"A tour de force that masterfully conceptualizes the paradoxes of emancipation: the challenge of practicing radical politics within and against neoliberalism’s tendency to incorporate critical activities."—Maria Boletsi, Endowed Professor of Modern Greek Studies at the University of Amsterdam and Associate Professor in Film and Literary Studies at Leiden University
"Soudias has written a tremendously important book about Greece’s recent past, in which the country was the prime example of neo-liberal cruel policies."—Jan Willem Duyvendak, author of The Return of the Native: Can Liberalism Safeguard Us Against Nativism?
"In carefully grounded research, Soudias explores the emergent subjectivities of the Syntagma Square occupation, their transformative potentialities and the traps neoliberal rationality has been setting for them. This is a book of sober analysis combined with a much-needed optimism for an emancipatory society."—Stavros Stavrides, National Technical University of Athens
Description
In Paradoxes of Emancipation, Dimitris Soudias traces the formation of political subjectivity in times of crisis by attending to the 2011 occupation of Syntagma Square in Athens—the heart of the Greek anti-austerity movement following the debt crisis. Soudias conceives of the Syntagma Square occupation as a lens through which we can critically engage with broader theoretical and political issues: the crumbling promises of the capitalist imaginary, the epistemic “spirit” of neoliberal rationalities, the spatialized practices of navigating precarity and uncertainty, and the prospects for a radically better tomorrow.
By challenging both the romanticization of anti-austerity activism and the reduction of neoliberalism to mere free market thinking, Soudias reveals that the relationship between political subject formation and emancipation in neoliberalism is utterly paradoxical. In their effort to overcome neoliberal rationalities, individuals also partly stabilize them. Interweaving the stories and insights of activists with sociology, geography, and political theory, this book makes bold claims about the future of emancipation by envisioning an “alter-neoliberal critique.” In so doing, Paradoxes of Emancipation presents an illuminating inquiry into how our experiences with capitalist crises lead to profound reevaluations of ourselves that challenge our expectations of the future.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Acronyms
Map of the 2011 Syntagma Square occupation
Introduction
The Future Will Be Better Tomorrow
1. Modernizing Greece
From Barbershops to Hair Salons
2. “Waking Up”
Spatialized Crises and Unthought-Of Experiences
3. Aspiring the Utopian
The Alter-Politics of Radical Imagination
4. Challenging the Dystopian
The Anti-Politics of Demystification
5. Paradoxes of Emancipation
Between Resistance and Reproduction
6. Toward an Alter-Neoliberal Critique
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Dimitris Soudias is a postdoctoral researcher at the Research Centre for the Study of Democratic Cultures and Politics at the University of Groningen.
Related Interest
August 2023