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ABSTRACT
This article offers a depiction of Athens focused on the consequences that the initial round of Memoranda measures (2012–2015) produced on its urban space. On a theoretical level, a strategic function of the Greek capital is posited, seeing it as an urban laboratory for testing debt policies; accordingly, the primary focus is on the neoliberal agenda set in motion there, mainly consisting of the combination of privatization programmes and the securitization of urban space. Consequently, some of the emerging critical issues – i.e. Rethink Athens and the cases of the Akadimia Platonos, Ellinikò and Aghios Panteleimonas neighbourhoods, alongside the most relevant bio-political tactics of social control - are encapsulated within a specific model of governance, named auste-city and specifically targeted at normalizing the ‘extraordinary’ state of economic crisis into an ultimate rule. The conclusion is that austerity is currently disclosing an opportunity for neoliberal forces to reorganize their own dominion.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 As chronicled by Dalakoglou, ‘during the anti-austerity forty-eight-hour general strike of June 28 and 29, 2011, police threw over 2,000 canisters of tear gas at the centre of Athens, as opposed to a maximum of a couple of hundred that had been used in the past during similar events (…) In October 2011, during the general strike march, an unemployed builder who was demonstrating died due to the extensive use of chemicals. Various types of tear gas-related health damages have led several times the association and the union of medical doctors to make public statements against the use of tear (chemical) gas by the police (…) Shock grenades were thrown every other minute during the general strike demonstrations in June 2011 (in Syntagma), including indoor places (…) The water cannon was used at the centre of Athens during the general strike of November 2012 (…) Plastic bullets made their first appearance in the Keratea anti-landfill protests during the winter of 2010–2011 (…) and in the centre of the city in early 2013 for the first time’ (Citation2013, 284–85).
2 As soon as the Syriza government took office in January 2015, it abolished the koukoulonomou, dismantled the DELTA special police force and, lastly, removed the steel fences that had been erected next to the Parliament during the Syntagma square movement.
3 Located on Acharnon Avenue in the district of Victoria, Villa Amalias was once a school, abandoned for almost two decades before a group of Athenian anarchists and punks occupied it in 1990. ‘On January 9, 2013, the squatters reoccupied the building for a few hours before police special force re-evicted it, arresting the ninety-two occupiers and charging them with felonies for having their faces covered’ (Dalakoglou Citation2013, 285).
4 Owned by the Pension Fund of merchant navy crews, Skaramanga was located on Patission Avenue and from 1999 was squatted and run by a mixed group of anarchists and anti-authoritarians. ‘A few hours after the re-eviction of Villa Amalias on the afternoon of January 9, the police, in a public demonstration of power, evicted another large central Athenian squat, the Skaramanga squat a few blocks away from Villa’ (Dalakoglou Citation2013, 285).
5 A squat of clear anarchist orientation, it is located in the neighbourhood of Kypseli. Evicted on January 2013, Lela was eventually taken back by the squatters.
6 ‘A 52 per cent increase in HIV infections was reported from 2010 to 2011.[…] The outbreak was mainly due to unsafe injecting practices among drug addicts, especially desperate young Greeks facing unemployment who had turned to drugs […] As a whole, the Thetis operation violated rights on personal security, rights on privacy and the confidentiality of personal health information (UN Human Rights Council Citation2013, 17).
7 It is noteworthy that the area commissioner was among those arrested during the judiciary operation set into effect against Golden Dawn soon after the killing of Pavlos Fissas. In 2009, another policeman ‘publicly shredded the Koran, causing a violent reaction among Muslims, who clashed with the police for two days’ (Deliolanes Citation2013, 12). Additionally, ‘Indeed, the close links between police and GD are not a local problem of Ayios Panteleimonas; this became apparent in the elections of May and June 2012, when approximately half of police officers on duty in the headquarters of Athens police voted for GD’ (Dalakoglou Citation2013, 287–88).