George Souvlis

Συζητήσεις με το Jacobin Greece: «Από την καταφρόνια μια καινούργια αυγή», μια συζήτηση με τον Σεραφείμ Σεφεριάδη.
Η συζήτηση αυτή εγκαινιάζει το νέο vidcast του Jacobin Greece στο φιλόξενο στούντιο του The Press Project με τίτλο, Συζητήσεις με το Jacobin. Πρώτος μας καλεσμένος ο καθηγητής πολιτικής επιστήμης στο Πάντειο Πανεπιστήμιο, Σεραφείμ Σεφεριάδης. Αντικείμενο της συζήτησης είναι όψεις του νέου του βιβλίου, Για την πολιτική που διαμορφώνει, Εργατικό κίνημα και κράτος (Εκδόσεις Τόπος). Ειδικότερα, ανοίγουμε θεματικές που καταπιάνονται με όψεις της σύγχρονης ελληνικής ιστορίας και πολιτικής όπως: η ιστορία της Σοσιαλδημοκρατίας, η ιστορία του ελληνικού κομμουνιστικού κινήματος στον ελληνικό μεσοπόλεμο, ο Βενιζελικός αστικός εκσυγχρονισμός, το μεταπολεμικό διεκδικητικό κίνημα, ο εκσυγχρονισμός κατά την διάρκεια της μεταπολίτευσης και τα αιτήματα που αποτελούν προϋποθέσεις για την αναζωογόνηση του σύγχρονου εργατικού κινήματος.
Παρακολουθήστε ολόκληρη την συζήτηση εδώ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqvZqnGBlUc&t=268s

Τo Jacobin Greece ξεκινάει το ταξίδι του με μία συζήτηση στην έδρα ενός από τα πιο σημαντικά εγχειρήματα εναλλακτικής ενημέρωσης. Έτσι, οι Γιώργος Σουβλής και Χρήστος Αβραμίδης βρέθηκαν στο φιλόξενο στούντιο του The Press Project και συζήτησαν με τον Κωνσταντίνο Πουλή για την Ελευθερία του Τύπου στην Ελλάδα και τις δυνατότητες χειραφέτησης στην Δημόσια Σφαίρα.
Στη συζήτηση που έλαβε χώρα πριν από μερικές εβδομάδες, συζητήθηκαν ζητήματα που αφορούν τα κυρίαρχα ΜΜΕ στην Ελλάδα, τη διαμόρφωση των συσχετισμών και τις δυνατότητες των κοινωνικών κινημάτων να απαντήσουν σε αυτό το εχθρικό τοπίο που διαμορφώνεται στην Ελλάδα.
Επίσης αναλύθηκαν οι προσπάθειες της κυβέρνησης ΣΥΡΙΖΑ να αναδιαμορφώσει το ραδιοτηλεοπτικό τοπίο και στη συνέχεια οι επιλογές της Νέας Δημοκρατίας που ξεκίνησαν από τον έλεγχο του ΑΜΕ-ΜΠΕ και επεκτάθηκαν και σε άλλες πλευρές.
Μεταξύ άλλων συζητήθηκε το βασικό θέμα της επιβίωσης των εναλλακτικών εγχειρημάτων και των ανθρώπων τους μέσα από οικονομικά μοντέλα λειτουργίας που δε θα δημιουργούν σχέσεις εξάρτησης από τα μεγάλα οικονομικά και πολιτικά συμφέροντα. Από αυτή τη σκοπιά αναλύθηκε το πετυχημένο μοντέλο του The Press Project και διεξήχθη συζήτηση σχετικά με τη διεθνή εμπειρία παρόμοιων προσπαθειών και τη δυνατότητα να εφαρμοστούν οι πετυχημένες τακτικές στην Ελλάδα.
Φυσικά, από τη συγκεκριμένη συζήτηση δε θα μπορούσε να λείπει μία προσέγγιση για τα Social Media και τις (α)δυνατότητες να συμβάλλουν στην προσπάθεια των κοινωνικών κινημάτων να παρακάμψει το τείχος σιωπής που επιβάλλεται από τα μεγάλα συμφέροντα.
Παρακολουθήστε ολόκληρη την συζήτηση εδώ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtt5kQ4jaPI

Dan-El Padilla Peralta “Classicism and Other Phobias: Antiquity’s Emancipation”, you can find the link of the talk and discussion here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx6WZWk0DqU&t=8s

Abstract: While rebutting Karl Kautsky’s exaltation of the Roman general Quintus Fabius Cunctator’s “strategy of attrition”, Rosa Luxemburg quotes the historian Theodor Mommsen in order to correct the record and inveigh against the preaching of this “legend … at high school students in our schools to drill them in conservative spirits” (Theory and Practice: Postscript, 1910). “Rome was not saved by the ‘Procrastinator’,” Mommsen writes in his Roman History (1856, 3rd edition), “but by the firm union of the federation – and equally, perhaps, by the national hatred with which the occidental welcomed Phoenician Man.” This lecture will explore the dark underside of this and other racializing moments in the disciplinary imagination of ancient history, by situating the emergence of “classics” as a field of study in dialogue not only within the Orientalist constructs of 19th-century nation-state politics but within the broader arc of European race-making and settler-colonialism. I will argue for an approach to the study of Greco-Roman classics that locates it as one uniquely (and violently) overrepresented form of classicism, and that inquires whether such an overrepresented form is capable of accommodating the communities and knowledge-practices that it has historically so effectively Othered.

Demetra Tzanaki, “This is not a gender: from the eugenic (post) liberal modes of governmentality to a World’s Republic”, you can find the link of the talk and discussion here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUYPKpCOp0Q

