Modern Greek Lessons: A Primer in Historical Constructivism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 2002 [1961]. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Howard, Richard, trans. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 2001. The Infantile Genital Organization. In Strachey, James ed. and trans., The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume 19. London: Vintage, 141–48.Google Scholar
Giannakopoulos, Kostas. 2005. Polemoi metaksy Andhron: Podhosfairo, Andhrikes Sexualikotites kai Ethnikismoi. Syghrona Themata 88: 58–67.Google Scholar
Gupta, Akhil. 1995. Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics, and the Imagined State. American Ethnologist 22, 2: 375–402.Google Scholar
Guyer, Jane. 2007. Prophecy and the Near Future: Thoughts on Macroeconomic, Evangelical and Punctuated Time. American Ethnologist 34, 3: 409–21.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, Michael 1985. The Poetics of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a Cretan Mountain Village. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, Michael. 2002. The Absent Presence: Discourses of Crypto-Colonialism. South Atlantic Quarterly 101, 4: 899–926.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, Michael. 2003. Localism and the Logic of Nationalistic Folklore: Cretan Reflections. Comparative Studies in Society and History 45, 2: 281–310.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, Michael. 2004. The Body Impolitic: Artisans and Artifice in the Global Hierarchy of Value. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, Michael. 2005. Practical Mediterraneanism: Excuses for Everything, from Epistemology to Eating. In Harris, William V., ed., Rethinking the Mediterranean. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 45–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herzfeld, Michael. 2011. Crisis Attack: Impromptu Ethnography in the Greek Maelstrom. Anthropology Today 27, 5: 22–26.Google Scholar
Hirschon, Renée. 2012. Cultural Mismatches: Greek Conduct in the Current Euro Situation. At: http://blog.oxfordcollegeofmarketing.com/2012/02/06/cultural-mismatches-greek-conduct-in-the-current-euro-situation/ (accessed 4 July 2015).Google Scholar
Jackson, Michael. 2005. Existential Anthropology: Events, Exigencies, Effects. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Kalantzis, Konstantinos. 2012. Crete as Warriorhood: Visual Explorations of Social Imaginaries in “Crisis.” Anthropology Today 28, 3: 7–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalantzis, Konstantinos. 2013. Comment on Dimitris Theodossopoulos, Infuriated with the Infuriated? Blaming Tactics and Discontent about the Greek Financial Crisis. Current Anthropology 54, 2: 212–13.Google Scholar
Kalantzis, Konstantinos. 2014. On Ambivalent Nativism: Hegemony, Photography and “Recalcitrant Alterity” in Sphakia, Crete. American Ethnologist 41, 1: 56–75.Google Scholar
Kalantzis, Konstantinos. 2015. Shepherds as Images, Shepherds with Images: Photographic (Re)engagements in Sphakia, Crete. In Carabott, Philip, Hamilakis, Yannis, and Papargyriou, Eleni, eds., Camera Graeca: Photographs, Narratives, Materialities. Farnham: Ashgate, 313–35.Google Scholar
Kirtsoglou, Elizabeth and Theodossopoulos, Dimitrios. 2009. Intimacies of Anti-Globalization: Imagining Unhappy Others as Oneself in Greece. In Theodossopoulos, Dimitrios and Kirtsoglou, Elizabeth, eds., United in Discontent: Local Responses to Cosmopolitanism and Globalization. Oxford: Berghahn, 83–102.Google Scholar
Knight, Daniel M. 2012. Cultural Proximity: Crisis, Time and Social Memory in Central Greece. History and Anthropology 23, 3: 349–74.Google Scholar
Knight, Daniel M. 2013a. The Greek Economic Crisis as Trope. Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 65: 147–59.Google Scholar
Knight, Daniel M. 2013b. Localising National Protest: The Nuances of Greek Political Allegiance. Suomen Anthropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 38, 1: 111–15.Google Scholar
Knight, Daniel M. 2015. Wit and Greece's Economic Crisis: Ironic Slogans, Food, and Antiausterity Sentiments. American Ethnologist 42, 2: 230–46.Google Scholar
Kulick, Don. 2006. Theory in Furs: Masochist Anthropology. Current Anthropology 47, 6: 933–52.Google Scholar
Loizos, Peter. 1975. The Greek Gift: Politics in a Cypriot Village. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
MacDougall, David. 1998. Transcultural Cinema. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Markopoulos, Dimitris. N. 1995. Eite Paidhes Ellinon, Eite Paidhes Varvaron: Kai ta Dhyo dhen Ghinetai. Athens: Gnosi.Google Scholar
Mitchell, W.J.T. 1994. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
O'Hanlon, Rosalind. 1988. Recovering the Subject: Subaltern Studies and Histories of Resistance in Colonial South Asia. Modern Asian Studies 22, 1: 189–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oring, Elliott. 1982. Review of Charles R. Gruner's Understanding Laughter: The Workings of Wit and Humor and Ethelyn G. Orso's Greek Humor: A Collection of Jokes and Ribald Tales . Western Folklore 41, 1: 62–66.Google Scholar
