1887
Volume 16, Issue 2
  • ISSN 1569-2159
  • E-ISSN: 1569-9862
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

This study presents a scrutiny of ‘liberal’ discursive constructions of the ‘Enlightenment’ in the Greek public sphere. The study is based on the analysis of articles published in two news/lifestyle websites, ‘AthensVoice’ and ‘Protagon’, during the (ongoing), so-called, ‘Greek crisis’. Discourse theory, informed by critical discourse analysis, is deployed to analyze these discursive constructions. The analysis shows that Greece’s economic/social/political problems are constructed as symptoms that underline Greece’s fundamental deficit, which is the country’s alleged ‘lack of ‘Enlightenment’, as perceived by ‘liberal’ voices in Greece and elsewhere. The article concludes that such discourses are part of a biopolitical, disciplinary framework producing the object to be reformed by austerity: an ‘un-Enlightened’ ‘Greek character’, ‘guilty’ for ‘self-inflicting’ Greece’s crisis. This ‘reform of character’ envisioned by liberals in Greece and elsewhere, is supposed to emerge through the institutional advance of neoliberal restructuring processes that include austerity reforms, privatizations, and loss of labor and civic rights, conditions to foster the neoliberal, entrepreneurial, mobile and austere subject, to potentially meet the socio-political requirements of late capitalist growth.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/jlp.15022.myl
2017-04-07
2024-12-08
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Adorno, Teodor , and Max Horkheimer
    1989The Dialectic of the Enlightenment. New York: Continuum.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Adorno, Teodor
    2004Negative dialectics. London: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Ali, Tariq
    2015The extreme center: a warning. London: Verso.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Andronikidou, Aikaterini , and Iosif Kovras
    2012 “Cultures of Rioting and Anti-Systemic Politics in Southern Europe.” West European Politics35 (4): 707–725. doi: 10.1080/01402382.2012.682342
    https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2012.682342 [Google Scholar]
  5. Arendt, Hannah
    1964Eichmann in Jerusalem. New York: The Viking Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Bauman, Zygmunt
    1989Modernity and the Holocaust. London: Polity.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. 2004Europe: An Unfinished Adventure. Cambridge: Polity Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. 2007Consuming life. London: Polity.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Baysha, Olga
    2012 “Mythologizing Modernity through Vernacular Discourses.” International Journal of Communication6: 2985–3005.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Bell, Duncan
    2014 “What is liberalism?” Political Theory42 (6): 682–715. doi: 10.1177/0090591714535103
    https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591714535103 [Google Scholar]
  11. Benjamin, Walter
    1968 “Theses on the philosophy of history.” InIlluminations, edited by Hannah Arendt , 253–264. New York: Schocken Books.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Bhabha, Homi
    1994The location of culture. Abington: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Bickes, Hans , Otten, Tina , and Laura C. Weymann
    2014 “The financial crisis in the German and English press: Metaphorical structures in the media coverage on Greece, Spain and Italy.” Discourse and Society25 (4): 424–445. doi: 10.1177/0957926514536956
    https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926514536956 [Google Scholar]
  14. Boltanski, Luc , and Ève Chiapello
    2006The New Spirit of Capitalism. London: Verso.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Brown, Wendy
    2003 Neo-liberalism and the end of liberal democracy. Theory and Event7 (1): 1–25.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Bozatzis, Nikos
    2016 “Cultural othering, banal occidentalism and the discursive construction of the ‘Greek crisis’ in global media: a case study.” Suomen Anthropologi41 (2): 47–71.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Buck-Morss, Susan
    1979The origin of Negative Dialectics. New York: The Free Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Chibber, Vivek
    2013Postcolonial theory and the specter of Capital. London: Verso.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Crouch, Colin
    2011The strange non-death of neoliberalism. London: Polity.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Phelan, Sean , and Lincoln Dahlberg
    2011 “Discourse Theory and Critical Media Politics: An Introduction.” InDiscourse Theory and Critical Media Politics, edited by Sean Phelan and Lincoln Dahlberg , 1–40. London: Palgrave MacMillan. doi: 10.1057/9780230343511.0004
    https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230343511.0004 [Google Scholar]
  21. Dardot, Pierre , and Christian Laval
    2014The new way of the world: on the neoliberal society. London: Verso.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Douzinas, Costas
    2013Philosophy and resistance in the crisis: Greece and the future of Europe. Cambridge: Polity.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Dyrberg, Torben B.
    2005 “Radical and plural democracy; in defence of right/left public reason. InRadical democracy: politics between abundance and lack, edited by Lars Tønder and Lasse Thomassen , 167–184. Manchester: Manchester University press.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Ebanda de B’béri, Boulou , and Eric Louw
    2011 “Afropessimism: a genealogy of discourse.” Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies, 25 (3): 335–346. doi: 10.1080/02560046.2011.615118
    https://doi.org/10.1080/02560046.2011.615118 [Google Scholar]
  25. Ellyll, Jacques
    2008The transformation of the bourgeois. Thessaloniki: Nissides.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Fairclough, Norman
    2003Analyzing discourse, textual analysis for social research. Abingdon: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Fanon, Franz
    2008Black skin, white masks. New York: Grove Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. Foucault, Michel
    2008The birth of biopolitics. Lectures at College de France, 1978–1979. London: Palgrave McMillan.
    [Google Scholar]
  29. Graeber, David
    2011Debt: the first 5000 years. New York: Melville House Publishing.
