Милонас Янис

Αναπαραστάσεις της Ελληνικής Κρίσης στα Ευρωπαϊκά ΜΜΕ: Μια Κριτική Προσέγγιση του Γερμανικού και Δανέζικου Τύπου

2020 · ARTICLE · el

This article focuses on the study of the Greek crisis in the German and Danish press. Relevant studies have shown that the media heavily relied on the official version of the crisis, as formulated by European political leaders, as well as prominent technocrats and economists. The analysis shows that the discourse of the crisis in the media is expressed in post-political terms, framing the Greek crisis with cultural, moral and technocratic arguments.

The Industrialization of Creativity and Its Limits: Introducing Concepts, Theories, and Themes

2020 · CHAPTER · en

In this introduction we explore how creativity, loosely referring to activities around the visual arts, music, design, film, and performance, is mobilized by states and governments as a “resource” for economic growth. The creative economy discourse emphasizes individuality, innovation, self-fulfillment, career advancement, and the idea of leading exciting lives as remedies to social alienation. Drawing on the chapters in this volume, this introduction questions this discourse, exploring how political shifts and theoretical frameworks related to creative economy in different parts of the world at a time when the creative industries become more and more “industrialized.” We present the interdisciplinary contributions of volume that navigate a variety of geographical contexts, ranging from the United Kingdom, France and Russia to Greece, Argentina, and Italy, and explore issues around art biennials, museums, DIY cultures, technologies, creative writing, copyright laws, ideological formations, craft production, and creative co-ops.

Self-orientalisation and the ‘Greek Crisis’ in Liberal Mainstream News Media

2020 · CHAPTER · en

The specific study focuses on the moralist and culturalist meaning investments of the Greek crisis publicity, as it appeared in the Greek mainstream liberal news media. Following relevant critical literature (Bozatzis, 2016; Carastathis, 2014; Ervedosa, 2017), I wish to stress the neoorientalist character of the hegemonic Greek crisis’ explanations, and to focus on the reproduction of such narratives within the Greek public sphere, by mainstream news media. In this context, neoliberal austerity reforms emerge as a modernising and Europeanising project.

Creativity in the Service of Economic Recovery and “National Salvation”: Dispatches from the Greek Crisis Social Factory

2020 · CHAPTER · en

This chapter focuses on discursive constructions of creativity in the Greek public sphere in connection to the Greek government debt crisis. Instrumentalized by policy makers and pundits pursuing neoliberal reforms in Greece, creativity is understood to serve a mode of biopolitical governmentality. This is connected to the production of a national consensus over the necessity for neoliberal reforms and to the individualization of the risks and insecurity that such reforms entail. This chapter looks at specific public discursive constructions of creativity in Greece from 2010 onward. Specifically, the creativity discourse is approached in both its progressive and conservative articulations as articulated by the social democrat Giorgos A. Papandreou, Greece’s prime minister during the first years of the crisis (2009–2011), and the conservative Kyriakos K. Mitsotakis, Greece’s prime minister in 2019 and at the time of writing. Simultaneously, this chapter foregrounds the examples of success stories of creative ventures that received publicity in Greece so as to unfold other examples of a hegemonic discourse meant to motivate society on a post-political, entrepreneurial, and nationalistic basis. Such success stories develop through the didactic narratives that proliferate in Greece’s mainstream news and lifestyle media, which are meant to establish a creative paradigm as a way out of unemployment and recession. Here, creativity forms a public repertoire that fabricates the crisis into a so-called opportunity for development that is borne through entrepreneurship.

Crisis, Authoritarian Neoliberalism, and the Return of “New Democracy” to power in Greece

2020 · ARTICLE · en

This article focuses on New Democracy (ND), Greece’s main conservative party, and its return to power in 2019. The study enquires into ND’s hegemonic strategy and governing practice. ND’s hegemonic strategy is grounded in both neoliberal and Far- Right premises. This enabled ND to create a hegemonic block that ranges from centrist liberals to far-rightists, while advancing an anti-leftist ideological project, connected to progressing upper- class interests. The ND administration unfolds an autocratic form of executive governance that is based on legislating class-related reforms, propaganda and effective control of the mainstream media, and coercive force. These features reflect the development of neoliberal authoritarianism in Greece. They represent “the new form of bourgeois republic in the current phase of capitalism,” bearing the traits of autocracy, illiberalism, and Far-Right mainstreaming. The study deploys examples from ND’s political discourse and from policies that the ND administration has launched.

