Identity and Emotion: Resented and Resentful in Crisis-Ridden Greece

Abstract

Since 2008, Greece has been spiralling down an economic and socio-political crisis. Over the past decade, it has endured massive riots, consecutive elections, a debilitating public debt, and endless rescue plans by the EU and other international bodies. The crisis sparked an intense interest in the Greek public discourse, which is often accused of being dominated by populist rhetoric. This interest appears to be accompanied predominantly by a certain leitmotif: instead of appreciating the assistance offered, the Greek people resent it and taking refuge in populist rhetoric, further undermining the country’s stability. This echoes the age-old argument that ‘the people are an irrational mob acting impulsively, a lamentable state that should be cured or disciplined.’ Could the shaming, the appeal to sober morality – branding all other discourses as populist and dangerous – be the fashionable response of a cosmopolitan elite, high-profile pundits and institutions to the problems of global capitalism? The debate raged in the public sphere and in the streets of Athens. On multiple occasions, the crisis was used as a trope in the European public sphere to justify socio-political changes, austerity measures and disciplinary actions. The emerging schema juxtaposed populist/anti-populist discourses, reducing discourses and identities to black and white. This chapter reads discursive constructions of the Greek crisis, by-stepping the populist/anti-populist divide. Using analysis based on affect theory and the philosophy of emotions, it investigates the various uses of resentment as part of affective engineering and as an instrument of collective identification, in an environment of multiple overlapping crises in Europe.

Citation

Giannousi, F. (2021), "Identity and Emotion: Resented and Resentful in Crisis-Ridden Greece", Machin, A. and Meidert, N. (Ed.) Political Identification in Europe: Community in Crisis?, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 111-125. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83982-124-020211013