The Condition of Crisis and the Symptoms of Social Change : Five Flights of Thought on the Post of the (Greek) Post Polity Era

It is widely known that Greece faces one of the most precarious and transformative periods of its modern history. Greek society has come to learn, in a baleful manner, that crisis is the result of its former political inefficiencies and a slump that must be overcome. The pressure of this awareness leads people to deface previously established social convictions about the self and the world. In this procedure, social and mass media articulate and (re)produce discourses from above, below and the past so to capitalize the present for a new and solid horizon for the future. This article challenges five beliefs that circulate in the Greek public sphere inculcating their incontrovertible realities: the end of Post-Polity era (the ‘former’ political status quo of Greece known as Metapolitefsi), the revival of ethno-socialist movements, the debt crisis of eurozone countries, youth’s stand for social change and the role Greece plays in this global financial turmoil comprise the contents of this critical debate. What I suggest, is that apart from the obvious misfortunes of crisis, the performative effects of the imposed vision of the well-regulated state brings forth collective feelings of offence and oppression in such ways that old divisive ideas about Greece are awoken, reducing the country to a zone of social change in which the subject renegotiates its sense of individuality and community