Abstract: Understanding the relationship between gender and eugenism requires a critical exploration of the factors that have shaped our negotiation with and resistance to power along with historical and contemporary readings of those factors. Moreover, it requires a new understanding of the foundations of the Western patriarchal, racist-colonial tradition of binary categoric thinking in which academic disciplines and epistemic truth are rooted. Following Michel Foucault’s premise, in his work the History of Sexuality: The Use of Pleasure, that aphrodisia remains the ethical substance for ancient Greek and Roman sexual ethics and the ontological parameters of the ‘thinking’ subject, I suggest that gender perpetuates this sexual, racist and patriarchal code of ethics and truth and the one-dimensional deterministic perception about the subject. While throughout the 16th century this regime of ethics-truth was more philosophical from the 19th century on, I argue, it takes the form of an absolute scientific truth - as a response to the social upheavals and the rising of Marxist and anarchist ideas. Thus, a discriminative in terms of sex, race, age, and able-bodiness regime-of- truth emerged, as a part of the liberal biomedical discourse, essentially for the survival of capitalism. This biomedical discourse gained momentum after the Paris Commune and provided a place for s/he as the subject that can speak the truth. At the same time, this biomedical discourse employed all the supposedly psychic and somatic interventions in order to ‘help’ nature -through the castration of the intersex- produce an evolved, scientifically stable, social sex, that is, gender. Within this logic, gender became the boundary not only between the rational, healthy, superior race of the civilized liberal-christian West, against the savage, anarchist, androgynous and degenerate non-Western races, but also the boundary between a supposed patriarchal and matriarchal culture, with the latter relying on blood and soil ties and a passive acceptance of all natural phenomena. It also signifies the inclusion of all people as equal, as all children of Mother Earth. In the patriarchal culture, by contrast, we run across the concept of the ‘beloved son’ symbol of the hierarchical order of society. Within this concept, eugenism, I argue, though commonly used, it has been under-theorized concept in the historical -materialist queer literature. In short, eugenism and its relation to gender is more complicated, and its historicity is more difficult than it is presented. After the October Revolution, a series of eugenic programmes will take place, aiming at the study of western gender and the obligatory classification of it strictly into male and female, as an absolute, universal scientific truth. At the same time any societal crisis such as poverty, defeat, subjugation, illness, or sudden death, was interpreted as the result of a psychologically vulnerable, effeminate, castrated, “bastardized”, transgender or intersex life. The dualistic, hierarchical form of masculinity-feminity and the sovereignty of patriarchy emerged as the weapon against degeneracy, transgenderism and communism, allowing fascism to grow up to its ultimate devasting moment for humanity, the holocaust. Following World War II, eugenism as a scientific regime of truth, became through gender not only the intersectional boundary between sex/nature and gender /nurture, but also the barrier against black, trans, intersex, homosexual youth, communists and working class who emerged as parts of an anarch, matriarchal and thus, castrated sub-human nature who had fallen to the category of sub-beings. In conclusion, I argue that gender in our days has become part of an absolute post-eugenic, liberal, scientific truth that leads to the production of a liberal, patriarchal, racist, ageist and ableist treatment of intersex and transgender life that goes hand in hand with the authoritarian (post) liberal states, under the threat of a World’s Republic.

Sara Farris, “Feminists From the Kitchen Floor: On Domestic Workers’ Erased Feminism”, you can find the link of the discussion here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaZL_JpEh1Q

Abstract: Domestic workers have been erased from two important movements of the 20th and 21st century: the workers' movement and the feminist movement. On the one hand, studies on class have historically neglected care and domestic workers in their analysis. Notoriously, both Karl Marx and E. P. Thompson did not include female 'servants' in their description of the English working class, in spite of the fact that this was the most prevalent job for working women in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. On the other hand, servants and domestic workers have been erased from the history of the feminist movement in spite of their important presence and contributions. This paper will address these two forms of erasure, and try to understand what it would mean to bring the domestic workers movement fully into the family picture of the workers' movement and the feminist movement.

Yiannis Hamilakis “Material memory and the politics of freedom”, you can find the link of the talk and discussion here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNSB0Pg0wBQ

Abstract: In this talk, I will reflect the role of materiality and of material memory in the constitution of temporal and other experiential regimes of modernity, while at the same time discussing the role of disciplinary practices, and more specifically archaeology, in producing and sustaining such regimes. Given the colonial-cum-national and racial background of modern western/eurocentric epistemes, what is to be done with apparatuses such as archaeology? Moreover, is there an emancipatory potential in material traces, in remnants? I will argue that a reconfigured and reconstituted archaeology as a sensibility, as a set of relationships, and a strategy of mediation between different worlds can activate the liberating, haunting potential of matter, provided that it undergoes a series of paradigmatic shifts to do with chrono-politics, with sensorial politics, and the politics of story-telling and narration. I will illustrate these theses with a series of short case studies, from the 19th c. Athenian Acropolis to the toppling of confederate monuments in the USA, and the archaeology of contemporary migration in the Mediterranean.

Stathis Kouvelakis, “Have Marx – and Engels – something to say on the national question (and internationalism)?”, you can find the link of the talk and discussion here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvY6UkLnxT0

Abstract: The common wisdom on the relation between the “founding fathers” of historical materialism and the nation is that they have little to say on the subject. “Little” doesn’t mean here quantitatively little, since it is acknowledged that many of their writings include lengthy discussions of those “national questions” that were of primary importance at their time – Poland, Italy, Ireland, German unity, the ‘Eastern question’, colonial expansion to name just the most prominent ones. The claim is rather that in all those texts there is little, if anything, that is properly original and specific, i.e. integrated to their broader theoretical framework.  A more emphatic version of this claim is that even if we admit that Marx and Engels have something specific to say on the national phenomenon, their contribution just misses the point, by reducing the question to a by-product of the development of productive forces combined with references to a Hegel-inspired philosophy of history, according to which only some peoples are entitled to a distinct national-state existence.  In both cases, the nation appears as the blindspot of Marx and Engels’s theory, a source of constant and serious trouble for all those who tried to build on their intellectual and political legacy. Ultimately, we are told, the reasons of this deficiency is Marx’s and Engels’s internationalism. Based on the assumption of transnational interests that are common to the exploited classes, internationalism lies unquestionably at the heart of their politics and their vision of history. However, according to this perspective, internationalism and attention to the specifics of national question are viewed as incompatible; hence the failure of Marxism as a political project since modern history has shown that nations are a much stronger form of collective existence than class-based movements.  Without denying the problematic and unstable aspects of Marx’s and Engels’s elaboration on the national question, we want to challenge these views by developing the following six points:
●Marx and Engels do have a theory of the nation as a modern phenomenon, inherent to the worldwide expansion of a new mode of production, capitalism, and the emergence of “bourgeois society” (a concept to be analytically distinguished from capitalism although belonging to the same historical formation).
●At the core of this theory lies the concept of the nation as the necessary framework through which the fundamental classes of modern society (first the bourgeoisie, then the proletariat) build their (revolutionary) capacity to lead a broader bloc of social forces to a higher level of historical existence (in Gramscian terms, their hegemony). The nation thus appears as the expression of the unity of politics and economics, of an enlarged vision of class struggle, within a revolutionary process oriented towards human emancipation.
●This vision is indeed, in its initial formulation (around the 1848 revolutionary moment), heavily loaded by Euro- and western-centric biases, typical of the time and largely derived from the position of its authors at the centre of the world’s major industrial and colonial empire. ●The evolution of Marx’s (and, to a more limited extent, Engels’s) views on colonialism and the multiple paths of development of European and Western societies lead them to overcome to a significant degree (but not fully) those biases.
●The internationalism of the exploited and oppressed groups wasn’t understood by Marx and Engels as a negation of national realities but rather as a constitutive dimension of new, class-based, historical bloc which has to affirm its strategic capacity to lead society (and seize political power) at a national level.
●This vision of internationalism wasn’t an abstract vision but an outlook concretely and systematically worked out in Marx’s and Engels’s interventions in the worker’s movement, first and foremost in the debates and practices of the International Workingmen’s Association (known as “the 1st International”).