The “Greek Crisis” in Europe: Race, Class and Politics

2019 · BOOK · en

he “Greek Crisis” in Europe: Race, Class and Politics, critically analyses the publicity of the Greek debt crisis, by studying Greek, Danish and German mainstream media during the crisis’ early years (2009-2015). Mass media everywhere reproduced a sensualistic “Greek crisis” spectacle, while iterating neoliberal and occidentalist ideological myths. Overall, the Greek people were deemed guilty of a systemic crisis, supposedly enjoying lavish lifestyles on the EU’s expense. Using concrete examples, the study foregrounds neoorientalist, neoracist and classist stereotypes deployed in the construction and media coverage of the Greek crisis. These media practices are connected to the “soft politics” of the crisis, which produce public consensus over neoliberal reforms such as austerity and privatizations, and secure debt repayment from democratic interventions.

Race and class in German media representations of the ‘Greek crisis’

2019 · CHAPTER · en

Research has shown that the mainstream media coverage of the EU’s economic crisis has been not only offensive and prejudiced for the people of the countries most affected by it, but most crucially, utterly relying on elite understandings of the crisis, as articulated by the political and economic establishment of the EU. Indeed, the hegemonic public framing of the Eurozone crisis followed an ‘Orientalist’ approach, through spectacular narratives stressing cultural and moral failures of ‘national characters’ and exceptional national institutions that are (supposedly) fundamentally different from the ‘European’ cannon. This way, regimes of exception were able to be publicly constructed as plausible explanations for the crisis (as a ‘self-inflicted’ problem by those not following the European norm), and equivalent exceptional policies (such as austerity regimes) to be implemented in the supposedly problematic countries. Drawing on the findings of previous research, this contribution presents the class and racist dimensions of the German mainstream media’s ‘Greek-crisis’ representations, by focusing on the ‘crisis epicenter’, Greece, a country relentlessly targeted and, slandered and shamed by the German media and the German elites in particular. The chapter concludes that both in their light and in their serious versions, the German media publicly construct the so-called Greek crisis in line with the bourgeois and post-democratic principles directing the EU.

Discursive articulations of the Cypriot economic crisis in Greek media

2019 · CHAPTER · en

This study examines the ways that the economic crisis in Cyprus is covered by mainstream Greek media from different (left and liberal) political affiliations. Cyprus is a country with strong historical, geographic, social, cultural, economic and political ties to Greece. Main events concerning Cyprus are followed by the Greek politicians, media and citizens with great interest. Further, Greece’s own crisis triggers an additional interest in the Cypriot crisis, as both countries agreed to ‘bailout’ agreements with the ‘troika’ (an institution composed by the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission), in exchange of severe austerity reforms, and thus, Cyprus can serve as an example to follow or to avoid, of any attempted policy of economic recovery.

Crisis, Austerity, and Opposition in Mainstream Media Discourses in Greece

2019 · CHAPTER · en

Dysfunctional Cultures and the Making of Homo Economicus: Expert Personas and Liberal Consent in Austerity Regimes

2019 · ARTICLE · en

Since the early years of the debt crisis in 2010, a large part of liberal intellectuals and public commentators in Greece has argued for an interpretative framework with the notion of ‘national identity’ as the root of all troubles. Their narrative presents the crisis as an opportunity for Greeks to rediscover themselves and acquire a more ‘Western’ and market-friendly outlook while austerity is realized. Here, the crisis is read as an outcome of a ‘deviant culture’ that now has the opportunity to recover. In this article we focus on how thуe discourse of media personas who are ‘non-political actors’ -a philosophers and a marketing gurus- popularized this framework especially between the years 2010 to 2012. We argue that these discourses, working to shape new social identities of flexibility, mobility and competition, compatible with the requirements of neoliberalism to overcome the crisis, work more effectively when voiced by supposedly ‘neutral’ agents.