    [Google Scholar]
  30. Hadjimichalis, Costis
    2011 “Uneven geographical development and socio-spatial justice and solidarity: European regions after the 2009 financial crisis.” European Urban and Regional Studies18 (3): 254–274. doi: 10.1177/0969776411404873
    https://doi.org/10.1177/0969776411404873 [Google Scholar]
  31. Hamilakis, Yannis
    2016 “Some debts can never be repaid: the archaeo-politics of the crisis.” Journal of Modern Greek Studies34 (2): 27–64. doi: 10.1353/mgs.2016.0026
    https://doi.org/10.1353/mgs.2016.0026 [Google Scholar]
  32. Harvey, David
    2014Seventeen contradictions and the end of capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Hobsbawm, Eric
    1996The age of capital, 1848–1875. London: Vintage.
    [Google Scholar]
  34. Kalyvas, Stathis
    2015Modern Greece: what everyone needs to know. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  35. Koliopoulos, John and Thanos Veremis
    2003Greece, the modern sequel: from 1831 to the present. London: Hurst and Company.
    [Google Scholar]
  36. Kutter, Amelie
    2014 “A catalytic moment: The Greek crisis in the German financial press.” Discourse and Society25 (4): 446–466. doi: 10.1177/0957926514536958
    https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926514536958 [Google Scholar]
  37. Laclau, Ernesto
    1996Emancipations. London: Verso.
    [Google Scholar]
  38. Lazzarato, Mauricio
    2011The making of the indebted man: an essay on the neoliberal condition. Amsterdam: Semiotext(e).
    [Google Scholar]
  39. Lindekilde, Lasse
    2014 “The mainstreaming of far-right discourse in Denmark.” Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies12: 363–382. doi: 10.1080/15562948.2014.894171
    https://doi.org/10.1080/15562948.2014.894171 [Google Scholar]
  40. Marx, Karl
    1976Capital: Critique of political economy v. 1. London: Penguin.
    [Google Scholar]
  41. Mentinis, Mihalis
    2013 “The entrepreneurial ethic and the spirit of psychotherapy: Depoliticisation, atomization and social selection in the therapeutic culture of the ‘crisis’” European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling15 (4): 361–374. doi: 10.1080/13642537.2013.855248
    https://doi.org/10.1080/13642537.2013.855248 [Google Scholar]
  42. Mouzelis, Nicos
    1996 “The Concept of Modernization: its relevance for Greece.” Journal of Modern Greek Studies14 (2): 215–227. doi: 10.1353/mgs.1996.0028
    https://doi.org/10.1353/mgs.1996.0028 [Google Scholar]
  43. Mylonas, Yiannis
    2012 “Media and the economic crisis of the EU: the ‘culturalization’ of a systemic crisis and Bild-Zeitung’s framing of Greece.” tripleC10 (2): 646–671.
    [Google Scholar]
  44. Mylonas, Yiannis and Panos Kompatsiaris
    2013 “Culturalist explanations of the crisis in the Greek public sphere.” InCrisis and mediaedited by George Pleios , 387–419. Athens: Papazisis.
    [Google Scholar]
  45. Mylonas, Yiannis
    2014 “Crisis, austerity and opposition in mainstream media discourses of Greece.” Critical Discourse Studies11 (3): 305–321. doi: 10.1080/17405904.2014.915862
    https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2014.915862 [Google Scholar]
  46. 2015 “Austerity Discourses in ‘Der Spiegel’ Journal, 2009–2014.” tripleC13 (1): 248–269.
    [Google Scholar]
  47. Polanyi, Karl
    2007The great transformation. Thesaloniki: Nisides.
    [Google Scholar]
  48. Prozorov, Sergei
    2016The biopolitics of Stalinism: ideology and life in Soviet socialism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. doi: 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474410526.001.0001
    https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474410526.001.0001 [Google Scholar]
  49. Ranciere, Jacques
    2007On the shores of politics. London: Verso.
    [Google Scholar]
  50. Said, Edward
    1977Orientalism. London: Penguin.
    [Google Scholar]
  51. Saldaña, Johnny
    2009The coding manual for qualitative researchers. London: Sage.
    [Google Scholar]
  52. Sennett, Richard
    2006The culture of new capitalism. Yale: Yale University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  53. Sevastakis, Nicolas
    2004Banal country: aspects of the public space and antinomies of values in contemporary Greece. Athens: Savvalas.
    [Google Scholar]
  54. 2012The Tyranny of the ‘common-sense’; Thoughts on the Times’ Psyche. Athens: Ekdoseis Enthematon tis Avgis.
    [Google Scholar]
  55. Stavrakakis, Yannis
    1999Lacan and the political. London: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  56. Streeck, Wolfgang
    2016How will capitalism end?London: Verso.
    [Google Scholar]
  57. Traverso, Enzo
    2003The origins of Nazi violence. New York: The New Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  58. Triantafyllidou, Anna , Gropas, Ruby , and Hara, Kouki
    2013 “Introduction: is Greece a modern European country?” InThe Greek crisis and European modernity, edited by Anna Triantafyllidou , Ruby Gropas and Hara Kouki , 1–24. London: Palgrave MacMillan. doi: 10.1057/9781137276254.0005
    https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137276254.0005 [Google Scholar]
  59. Tsoukalas, Costas
    2012Greece of oblivion and truth: From a pro-longed adolescence to a violent maturation. Athens: Themelio.
    [Google Scholar]
  60. Williams, Raymond
    1977Marxism and literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1075/jlp.15022.myl
Loading
/content/journals/10.1075/jlp.15022.myl
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): biopolitics; Crisis; Enlightenment; Europe; Greece; liberals; modernity
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error