Eugenia Siapera “New Technologies: Between Liberation and Subjugation”, you can find the link of the talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLM2TVVdfEQ

Abstract: The pace of technological development has significantly accelerated in the past 20 years or so. Aided by unprecedented computing power, ideas that belonged to science fiction are now possible. Techniques such as machine learning and deep learning have massively increased in precision and refinement. However, these technological developments take place in a period of intense capitalist crisis. This has led to the formulation of three significant critiques: The first strand focuses on the identification of new or intensified forms of worker control and other forms of subjugation, highlighting intensified surveillance and expansion into the lifeworld, exploitation, resource appropriation, increasing alienation and data extraction as a colonial practice. The second line of critique seeks to identify longer term, epochal shifts, looking at how technologies are co-articulated with, and change capitalist practices, such as platform capitalism, data-intensive capitalism, surveillance capitalism and so on. The third line of critique locates technological innovation as part and parcel of ongoing capitalist restructuring in a context characterised by falling rates of profit and in general the unstoppable drive for growth and profit. All three critiques view technology as caught up in capitalist practices of exploitation and extraction. But is this an inevitability of technological development? Must technological advances produced under a capitalist mode of production always and necessarily reflect its ethos and principles? Recognizing the important contribution
of these critiques, I want to address the following questions: can an alternative radical approach to technology be developed? Can technologies aid and even advance a politics of liberation? To address these questions, I sketch out intersections between technology and the project of emancipation across three domains: technologies, labour and economic organisation; technologies and the lifeworld, everyday life and identity; and technologies and the political sphere.

Volodymyr Ishchenko “Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine and the post-Soviet crisis of hegemony”, you can find the link of the talk and discussion here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmRnzTqphYA

Abstract: How can Gramsci help us to understand the war in Ukraine? The talk will discuss the concepts of passive and Jacobin revolutions, hegemony crisis, Caesarism in relation to the post-Soviet condition. Post-Soviet Caesarist regimes and maidan revolutions presented only deficient solutions to the post-Soviet crisis of hegemony that either conserved or reproduced and intensified the very crisis. The roots of the crisis lie in the incapacity of post-Soviet political capitalists to provide any stable alternative to the degraded Communist hegemony. The dynamics of the hegemony crisis on the global, regional, and domestic levels is crucial to understanding the threats, opportunities, and resources for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. However, this shift to military coercion after failing in political, intellectual, and moral leadership may trigger the end of the crisis either destructing any sovereign center of capital accumulation in the post-Soviet region or pushing Russia to the fundamental economic, political, and ideological transformation that may create the conditions for a new cycle of “Jacobin” social revolutions in the XXI century.

Athina Karatzogianni "Revolutionary consciousness follows does not direct the movement: Luxemburg's relevance for digital movement organisation today", you can find the link of the talk and the discussion here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR0OlPbV27A Abstract: This seminar problematises human consciousness, temporality, as well as historical, class, and false consciousness, all of them as elements of an ideologisation process ongoing at

Reporters United “#PredatorGate: Investigating the underreported surveillance scandal in Greece”, you can find the link of the talk and discussion here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzHJIcso9lg

Abstract: Since December 2021, Reporters United has been investigating the wiretapping scandal, uncovering both the surveillance on part of the Greek national secret services (ΕΥP) and the spyware infections performed via the illegal spyware Predator. On January 4, 2022, we explained how the government changed the law governing the secret services practices by introducing an unconstitutional amendment to cover up its wiretapping. On April 15, we revealed that the amendment to the law intended to silence the surveillance of journalist Thanasis Koukakis. On June 3 and August 4, we documented (along with the newspaper “Efimerida ton Syntakton – EfSyn”) the business connections between Grigoris Dimitriadis, the nephew and general secretary of Prime Minister and businessman Felix Biggiou, a shareholder and former deputy administrator of Intellexa, the company that markets the spyware Predator in Greece. After these revelations, Mr. Dimitriadis resigned from the position of the Prime Minister’s general secretary (as did Panagiotis Kontoleon, who was holding at the time the position of General Director of Greek secret services) and filed a lawsuit against the journalists of Reporters United, the journalists “Efimerida ton Syntakton-Efsyn” and Thanasis Koukakis, claiming over half a million euros. Despite the lawsuit, which was denounced by domestic and international organizations as a SLAPP lawsuit aiming at silencing us, the investigation continued, revealing connections of government officials with businessman Yiannis Lavranos, involved in the wiretapping scandal, as well as the government's war against ADAE, the independent Authority defined by the Constitution as responsible for the protection of privacy of communications in Greece and which plays an important institutional role in clearing up the wiretapping scandal.

Paola Revenioti, “documentary ‘Oleanders’ + discussion”, you can find the link of the discussion here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u59N-iW0Rl8

Abstract: Projection and discussion of the documentary “Oleanders”: Paola, Betty and Eva are three trans women in their 60s who have known each other for more than forty years. All three of them started making their living early in their youth as sex workers in Athens, Greece. In “The Oleanders” Betty Vakalidou, Eva Koumarianou and Paola Revenioti revisit all the different places in the city where they used to work, socialize, get harassed or arrested by the cops, fight for their rights, have fun and find love. The unapologetic, humorous, and empowering discussion of Eva, Betty and Paola is a history of Athens as well as a history of sexualities of the Mediterranean region and beyond.

Susan Robertson “Just Educational Futures”, you can find the link of the talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq6woQE_QJQ&t=2s

