Masculinities Flailing and the Sovereign Debt Crisis: The Figure of “the Migrant” and Greek Nationals As the European “Other”

This talk presents part of my research on the crisis of gendered subjectivities currently unfolding in Athens, Greece.  The focus is on how alterities are negotiated with in this shifting cultural, economic and political terrain. Between xenophopic, increasingly racist, popular discursive practices, including stabbings of migrants coming off mass transport in the evenings, and traces of a new official rhetoric of equality and “fair play” towards migrants, the figure of “the migrant” is becoming central for public discourse in Greece, as it was in the 90s, once again. The talk addresses the current reinflection of this figure, its gendered, and sexualized, aspects, and tracks some of the connections between articulations of what I suggest is a concerted, directly “crisis” related, political program  of resignifying disparate“ others” residing within.

The argument advanced is that public discussion of “the migrant problem” is being used in Greece to serve as cultural ground for negotiating with, and adjusting to, rather than fundamentally refuting, a newer set of “unimaginable” alterities.  These include those generated by the neo-liberal technologies rapidly being implemented, as well as the IMF/EC/ECB troika presence itself. Now that Greek citizens are becoming “immigrantized,” as I suggest, within the otherwise familiar territory of their homeland, hatred towards those more clearly marked as “other” serves as a way to preserve a phantasm of national sovereignty. The talk sketches how this relates to what the research suggests is key-- an underlying crisis of hegemonic masculinities, which the international sovereign debt crisis places in bold relief.