Paper short abstract:

As Greek society draws to “point zero” and none yet also a host of possibilities for socio-political projects open, different battles are waged. Prominent among them, the battle of political memory, initiated in Mai 2011 at Constitution Square, to haunt ever since rulers and ruled, in opposing ways.

Paper long abstract:

The "shock and awe" strategies for social re-engineering elaborated in Greece since May 2010 by the "troika" and its local partners, as "remedies of the glocal crisis, and the new articulations of the political, emerging in the process, brought to a standstill social and political imaginaries for the future. As if caught in a "messianic moment", rulers can still dupe the ruled by cloaking their project in optimistic perspectives or in notions of ultimate necessity and collective guilt, while their mediatic partners terrorize for discipline; and the ruled can still let themselves be duped to compliance, numbing in the momentum of a consumer democracy that had discarded political visions as useless and relegated memories of past political struggles into the realm of a definitely bygone past. Meanwhile, memorandum after memorandum, law after law, basic social rights, social wellfare and even Greek sovereignty became themselves a thing of the past, with no radical opposition.

Below this surface of stillness, however, rulers are far less self-confident than they seem, and the ruled far less inert. As Greek society is drawn to "point zero", where no way-out is visible, yet also a host of possibilities for new socio-political projects are opened, different battles are waged. Prominent among them, the battle of political memory, initiated in Mai 2011 at Constitution Square, to potentially renew explorations of the political and to haunt ever since rulers and ruled, in opposing ways.