Abstract: Thomas Piketty and colleagues (Piketty 2020; Gethin, Martinez-Toledano and Piketty 2021), amongst others, point to what appears a paradox; that in many Western societies, a significant rise in the level of social inequalities over the past two decades has not been accompanied by an equivalent rise in political demand for redistribution, via class-based politics. Jonathon Mijs (2021) also points to this same paradox. Using International Social Survey Data, he shows that citizens in general in more unequal societies are less concerned about social inequalities than those in more egalitarian societies. This is not to suggest there have been few frictions or little turbulence across these polities. Far from it! From the election of authoritarian populists like Trump in the USA, to Brexit in the UK, and the rise of far-right politics, there is considerable evidence of dramatic upheavals in these political and social systems. Is the rise of xenophobic ‘populism’, Piketty (2020) asks, the outcome of these inequalities, or are they the result of longer-run structural changes? In authoritarian populist polities like the UK and USA, Piketty and colleagues show that less well-educated low-income voters who have historically voted left have moved to the political right, whilst once conservative, better-educated higher-income voters have moved to the political left. They go on to identify two kinds of political elites: a high education low-income ‘Brahmin Left’ and a high-income low education ‘Merchant Right’. Central to their argument is that levels of education appear to be a key demographic variable in these shifts. Is the rise in levels of higher education across different societies, Piketty asks, a consequence of the transition to a knowledge society, resulted in the transformation of values, political alliances, and voting behaviour? Could it be that this represents a realignment, and cleavage, along education lines (Gethin, Martinez-Toledano and Piketty 2021: 6; see also Bovens and Wille 2017). And if so, what are the implications of this? Would the promotion of greater access to higher education be a means of stimulating a shift to a left political agenda? In Capital and Ideology (2020), Piketty embraces this as a solution to the problem of inequality and the basis for a more radical liberatory politics of the kind that Rosa Luxemburg envisaged (Mills 2020). In this paper I problematise these seductive knowledge societies/cleavage accounts in several ways.
First, they promote an overly teleological, cosmopolitan, view of the knowledge society as an inevitable shift from industrialisation to a new mode of production (Kitschelt and Rehm 2021). I contrast this with the ongoing work by corporate elites, multilateral agencies, and political power to advance a knowledge economy premised on services, human capital formation, innovation, digital technologies, and intellectual property (Robertson 2009).
Second, that the work logic tied to the rise of people-to people occupations (Oesch 2006) are assumed to be part of the state and presumed to engender a left politics. I argue that many of these occupations are part of a privatised social policy sector; it therefore does not follow that the work logic of person-to-person labouring sits outside neoliberal governing. Rather, many services sectors, such as education, care and health work, are themselves governed by the ‘engines of anxiety’ and ‘cruel optimism’ of neoliberalism (Epseland and Sauder 2016; Davies 2018; Mijs 2022; Ibled 2022).
Third, higher education is black boxed and placed beyond ideology. However, Mijs (2021) shows that being well educated does not necessarily result in the embrace of structural accounts of social inequalities. Instead, in highly unequal societies, its citizens (both well-educated and less well-educated) are more likely to explain success in meritocratic terms, as ‘individual effort’. This accords with findings from our own research (see Martini and Robertson 2022; Robertson and Martini 2023) where we trace out discursive transformations over two decades of higher education policies in the UK aimed at developing globally competitive knowledge economies, on the one hand, and the inclusion of higher education into the services economy, on the other. We show that Young’s (1958) conception of ‘meritocracy’ (ability and effort) has now been replaced with ‘neoliberal meritocracy’ (effort) as a legitimating ideology. In doing so it erases visibility of the structural inequalities that account for the highly unequal outcomes in UK higher education.
Fourth, treating higher education as a ‘variable’ (the holder of a higher education qualifications, or not), along with income, makes invisible the dynamics that Luxemburg (1951) pointed to in The Accumulation of Capital: capitalism is dependent on expanding into new spheres of social life whose dynamics include commodification (education as consumption), differentiation (stratification/value/worth), imperialism (international markets/brain drain), precarity (zero hours contracts/indebtedness), and militarism (securitisation/policing of free speech/knowledge espionage). Using UK higher education as a case, I show its progressive incorporation into processes of capital accumulation. In doing so, higher education as a sector, together with its workers and students, experience ongoing crises as it is caught in the tensions and contradictions of capitalist expansionary development.
I conclude by arguing that higher education itself needs to be cleaved from the jaws of what Fraser (2022) calls ‘cannibal capitalism’. Drawing insights from Wright’s (2010) real utopias, Luxemburg’s work on social transformation through mass strikes, spontaneous and organised action, and learning through social organising, and Freire’s (1970) conscientisation, I argue for a radical reworking of higher education as a key institution engaged in knowledge production that enables it to be constitutive of social democracy, social transformation, and social justice.

Kanishka Goonewardena: “Neoliberalism in Sri Lanka: Crisis, Protest and Left Strategy”, you can find the link of the talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nEIhqiNW3s&t=281s

Abstract: This presentation attempts to make sense of the economic crisis and political protest in Sri Lanka. In popular media and by the protestors themselves, the on-going Sri Lankan crisis of 2022 was mostly if not exclusively understood in terms of the corruption, ineptitude and other nefarious qualities of the country’s deposed president and his extended family. Without denying their patent deficiencies, here we begin rather with an historical perspective on Sri Lanka’s seemingly ungovernable external debt problem, which manifested itself most immediately in unprecedented power cuts, fuel shortages and inflation, bringing people from all classes into the streets in apparently spontaneous protest. Next, we examine the nature of the protest movement itself, including its multi-class character, social media orchestration, foreign relations and political demands condensed in the ultimately successful but also extremely limited slogan and hashtag #gotagohome (injunction for President Rajapaksa to resign). Finally, we compare the form and the content of what Sri Lankans call the aragalaya (the struggle) to classical revolutions such as the French and the Bolshevik, as well as Arab Spring and Occupy movements, to assess the prospects of the present conjuncture in Sri Lanka from an emancipatory perspective.

Aristotle Kallis: “The banality of fascism”, you can find the link of the talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7o5ZClYiYs&t=754s

Abstract: Little over a hundred years ago the word ‘fascism’ was meaningless. Only a few ‘dense’ years later it had graduated into a formidable trope, first in Italy and very soon across an ever-expanding range of countries. Superlatives have accompanied historical accounts of fascism ever since its appearance in crisis-ridden post-WW1 Italy. Surely something as extreme, repressive, murderous, and devastating in the most real sense of the word as ‘fascism’ cannot be spoken about in any terms other than the language of the unique and the extreme. Yet, if we shift for a moment the focus from the praxis and the outcomes to the reasons behind fascism’s formidable international traction in the interwar years and its endurance over time, we encounter a different picture. Like a potent alchemy, fascism was forged from the existing base metals of nationalism and deep-rooted fears of the ‘other’, from sedimented prejudices and contemporary anxieties about crises, real or perceived. It also promised the illusion of history-making agency to those who felt disempowered and subjugated by the historical mainstream. Fascism’s ideological and political formula may have been unique, extreme, and brutal but its drivers were (and continue to be) disturbingly commonplace, indeed banal. This explains why, in the midst of a profound crisis of liberalism and of a collective paranoia against the spectre of a socialist revolution, interwar fascism gained traction so quickly among people and elites across countries, regions, cultures, and political spaces. If fascism may indeed be ‘banal’ in this sense, as I will argue, then the fight against it needs to be refocused on the mainstream fundamentals that drive its ongoing appeal. In the past fascism gained traction and was diffused internationally not because of some mysterious collective lapse into unreason and extremism but through incremental, banal affirmative choices for many. Its power of attraction derived from a deep reservoir of crises, fears, and long-standing prejudices, building on run-of-the-mill motifs about national community and sovereignty, expressing a longing for defending a seemingly threatened identity and for wresting agency that appeared in retreat. All these fundamentals remain as painfully relevant and resonant today as in the past. Therefore fascism’s potential for resurfacing, one way or another, and for gathering fresh (if different) momentum today or in the future remains largely undiminished.

Panayota Gounari: “The debate around Critical Race Theory in the US and the Discourses of Historical Revisionism”, you can find the link of the talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPfYCrHWwwA&t=6s

Abstract: Far-right populist authoritarianism builds on the rhetoric of historical revisionism. Revisionist history can be illustrated in the U.S. Republicans’ backlash against using Critical Race Theory in school curricula, promoting at the same time ‘Patriotic Education,’ a whitewashed nativist version that bears little relevance to the present, while selectively erasing the past. This seminar explores the features and politics of historical narratives, collective remembering and their role in supporting and strengthening the authoritarian far-right Trumpist rhetoric. The control over the collective historical narrative is central in far-right politics, and Trumpism has successfully integrated a dangerous historical revisionism into its muddy ideological mix. The distortion of history has traditionally been at the core of all ideological struggles. Features of far-right authoritarian narratives will be presented in an attempt to frame history as a critical pedagogical project and pedagogy as a historical project. Different themes will be weaved under the light of history and the process of historicization, situating social phenomena and events in their historical dimension.

