In order to learn, Europe must be willing to un-learn many of its self-conceptions and many of its conceptions about the non-European world that brought it to its present place. Europe and the Global North as a whole are being assailed by a feeling of historical and political exhaustion. After five centuries of imposing its…
This is the foreword by Costas Douzinas to Law and Critique in Central Europe: Questioning the Past, Resisting the Present, eds. Rafał Manko, Cosmin Cercel, and Adam Sulikowski (Oxford: Counterpress 2016). I am writing this preface in the Chamber of Hellenic Parliament a little after giving my maiden speech as a newly elected Member of Parliament…
A crisis is to be taken seriously, without illusions, but also as a chance to be fully exploited. Late in his life, Freud asked the famous question “Was will das Weib?”, “What does a woman want?”, admitting his perplexity when faced with the enigma of the feminine sexuality. A similar perplexity arouses today, apropos the…
Brexit campaigners would have us abdicate at the global level, all potential for the re-establishment of political and social self-determination over the economy. We, by contrast, should take our fight for the soul of economic liberalism to Europe. Order in Chaos Even as it is wholly ill-informed, the Brexit debate is dominated by a battle…
Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. — Antonio Machado I. Introduction The referendum on whether or not Britain should remain within the European Union (EU) is now fully underway. This debate confronts socialists with a series of pressing tactical and strategic challenges,…
In the first flurry of publicity around the present referendum on the UK’s EU membership, the expected statement regarding the securing of UK sovereignty has not, perhaps surprisingly, been forthcoming. Instead we have been treated to rebuttals of Gove on the role of the European Court of Justice and scorn for Johnson’s double referendum from Cameron.…
I’m writing to tell you how delighted I am that you have won the Labour leadership – and so decisively too. It may come as a surprise to you to know that I and many many of my friends here in Ireland have been watching this contest with a mixture of hope and trepidation, but…
A victory for OXI would not just help restore a sense of dignity to Greece; it would strengthen the ground for anti-austerity struggles across Europe. Today, Greece has an opportunity to make history. The brave decision by Prime Minister Tsipras to call a referendum on the creditors’ inhumane ultimatums has turned the tables. The government’s…
Alain Supiot and Emilios Christodoulidis discuss the questions of solidarity and the protection of work in Greece. Emilios Christodoulidis holds the Chair of Jurisprudence at the University of Glasgow. Alain Supiot holds the Chair ‘Etat social et mondialisation: analyse juridique des solidarités’ at the Collège de France. Emilios Christodoulidis* (‘EC’): Alain, thank you for joining…
This text is written by a group of people living in the United Kingdom who are migrants, students and workers. In the last few weeks alone we have witnessed the deaths of hundreds of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea and we have mourned Pinakin Patel who died in detention in Yarl’s Wood. This, as we…
Syriza’s greatness lies in the fact that from an impossible position and in a catastrophic situation, it hasn’t been afraid to succeed.Two narratives compete for the truth of today’s global political stage. On the one hand, there’s the narrative of leftist irresponsibility and incorrectness. On the other, an austere narrative of correctness based on the…
We are epicurean fragments and not debts, our life is not the life of rights (as debts that will never be paid), but of their use.It may be the case that one could note the peculiar appearance of the thinking minister. A thinking minister is not suddenly a liberated or a good minister, but at…
For any new radical politics the future lasts a long time. There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn’t. ∼ Leonard Cohen It is probably uncontroversial to argue that the Greek elections of the 25th January will be remembered as one of the most…
‘Ils sont tous Charlie,’ in all its colonial narcissistic splendour.There is a close relation between satire and secularism as the latter came to emerge in Europe. Secularism, as is well-known, gained strength historically as a reaction to an era of European inter-religious violence and massacres. It was not only a desire for the separation of…
Podemos is is a new kind of party, a movement-party, or rather a party-movement; the end result of a learning process from the South that made it possible to creatively channel the outrage on the streets of Spain. Can a Podemos wave spread to other countries? The countries of Southern Europe are extremely diverse, both…
Is it really the case that the European Securities Market Authority and its regulatory brethren are the market-facing vanguard of Europe’s auto-colonisation through financial stabilisation? A much remarked upon feature of the Global Financial Crisis (‘GFC’) has been the recourse of governments to permanent states of exception, purportedly justified by the need to protect financial…
Crocodile Tears In the space of just over a week the world watched in astonishment as two ships sank off the Italian coast, giving rise to staggering death-tolls (359 on the 3rd of October, more than 50 on the 11th) and various expressions of grief. Among the mourners were those directly responsible for asylum and…
Beneath the surface, desperation and despondency abound in parts that fairy stories simply cannot reach. The bailout will soon be over. No longer will Ireland have to be subjected to the interference of external powers in its affairs. No more humiliating conditionalities imposed by mild-mannered Troika functionaries with a stern economic vision. Instead, thanks to the credit…
The European Commission has been forced to rebuff a proposal by the Eurozone’s new bailout fund, the ESM, that Greek assets be transferred to a new Luxembourg-based special purpose vehicle as a part of a wider privatisation scheme. The proposal, mooted by Finland in 2011, and on the radar of the IMF, was aimed at…
This was August 2008 at Koraka’s Cape beach in Lesvos. A local farmer told me that he saw a prosthetic leg on the beach. He said that the leg belonged to a boy, around 13 years old, who arrived on a rubber boat with his family. The coastguard were just behind the boat as it…