Orso, Ethelyn G. 1979. Greek Humor: A Collection of Jokes and Ribald Tales. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Ortner, Sherry B. 1995. Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal. Comparative Studies in Society and History 37, 1: 173–93.Google Scholar
Panourgiá, Neni. 2005. Dangerous Citizens: The Greek Left and the Terror of the State. New York: Fordham University Press.Google Scholar
Panourgiá, Neni. 2011. The Squared Constitution of Dissent. In “Hot Spots: Beyond the ‘Greek Crisis’: Histories, Rhetorics, Politics.” Special issue of Cultural Anthropology, at: http://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/252-the-squared-constitution-of-dissent (accessed 3 June 2015).Google Scholar
Papailias, Penelope. 2011. Witnessing the Crisis. In “Hot Spots: Beyond the ‘Greek Crisis’: Histories, Rhetorics, Politics.” Special issue of Cultural Anthropology, at: http://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/246-witnessing-the-crisis (accessed 3 June 2015).Google Scholar
Papamanousakis, Stratis. 1979. I Ksenokratia stin Kriti. Athens: Kalvos.Google Scholar
Papataxiarchis, Εvthymios. 2006. To Kathestos tis Diaforetikotitas stin Elliniki Koinonia: Ypotheseis Ergasias. In Papataxiarchis, Evthymios, ed., Peripeteies tis Eterotitas: I Paraghoghi tis Politismikis Dhiaforas stin Simerini Elladha. Αthens: Alexandreia, 407–69.Google Scholar
Pinney, Christopher. 1997. Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs. London: Reaktion.Google Scholar
Pinney, Christopher. 2002. Visual Culture. In Buchli, Victor, ed., The Material Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg, 81–86.Google Scholar
Pinney, Christopher. 2006. Four Types of Visual Culture. In Tilley, Christopher, Keane, Webb, Kuechler, Susan, and Rowlands, Michael, eds., Handbook of Material Culture. London: Sage, 131–44.Google Scholar
Pinney, Christopher. 2011. Photography and Anthropology. London: Reaktion.Google Scholar
Prakash, Gyan. 1994. Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism. American Historical Review 99: 1475–90.Google Scholar
Rakopoulos, Theodoros. 2014. The Crisis Seen from Below, Within, and Against: From Solidarity Economy to Food Distribution Cooperatives in Greece. Dialectical Anthropology 38: 189–207.Google Scholar
Ramfos, Stelios. 2012. Time Out. Athens: Armos.Google Scholar
Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Schepher-Hughes, Nancy. 1995. The Primacy of the Ethical: Proposition for a Militant Anthropology. Current Anthropology 36, 3: 409–40.Google Scholar
Schneider, Jane, ed. 1998. Italy's “Southern Question”: Orientalism in One Country. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Sontag, Susan. 1991. Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Stallybrass, Peter and White, Allon. 1986. The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Stewart, Charles. 2006. Creolization, Omogéneia and the Greek Diaspora. Diaspora 15, 1: 61–88.Google Scholar
Stewart, Kathleen. 1988. Nostalgia—A Polemic. Cultural Anthropology 3, 3: 227–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sutton, David. 1997. Local Names, Foreign Claims: Family Inheritance and National Heritage on a Greek Island. American Ethnologist 24, 2: 415–37.Google Scholar
Sutton, David. 2001. Remembrance of Repasts: An Anthropology of Food and Memory. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Sutton, David. 2003. Poked by the “Foreign Finger” in Greece: Conspiracy Theory or the Hermeneutics of Suspicion? In Brown, Keith S. and Hamilakis, Yannis, eds., The Usable Past: Greek Metahistories. Lanham, Md.: Lexington, 191–210.Google Scholar
Theodossopoulos, Dimitris. 2013. Infuriated with the Infuriated? Blaming Tactics and Discontent about the Greek Financial Crisis. Current Anthropology 54, 2: 200–21.Google Scholar
Theodossopoulos, Dimitris. 2014. The Ambivalence of Anti-Austerity: Indignation in Greece: Resistance, Hegemony and Complicity. History and Anthropology 25, 4: 488–506.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Varoufakis, Yannis. 2014. Being Greek and an Economist while Greece Is Burning! An Intimate Account of a Peculiar Tragedy. Journal of Modern Greek Studies 32, 1: 1–23.Google Scholar
Yalouri, Eleana. 2001. The Acropolis: Global Fame, Local Claim. Oxford. Berg.Google Scholar
Yiakoumaki, Vassiliki. 2011. Contesting Histories of Greek Student Protest, or the Debate on “Open” and “Closed” Universities. In “Hot Spots: Beyond the ‘Greek Crisis’: Histories, Rhetorics, Politics.” Special issue of Cultural Anthropology, at: http://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/248-contesting-histories-of-greek-student-protest-or-the-debate-on-open-and-closed-universities (accessed 3 June 2015).Google Scholar
Zinovieff, Sofka. 2006 [1992]. Ellines Antres ke Ksenes Ghinekes: To “Kamaki” se mia Eparhiaki Poli. In Papataxhiarchis, Evthymios and Paradellis, Theodoros, eds., Taftotites ke Fillo stin Sighhroni Elladha: Anthropologhikes Proseggiseis. Athens: Alexandreia.Google Scholar