Ο τίτλος της ομιλίας των Νικόλα Λεοντόπουλο και Θοδωρή Χονδρόγιαννο είναι «#PredatorGate: Ερευνώντας το ελλιπώς δημοσιογραφικά καλυμμένο σκάνδαλο παρακολούθησης στην Ελλάδα» στην οποία θα συζητηθεί το πρόσφατο σκάνδαλο των τηλεφωνικών υποκλοπών στην Ελλάδα το οποίο δημιούργησε τριγμούς στο πολιτικό σκηνικό της χώρας, την έρευνα του οποίου άνοιξαν οι ίδιοι μ’ ένα ρεπορτάζ ένα χρόνο πριν που έβαζε από τότε στο κάδρο τον πρωθυπουργό της Ελλάδος και την κυβέρνηση.
Μπορείτε να εγγραφείτε εδώ: https://politicsofliberation.gr/reporters-united/

Olga Lafazani: “The significance of the insignificant. Borders, migration, everyday life”, You can find the link of the talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3O5Fzq-Qp0

Abstract: The aim of the paper is to reflect on how borders proliferate in everyday life, not only through laws, institutions or policing practices, but also through deeds, words, and feelings. Rather than analyse migration and borders by focusing only on the borderzones, this paper attempts to capture the multiple relations that connect the camp to the city square, the deportation regime to the train carriage, the newspaper headlines to the housing tenements in an attempt to work towards framing a broader theory of borders in geographical terms. By using fragments of narrations of everyday encounters between migrants and locals in the city, light will be shed on different moments, places, people, and encounters: brought together they create a map of the multiple and complicated ways borders operate as technologies of power within everyday life in the city. The city is Athens between 2009-2013, a time that saw the beginnings of the "economic crisis" in Greece. During those years, migrants were being increasingly illegalised and racialized by dominant policies and media discourses compared to the previous decade of "economic growth" . It is well established in the critical literature that borders have a polysemic nature, as they do not hold the same meaning for everyone. As Caton and Zacka write: "A border is not a line, but a space with depth. And this space changes, morphologically, on the basis of the identity of the one who enters it." (Caton and Zacka, 2010: 209). Taking a step further, this paper will discuss not only how meanings, experiences, and spaces change in relation to the identity of the people who cross the borders, but how identities, bodies, and spaces are themselves produced through bordering practices. Everyday life, as described by H. Lefebvre is defined by conflicts and contradictions which become particularly apparent when we approach borders ethnographically, starting from the everyday life experiences of migrants: moments and spaces of exclusion, powerlessness, and subordination but also of inclusion, emancipation, and subversion. In this sense, the focus is on these microbe-like, clandestine, and insignificant acts of everyday life, in which borders are renegotiated between the ones who belong and the ones who do not, when belonging is not conceived as a sense but as a socially constructed position that manufactures bodies, acts, and feelings. Drawing from critical geography, border and migration studies, as well as from feminist and postcolonial critique, and by focusing on everyday encounters an attempt is made to generate more complicated and nuanced understandings of subjectivity and power, and to bring to the fore the multiple borders that are simultaneously embodied and transcended, performed and challenged, established and subverted.

Vassilis Lambropoulos, “The tragedy of autonomy in the modern theater of liberation”. You can find the link of the talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy1bPlC9Lo8

Abstract: Τhe independence of the vast majority of colonized people in the 1960s is justly celebrated as a great era of liberation. It is also discussed in terms of the contradictions of self-determination. As soon as the post-colonial state was established, it fell short of its egalitarian aspirations as it limited domestic dissent, punished political opposition, and faced secessionist challenges that led to civil wars. During that decade, while politicians and intellectuals confronted the dilemmas of governance, several authors wrote major plays to dramatize the antinomies of autonomy. Long before the “tragedy of colonial enlightenment” (David Scott) was theorized, it appeared on the stage. Interestingly, it was placed in the era of the Haitian Revolution, some one hundred fifty years earlier, by Edouard Glissant, Derek Walcott, Lorraine Hansberry, Aimé Cesaire, Langston Hughes, C.L.R. James, and Hénock Trouillot. This seminar draws on political theory, postcolonial thought, and history of drama to discuss the tragedy of autonomy in the second half of the 20th century.

Οι εκδόσεις RedMarks την Τρίτη 22 Νοεμβρίου πραγματοποίησαν την παρουσίαση της νέας τους κυκλοφορίας "Η Πάλη ενάντια στον Φασισμό", της Κλάρα Τσέτκιν, στον Σύλλογο Ελλήνων Αρχαιολόγων.

Μίλησαν οι:
✔ Αντώνης Νταβανέλος, εκδόσεις RedMarks
✔ Γιώργος Σουβλής, μεταδιδακτορικός ερευνητής, τμήμα Κοινωνιολογίας Πανεπιστημίου Κρήτης
✔ Κώστας Παπαδάκης, συνήγορος Πολιτικής Αγωγής στη δίκη της ΧΑ

Συντόνισε η Κατερίνα Γιαννούλια, Γραμματεία Ισότητας ΑΔΕΔΥ.
Το link της συζήτησης εδώ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmZxoi6ywZU

Seraphim Seferiades, “Why calling the Far Right (and the Left) ‘populist’ is a bad idea, and why it is done” & Loukia Kotronaki “Understanding the contemporary far right from the perspective of social movement’s theory”. You can find the link of the talks here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrkFHqtcY2Q&t=74s

Abstract SS: ‘Concepts’, wrote Cambridge physicist George Thomson (1856-1940), ‘are ideas which receive names. They determine the questions one asks, and the answers one gets’. Scholars create words (conceptualize) to tell us what they actually ‘see’, to draw our attention to what they think is interesting and critical. But whether they realize it or not, this reflects their values, their normative and ideological beliefs. We always need to know ‒and, if necessary, unearth‒ these values, but what we judge them for is the performance of their concepts on the research field: whether they are able to pose and address questions that expand our cognitive horizons or ‒on the contrary‒ shrink them. Relying on classical methodological principles, this presentation addresses the prolonged cognitive dystopia observed in the so-called ‘populist studies’. I argue that whilst the dominant approaches function as first-rate transmission belts for the two basic value motives that sustain them (either the neoconservative defense of post-democracy or the projection of new reformism ‒aka ‘left populism’‒ the as the only possible answer to the ever-increasing systemic crisis), they result in stunningly poor social science.

Abstract LK: Not everything that moves deserves to be called a ‘social movement’. We hardly consider all extra-institutional action to be conducive ‒by definition‒ to social and political change, nor do we assume that all non-established political actors seek to promote a genuine alternative to the mainstream political agenda. And yet, this is precisely what we do when we set out to interpret, comprehend, and explicate the far-/alt-right in terms of social movement politics. Is there a common normative, communicative, or sociological glue binding the two phenomena together? Is it their common ‘power of numbers’, the social discontent they presumably air, or, perhaps, a new political ethos challenging dominant codes? Starting off by offering a theoretical overview of the historical trajectory of social movements, I will emphasize the defining properties of this particular form of contentious politics, whilst also highlighting their affinity with major political processes such as, most notably, democratization. I then turn to an assessment of the so-called ‘populist’ frame in the study of collective action. I argue that, instead of procuring more elaborate conceptual and analytical categories for interpreting recent political phenomena beyond the realm of routine politics, its ‒hardly innocuous‒ (re-)invention and proliferation has had the exact opposite effect: the normalization and mystification of the post-democratic condition.

