Wednesday, June 26, 2013
4.04 (PC Hoofthuis)
Crises are moments in the life of societies when determinisms of all sorts (economic,
cultural, institutional) weaken, and of resurgence of contingency and political possibility.
This is what Gramsci calls the “terrain of the conjunctural” that he distinguishes from the
“organic”(Gramsci, 1972). Since 2010, Europe has become the epicenter of the first great
capitalist crisis of the 21st century. And the situation in the region appear to be very fluid. In
order to explore the political possibilities that should arise from this crisis, one need to
better understand how capital's turbulences are interwoven with the transformation of
European statehood. This is the general issue, I will discussed in this communication while
focusing on the European crisis and more specifically on the turbulences in its southern
periphery.
Until now, most of the researches in the field of political economy were focused on the
sequencing of the events and pointed to the loopholes of the EU or EMU architecture.
Costas Lapavistas (Lapavitsas, 2012) and Engelbert Stockhammer (Stockhammer, 2011) in
particular have made major contributions on this topic. My objective here is somehow
different. To better understand the idiosyncratic characteristics of the EU crisis and assess
what is “the right to the state” issue is this context, I propose to explore the three following
questions:
1. What are the contradictions of the accumulation process which fuel the multiple and
strong manifestations of popular anger in the southern periphery of the EU ?
2. To what extent the rapid transformation of the European statehood is functional to the
requirements of the general process of accumulation at this moment ?
3. Why the general claims of the protest make them highly destabilizing for the general
reproduction of capitalism in the region ?
cultural, institutional) weaken, and of resurgence of contingency and political possibility.
This is what Gramsci calls the “terrain of the conjunctural” that he distinguishes from the
“organic”(Gramsci, 1972). Since 2010, Europe has become the epicenter of the first great
capitalist crisis of the 21st century. And the situation in the region appear to be very fluid. In
order to explore the political possibilities that should arise from this crisis, one need to
better understand how capital's turbulences are interwoven with the transformation of
European statehood. This is the general issue, I will discussed in this communication while
focusing on the European crisis and more specifically on the turbulences in its southern
periphery.
Until now, most of the researches in the field of political economy were focused on the
sequencing of the events and pointed to the loopholes of the EU or EMU architecture.
Costas Lapavistas (Lapavitsas, 2012) and Engelbert Stockhammer (Stockhammer, 2011) in
particular have made major contributions on this topic. My objective here is somehow
different. To better understand the idiosyncratic characteristics of the EU crisis and assess
what is “the right to the state” issue is this context, I propose to explore the three following
questions:
1. What are the contradictions of the accumulation process which fuel the multiple and
strong manifestations of popular anger in the southern periphery of the EU ?
2. To what extent the rapid transformation of the European statehood is functional to the
requirements of the general process of accumulation at this moment ?
3. Why the general claims of the protest make them highly destabilizing for the general
reproduction of capitalism in the region ?
