Recognition: Exarcheia, mon amour

Abstract

The human-scape of Europe has changed irrevocably since the intensification of extractive economies and the wars that they have engendered from the 1990s onwards. Greece, as a country, and Athens as its major city, have been caught in this web off-guard, even though any astute politician could have seen the changes coming. This altered human-scape comprises human subjects involved in a dynamic dialectic of recognition ‐ recognition of the self and the other, and recognition of the self by the self, in the process producing new subjectivities and hardening already existing ones. I am looking at three emblematic points in Athens ‐ Exarcheia, the Athenian Trilogy and Gerani ‐ through the eyes and the words of (primarily) anarchist and leftist activists, subjects who have been at the forefront of resistance both to hegemonic and authoritarian politics since the 1960s and to their extractive economies. Through raw material that I collected in the summer and winter of 2018 I examine the positions taken by these subjects as they try to re-negotiate their politics of recognition in a landscape that is constantly shifting.