STATE IN/AND CRISIS

Theory and Movement in a Dangerous World
Historical Materialism Athens Conference 2023 Call for abstracts
20-23 April 2023, Panteion University, Athens
Deadline for abstracts: 30 November 2022

https://conference.historicalmaterialism.org/event/4/

For all inquiries, please contact: hmathens2023@gmail.com

There are few more challenging tests of fascist core-periphery topographies than the case of interwar Greece. Greece can claim no significant fascist movement in the interwar years; no significant fascist political party; and no dictatorial regime inspired by a genuinely revolutionary ultranationalist vision. In the last category, the only possible candidate, the 4th of August dictatorial regime headed by the retired general Ioannis Metaxas, was established late (1936) and lasted only for a few short years until the death of the dictator (January 1941). The contributions to this special issue on interwar Greece feature not only diverse aspects of the Metaxas regime but also offer broader perspectives on the ideological and political dynamics of fascism across the 1920s and 1930s. This special issue intends to build bridges between historical and sociological approaches; between the study of ideas and the analysis of policies; between contextual specificities and international trends; and, in the end, between recent historiographies of generic fascism and of modern Greek history. Collectively, the contributions also evince a plea to take the fascist experience and the potential for radical ruptures in interwar Greece more seriously.

This article analyses legal texts written by Nikolaos Koumaros that were foundational to the 4th of August regime in Greece. It demonstrates the regime possessed an ideology that did not differ substantially from other authoritarian regimes of the period. In particular, the choice of Koumaros as the central legal theorist of the regime can be explained by his familiarity with anti-liberal theories of the time. His engagement with these theories was linked with his studies in France and Italy during the interwar period, exposing him to fascist ideals. A detailed examination of the conceptual transfers that informed the main legal texts of the regime demonstrated their reasoning followed closely the theoretical developments of the time. Mussolini’s doctrine of fascism and a specific reading of Rousseau functioned as the basis for the legitimisation of a new, anti-liberal political order. These ideas became key analytical pillars of the legal texts that gave shape to the regime’s normative and political foundation, demonstrating that explicit fascist theories informed the political physiognomy of the regime.

«Η Κανονικοποιήση του Ακροδεξιού Λόγου στην Ελλάδα»: Συνέντευξη με τους επιμελητές του βιβλίου (video)
Χρήστος Αβραμίδης
10.11.2022
Έχουμε ξεμπλέξει με την Ακροδεξιά; Μια αρνητική απάντηση σε αυτό το ερώτημα είναι σχεδόν αυτονόητη, αλλά δεν ισχύει το ίδιο και για το φάσμα ερωτημάτων που γεννιούνται μετά από αυτήν την απάντηση όταν κανείς καλείται να απαντήσει στο γιατί.
Η μελέτη που επιμελείται ο Γιώργος Σουβλής και η Ρόζα Βασιλάκη, καταφέρνει να ψηλαφίσει απαντήσεις σε πολλά διαφορετικά επίπεδα της κοινωνίας και της πολιτικής. Τα ιδεολογικά μοτίβα στα οποία στηρίχθηκε η Χρυσή Αυγή παραμένουν ενεργά και μάλιστα σε κάποιους θεσμούς ίσως ακόμα και κυρίαρχα. Τον πρόλογο υπογράφει ο Αριστοτέλης Καλλής, ο οποίος έχει τίτλο «Η κοινοτοπία των άκρων και η «κανονικότητα» της Χρυσής Αυγής».
Το πρώτο κεφάλαιο αφορά το πολύ ενδιαφέρον ζήτημα της «δεξιοποίησης των έμφυλων πολιτικών ταυτότητας», με αναφορά στον Ομοεθνικισμό και τον φεμοεθνικισμό στην Ελλάδα. Υπογράφεται από τις ερευνήτριες Έλλη Βουγιούκα , Ανδρομάχη Κουτσουλέντη, Άννα Μπιρμπιλοπούλου, Ηρώ Τσαρμποπούλου-Φωκιανού και Έλια Ψαρά.
Το δεύτερο κεφάλαιο μελετάει τον ρόλο των ΜΜΕ στην Ελλάδα, έχει τίτλο «Συμβατικά ΜΜΕ και αντισυμβατικοί λόγοι: ηθικός πανικός και κανονικοποίηση της ακροδεξιάς ρητορικής» και υπογράφεται από τις Κατερίνα Δουρακέλλη & Νατάσα Μπραέσα.
Το τρίτο κεφάλαιο μελετά τις Ελληνικές Ένοπλες Δυνάμεις. Ο τίτλος του είναι «Χωρίς στρατό δεν υπάρχει πατρίδα»: η ακροδεξιά ρητορική στις Ένοπλες Δυνάμεις και υπογράφεται από τον Γιώργο Παπακωνσταντίνου και την Ηρώ Τσαρμποπούλου-Φωκιανού.
Στο τελευταίο κεφάλαιο παρουσιάζεται η «ακροδεξιά ρητορική και η Ορθόδοξη Εκκλησία της Ελλάδας», με συγγραφείς τους Νίκο Αντωνάκο, Στέφανο Λιακάκο, Μόνικα Ναμία, και Βασίλη Νικητάκη. Το επίμετρο της μελέτης υπογράφει ο Δημήτρης Χριστόπουλος με τίτλο «Όποιος δεν φοβάται το πρόσωπο του τέρατος, πάει να πει ότι έχει αρχίσει να του μοιάζει». Επίσης στην έκδοση συμπεριλαμβάνεται και το παράρτημα με τίτλο «Μετά τη Χρυσή Αυγή: η διείσδυση και οι μεταμορφώσεις του ακροδεξιού τρόπου σκέψης» το οποίο υπογράφεται απ’τους επιμελητές μαζί με τον Τρύφωνα Λεμοντζόγλου.
Ο αναγνώστης μπορεί να προμηθευτεί την μελέτη δωρεάν μέσα από το ίδρυμα Ρόζα Λούξεμπουργκ, πατώντας σε αυτό το λινκ: https://rosalux.gr/publication/i-kanonikopoiisi-tou-akrodexiou-logou-stin-ellada/?fbclid=IwAR1MTVeSEld5FmUDqoVtQ9AZA5tERPR9AGSvHSs7rMmSZvDeNCVA6SZdse8

Το βίντεο μπορείτε να το δείτε εδώ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPYyzeICdsw

Στις 4/11/2022 είχαμε την χαρά να συζητήσουμε από κοινού με την Rosa Vasilaki και τον Iason Bantios το βιβλίο μας, Η Κανονικοποίηση του Ακροδεξιού Λόγου στην Ελλάδα και το ντοκιμαντέρ Σε μια στιγμή κινδύνου του Alterthess στο 91,4 FM Στο Κόκκινο στην εκπομπή "Κάτι Παίζει στο Κόκκινο" της Ευγενίας Χατζηγεωργίου. Ευχαριστούμε το Κόκκινο για την φιλοξενία! Το link της συζήτησης εδώ: https://soundcloud.com/user-958813084/alterthess_ekdilosi?fbclid=IwAR256r0mNQRf6lM2BvuKFalxUB8DalQp724S_F6kTMQxeKd1ZBNiAjpE1Ec

