"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. Theorizing from the accounts of participants of the Syntagma Square occupation at the heart of Greece’s anti-austerity movement, Soudias’ thought-provoking proposal of an alter-neoliberal critique opens up pathways for imagining a different, better future beyond the grim odds of the neoliberal present."—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. Soudias shows that even under such harsh circumstances people are still able to articulate alternatives, not as forms of escapism but as feasible ways of dreaming and doing differently. A must read for everybody who want to understand the enormous resilience of the Greek people and all others suffering from neoliberal economic policies."—Jan Willem Duyvendak, author of The Return of the Native: Can liberalism safeguard us against nativism?
"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. Soudias shows that even under such harsh circumstances people are still able to articulate alternatives, not as forms of escapism but as feasible ways of dreaming and doing differently. A must read for everybody who want to understand the enormous resilience of the Greek people and all others suffering from neoliberal economic policies."—Jan Willem Duyvendak, author of The Return of the Native: Can Liberalism Safeguard Us Against Nativism?
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. Soudias conceives of the Syntagma Square occupation as a lens through which we can critically engage with broader theoretical and political issues about 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 light-touch 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 in ways that challenge our expectations of the future.
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
