Understanding Modern Greece's Political Mentality through the Perspective of its Orthodox and Byzantine Roots
Political Science
Final Report Abstract
The DFG research project at the intersection of political science, philosophy and religious studies entitled "Understanding Modern Greece’s Political Mentality through the Perspective of its Orthodox and Byzantine Roots" and hosted at the University of Winchester commenced with three observations and three research questions. The observations at the launch of the project were the following: (a) that Greece’s financial crisis (which started in 2009 and will go on until 2060, as foreseen by the enhanced surveillance reports and all respective commitments) stimulated an intense public debate on national identity in Greece, and particularly on the relationship between Greek and European identity; (b) that in this debate, Greece’s Byzantine past and heritage, as well as today’s predominance of an Eastern Orthodox religious affiliation, were problematized; (c) that, given the above, a deeper enquiry into the relevant assumptions within Greece’s public sphere as these are to be traced in the discourse produced by Greek public intellectuals and academics is a "Desideratum". Thus, the discourses produced by public intellectuals sharing a claim that Greece possesses a cultural otherness in comparison to the "West", which is to be traced in its Orthodox Christian and Byzantine roots, were put under scrutiny in the context of this project. Research questions included, but were not restricted in, the following: (i) what purchase would those discourses have when examined from a cultural, religious and historical perspective respectively? (ii) How do these relate to Greece’s dominant discourse - i.e., how do they shape it, are shaped by it, or react to it? (iii) Concerning the geographical claims within those discourses (i.e., their implicit understanding of spatiality as demonstrated by the use of concepts such as "the West", "our own East/e kath' emas Anatole", the Byzantine "Oikoumene", and so on), what would their examination with the help of the toolbox provided by critical geopolitics reveal about their nature? The Greek intellectuals that were chosen as focal points due to their influence and impact are Christos Yannaras and Theodoros Ziakas (with a reference to Kostas Zouraris as well). In spite of this impact, their work and thought have not yet been exhaustively researched at an international level, forming a gap in the academic overview of current Greek socio-political thought. In the course of this research it surfaced that (1) in many respects, these intellectuals formulate discourses that stand "against" what could be described as Greece’s state ideology on matters of national identity - rather than reinforce Greece’s ideological statecraft; (2) their version and assessment of Byzantium and Orthodoxy derives from a "Revisionist" or "corrective" account, which was engendered by what has been described as the Greek theological "generation of the 1960s" over and against the understanding of Byzantium and Orthodoxy as articulated in state universities and institutions; (3) rather than construct geographies, their geographical claims lack a territorial nature and are instead deconstructing the geographical narratives of Greek statecraft concerning "the West" and "the Rest - that is, their work forms an implicit exercise in critical geopolitics rather than a fitting object of scrutiny for critical geopolitics. The paradox that was unveiled in the course of this research is that, in spite of the nationalist undertones in several aspects of the thought of said intellectuals, their influential work may indeed be read as a postcolonial gesture against what was described in the outputs of the project as Greek Neo-Orientalism - resulting in a peculiar Greek postcolonial nationalism. The implications of this significantly revise Greece’s standard and hegemonic "cultural dualism" thesis (describing a never-ending battle between a "reformist camp" and an "underdog camp") as formulated by N. Diamandouros and others. Another aspect of the project consisted in reading the religious aspect of said discourses as a post-secular gesture, in line with synchronous developments and discussions in other countries, rather than as a pre-modern and reactionary one as the "cultural dualism" thesis would have it. All in all, the project’s findings entail that it is "the Greek state itself" that problematizes Greece’s Byzantine roots (in an attempt to trace a straight line from classical Greece to modern Greece through the Enlightenment in particular), resulting in the need to redefine the question of what may be read as progressive and reformist, what may be read as conservative and reactionary, what may be identified as state-sponsored nationalism and what as a reaction to it in Greece’s public discourse and in the agents that shape it. Apart from outputs in peer-reviewed journals and volumes, these included public media outlets, such as "Greek News Agenda", an online platform launched by the General Secretariat for Media and Communication of the Hellenic Republic. It was initially intended that wrestling with the project’s research questions would significantly contribute to the understanding of the Orthodox and Byzantine roots of modern Greek identity per se, including Greece’s contemporary ambivalence, and also provide the European scholar with an inner perspective on the causes and mechanisms of contemporary Greek political mentality. We remain with the hope that this objective has indeed been met.
Publications
- An Ontology of the Historico-social: Christos Yannaras‘ Reading of European history, in: Mustard Seeds in the Public Square, ed. Sotiris Mitralexis (Wilmington, Delaware: Vernon Press, 2017), pp. 93–112
Sotiris Mitralexis
- Modern Greece Between East and West: Hysteria and Otherness”; 2 July 2017.
http://www.greeknewsagenda.gr/index.php/topics/opinion-analysis/6488-modern-greece-between-east-and-west-hysteria-and-otherness
Sotiris Mitralexis
- On Recent Developments in Scholarly Engagement with (the Possibility of an) Orthodox Political Theology, in Political Theology (30 Nov 2017)
Sotiris Mitralexis
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/1462317X.2017.1402551) - Studying Contemporary Greek Neo-orientalism: the Case of the 'Underdog Culture‘ Narrative, in Horizons of Politics/ Horyzonty Polityki 8:25 (2017): pp. 125–149
Sotiris Mitralexis
(See online at https://doi.org/10.17399/HP.2017.082508) - The Eucharistic Community is Our Social Program: On the Early Development of Christos Yannaras‘ Political Theology, in Political Theology (28 Nov 2017)
Sotiris Mitralexis
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/1462317X.2017.1402550) - Modern Greek Orthodox Theology, in: The Oxford Handbook of Eastern Orthodox Theology, edited by Andrew Louth & Andreas Andreopoulos, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018
Sotiris Mitralexis
- A Luscious Anarchism in All of This: Revisiting the '80s and '90s Greek 'Neo-Orthodox‘ Current of Ideas. Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Vol. 37. 2019, Number 2, pp. 295-326.
Sotiris Mitralexis
(See online at https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/mgs.2019.0019)