Το Σάββατο 5 Νοεμβρίου 2022, στις 7μμ, στον κινηματογράφο Βακούρα, το ίδρυμα Ρόζα Λούξεμπουργκ, διοργανώνει την προβολή του ντοκιμαντέρ «Σε μια στιγμή κινδύνου» του Alterthess και την παρουσίαση του συλλογικού τόμου «Η Κανονικοποιήση του Ακροδεξιού Λόγου στην Ελλάδα - Φύλο, ΜΜΕ, Ένοπλες Δυνάμεις, Εκκλησία». Είσοδος ελεύθερη.
To facebook event εδώ: https://www.facebook.com/events/427705646106759?ref=newsfeed

Συνέντευξη μου στην εκπομπή Κοινωνία Ώρα Press του The Press Project με τις Γεωργία Κριεμπάρδη & Νεκταρία Ψαράκη για την σύγχρονη Ακροδεξιά & Δεξιά, εντός και εκτός συνόρων, τους διάφορους μετασχηματισμούς που έχει υποστεί και το τι πιθανώς πρέπει να κάνουμε ώστε να ανατραπούν οι τωρινοί συσχετισμοί δύναμης στο Πολιτικό.
Η συζήτηση διαρκεί από το 35:24 εώς το τέλος της εκπομπής.
To link εδώ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=4gooSg369_k&fbclid=IwAR1Ak5H2NWxye5pwzezW-AaODeoIqoAWX9bW-sTt94FG7hL966Ve6gl3dyo

Συνέντευξη μας από κοινού με την Rosa Vasilaki στο ραδιοφωνικό σταθμό Στο Κόκκινο 105,5 στην εκπομπή Art and the City των Nathalie Hatziantoniou και Maria Thanassoulia για το σεμινάριο  Politics of Liberation που συνδιοργανώνουμε. H παρεμβάση μας διαρκεί από το 38:32 εώς 51:14 λεπτό της εκπομπής την οποία μπορείτε να βρείτε στην παρακάτω σελίδα ( https://www.avgi.gr/sto-kokkino ) αφότου πατήσετε 21.9.2022 στο Αρχείο της εβδομάδας και επιλέξετε την εκπομπή Art and the City.

Dylan Riley “What Next? The End of Democratic Capitalism and the Tasks of the Left” (Edited version).
You can find the link of the talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5gIjVF2WI0

Abstract: Liberals and progressives in the US and elsewhere often speak of defending or restoring liberal democracy. This implies that democracy can be sustained through a series of policy choices, and ignores the problem of the fraught relationship between democracy and capitalism. A historical look at capitalism and democracy, however, shows that the two have been compatible with one another only at certain moments, primarily during the long boom of the post 1945 period in the rich world. This configuration is now coming to an end due to deep structural transformations in the nature of capitalism in which political mechanisms are becoming increasingly decisive in determining the rate of return. The democratic politics of the left must be articulated in relation to these profound changes in the structure of capitalism.

“Politics of Liberation” seminar announcement

We are happy to announce the launch of the bi-monthly seminar series “Politics of Liberation” which will be conducted by Rosa Vasilaki and George Souvlis and will take place in the premises of the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung on Friday evenings from mid-September 2022 to the end of June 2023. The seminar will have the form of an open talk given by an invited speaker discussing aspects of the current conjuncture related to their research interests. Discussion with the participants will follow and materials related to the seminar will be available beforehand.
The seminar hopes to cover a gap in a specific kind of sociability and discussion in Greece – which would bring together all interested parties in the dynamics of social change – especially after the economic crisis, the increasing in Europe, the rise of authoritarianism and variations of the Far Right, the global experience of COVID-19 and the apparent inadequacy of the Left to positively capitalise on these extremely significant social and political shifts.
The seminar aims to be open to the broader spectrum of progressive social forces, and go beyond the usual limitations of academia, organized party politics, or the narrow focus on Europe. The overall purpose of such endeavour is to create the conditions for true exchange, dialogue and deep reflection on social change.
The seminar will be conducted in English and will be broadcast also online through the digital platforms of the RLS office. The web page of the seminar will be launched at the beginning of September and will include the exact program, a reservation calendar, as well as materials related to the speakers and their respective topics of research/discussion. The seminar will be open to all upon reservation via the online calendar.
The speakers for 2022-2023 series are: Dylan Riley, Judith Butler, Dan-El Padilla Peralta, Edouard Louis , Geoff Eley , Stathis Kouvelakis, Brad Evans, Chantal Meza, Yannis Hamilakis, Sara Farris, Seraphim Seferiades , Loukia Kotronaki, Vassilis Lambropoulos , Olga Lafazani (Olga Laflaf), Παολα Ρεβενιωτη , Panayota Gounari , Aristotle Kallis, Susan Robertson, Kanishka Goonewardena, Elisa Giustinianovich, Cedric De Leon, Athina Karatzogianni, Eugenia Siapera, Demetra Tzanaki , Volodymyr Ishchenko.

https://rosalux.gr/el/event/politics-liberation

Η παρουσίαση αυτή εστιάζεται στην κοινοβουλευτική κρίση της δεκαετίας του 1930 στην Ελλάδα η οποία οδήγησε στην κατάρρευση της Δεύτερης Ελληνικής Δημοκρατίας και στην εγκαθίδρυση του αυταρχικού καθεστώτος της 4ης Αυγούστου. Με δεδομένο αυτό, η στόχευση είναι διττή: αφενός να προσφέρει μια ερμηνεία για τα αίτια της κρίσης και της κατάρρευσης του κοινοβουλευτισμό της μεσοπολεμικής περιόδου, αφετέρου να εξετάσει το πώς βασικοί δρώντες της αντιλήφθηκαν και συνέβαλλαν στις διαδικασίες αυτές. Αναφορικά με το πρώτο ζήτημα προτείνω ως σημείο εκκίνηση το έργο του Antonio Gramsci και ειδικότερα την έννοια της ηγεμονίας, επιχειρηματολογώντας ότι η κρίση και η κατάρρευση του Ελληνικού μεσοπολεμικού κοινοβουλευτισμού μπορεί να προσδιοριστεί ως μια κρίση ηγεμονίας η οποία κατέληξε σε οργανική κρίση του πολιτικού συστήματος καθαυτού στο μέτρο που τα δυο κυρίαρχα πολιτικά μπλοκ –Βενιζελισμός και Αντιβενιζελισμός– δεν κατάφεραν να αρθρώσουν ικανοποιητικές ηγεμονικές απαντήσεις μετά το ξέσπασμα της Παγκόσμιας Οικονομικής κρίσης του 1929. Ως προς το δεύτερο ζήτημα, επιχειρείται μια εξέταση το πώς η κρίση αυτή προσλήφθηκε και αναπαράχθηκε από τους ίδιους τους ιστορικούς δρώντες της μεσοπολεμικής Ελλάδας εστιάζοντας σε τρεις φιγούρες αυτής: τον Γεώργιο Βλάχο, εκδότη της εφημερίδας «Καθημερινή», τον Ιωάννη Μεταξά, μετέπειτα δικτάτορα της Ελλάδας και τον νομικό Νικόλαο Κούμαρο ο οποίος υπήρξε κεντρική φιγούρα οργανικού διανοούμενου του καθεστώτος της 4ης Αυγούστου. Το επιχείρημα που προκρίνεται ως προς αυτούς είναι ότι όχι μόνο είχαν συνείδηση της κρίσης συμβάλλοντας καθοριστικά με λόγους και πράξεις στην κρίση της Δεύτερης Ελληνικής Δημοκρατίας, αλλά αντιλαμβανόμενοι την ιστορική αλλαγή πολιτικού παραδείγματος που συνέβαινε στην Ευρωπαϊκή ήπειρο την περίοδο αυτή πρότειναν συγκεκριμένες αυταρχικές λύσεις για την υπέρβαση της.
Το βίντεο ολόκληρης της ομιλίας μου: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8aePR6uIt4

