Spatializing Radical Political Imaginaries
Neoliberalism, Crisis, and Transformative Experience in the Syntagma Square Occupation in Greece
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Abstract
This article seeks to make sense of why participants in square occupations point to the transformative character of their experience. Drawing from narrative research on the 2011 occupation of Syntagma Square in Athens, I argue that the transformative quality of the occupation lies in the spatialized emergence and practice of radical political imaginaries in these encampments, which signify a demarcation from and an alternative to the neoliberalizing of everyday life in Greece. By scrutinizing the spatial demarcation between the “upper” and “lower” parts of the Syntagma Square occupation, one can think more carefully about the conditions of possibility for the emergence of the radical imagination.
Contributor Notes
Dimitris Soudias received his DPhil in Political Science from Philipps-University Marburg. His dissertation, entitled “Neoliberalism as Crisis: Radical Imagination in Syntagma Square and Beyond,” focuses on transformative experience and processes of subject formation against the backdrop of neoliberal restructuring and crisis. Email: soudias@uni-marburg.de