Στόχος της παρουσίασης είναι να επανεξετάσει ορισμένες όψεις του Μεταξικού καθεστώτος με έμφαση στις καταβολές, τον πολιτικό του χαρακτήρα και τους νομιμοποιητικούς λόγους που παρήχθησαν από τους οργανικούς τους διανοούμενους πριν και μετά την εγκαθίδρυση του. Τρία βασικά επιχειρήματα θα αποτελέσουν τους βασικούς άξονες ανάπτυξης των θεματικών αυτών. Το πρώτο είναι ότι οι δομικές καταβολές της κοινοβουλευτικής κρίσης της Δεύτερης Ελληνικής Δημοκρατίας που οδήγησε στο καθεστώς Μεταξά βρίσκονται στην αδυναμία του ελληνικού πολιτικού συστήματος να αρθρώσει αποτελεσματικές ηγεμονικές πολιτικές που θα ικανοποιούσαν τα κοινωνικά αιτήματα που αρθρώθηκαν από τα κάτω από το 1931 και μετά, από την στιγμή δηλαδή που τα αποτελέσματα της παγκόσμιας οικονομικής κρίσης του 1929 επέδρασαν καταστρεπτικά στην δομή της Ελληνικής οικονομίας. Ακολουθώντας το έργο του ιστορικού κοινωνιολόγου Dylan Riley, Civic Foundations of Fascism, το δεύτερο επιχείρημα εισηγείται την εννοιολόγηση του Μεταξικού καθεστώς ως «αυταρχική δημοκρατία» ως ένα φασιστικό καθεστώς, δηλαδή, το οποίο όχι μόνο αρνήθηκε τον πολιτικό φιλελευθερισμό της προηγουμένης περιόδου, αλλά επιχείρησε θεσμικά και ιδεολογικά ‒έστω και με περιορισμένη επιτυχία‒ να τον υπερβεί ακολουθώντας τα παραδείγματα των όμορων καθεστώτων της περιόδου. Και τέλος, ως συνέπεια του δεύτερου επιχειρήματος προτείνει οι νομιμοποιητικοί λόγοι εναντία στην Δεύτερη Ελληνική Δημοκρατία που αρθρώθηκαν από τους ελάσσονες και ήσσονες διανοούμενους του καθεστώτος να γίνουν κατανοητοί ως αντικοινουβουλευτική κριτική και όχι ως εν γένει αντιδημοκρατική στο μέτρο που ίδιοι αξίωναν με τις αντιπροτάσεις τους πιο περιεκτική αντιπροσώπευση τους έθνους μέσω των θεσμών που το νέο πολιτικό εγχείρημα του Ιωάννη Μεταξά επιχείρησε να στήσει.

The main aim of this paper is to offer an overview of the relation between the state and the higher education in Greece the last forty years. Having this objective we locate the historical development of this relationship within the wider context of the period under examination. Our central argument is that any effort to map the trajectory of the Greek Universities should take necessarily into account the general historical context of the period. More precisely with that we mean both the students protests from below and the wider global transformations from above. These dynamics, however, have their own historicity. For its better conception we suggest a periodization in three temporally discreet, though dialectically interlinked, time periods. The first one lasts from 1974 to 1990 and it is the first phase of the Metapolitfsi (translated as "polity or regime change") in which predominates the demand for the democratization of all public institutions. This demand includes also universities. The second period expands between 1991 and 2008 and can be described as the era of the rather incomplete neoliberal modernization of Greek universities. The third period begins in 2009 and lasts until today. It is, of course, the period of the Global Crisis of overaccumulation. In the Greek context this crisis took the form of the country’s public debt crisis and of the implementation, as an antidote, of draconian austerity policies trying unsuccessfully to heal it.

Abstract
Skinner's particular contribution to the field of Intellectual history is to articulate a theory of interpretation which concentrated on recovering the 'speech acts' embedded in the 'illocutionary' statements of specific individuals in writing works of political theory. Having this aim his work attempts, according to his methodological declarations, the treatment of past linguistic acts strictly as historical phenomena, as things happening in a context which defines the kind of events they were. In this paper I will attempt to demonstrate the limitations of Skinner's approach and counter-propose some alternatives to them using methodological elaborations produced by Marxists like Ellen Meiskins Wood, Neal Wood and Antonio Gramsci. My criticism focuses mainly on two methodological aspects of his work. The first is his quite restrictive proposal for the study of political thought as a multiplicity of linguistic acts performed by language users in historical contexts. The second one is in his one-dimensional focus on the level of synchronicity and the related search on the writer's intention, an emphasis that leads to the neglect of possible disconnection between past. I suggest that the remedy for his first methodological fallacy is an epistemological focus which sets as its priority the demonstration of the interconnections between the theoretician's ideas and the structures of society, namely the correlation between the internal political forces of society, its economic organization, and the cultural and class divisions which pervade it. Regarding the second aspect of his approach, I counter-propose a historical understanding which conceives the past and present as an organic totality adopting the presupposition that every history is necessarily contemporary history.

Εισαγωγικό σημείωμα της ελληνικής έκδοσης από τους Γιάννη Κουμπουρλή και Νίκο Βαφέα.

Περιεχόμενα
Εισαγωγικό σημείωμα της ελληνικής έκδοσης.................................. 9
1 | Η αίσθηση ενός ξεκινήματος.................................................. 25
2 | Οι καταβολές του καπιταλισμού ............................................ 47
3 | Επαναστάσεις και κοινωνικά κινήματα.................................. 69
4 | Αυτοκρατορίες ....................................................................... 105
5 | Κράτη ..................................................................................... 128
6 | Ανισότητα ............................................................................... 149
7 | Φύλο και οικογένεια............................................................... 175
8 | Κουλτούρα.............................................................................. 190
9 | Προβλέποντας το μέλλον ....................................................... 210
Βιβλιογραφία ..................................................................................... 229