Description

Uses and Abuses of Culture: Greece 1974–2010 presents a new perspective on the ongoing crisis and the broader debate concerning the case of Greece. It examines contemporary perceptions of Greek identity and cultural memory as salient factors of this crisis.

The book focuses on the era that began with the fall of the dictatorship in Greece, in 1974, and investigates previous and current pathologies of Greek society in relation to the ways they affected the understanding of the term ‘culture’ up to and including the year 2010. The chapters are structured around pivotal political and social events, and highlight characteristic examples of contemporary visual culture; these encapsulate the tendencies, attitudes, values and ethics of modern Greek society. The book examines issues of cultural identity and collective memory, and explores phenomena of authority and censorship. It argues that participation in culture is equally due to the power of antiquity as well as to the new social values of distinction.

A key area of the research centres on the contradictions and conflicts between intrinsic components of Greek cultural and national identities and its adopted European identity, the latter gradually formulated upon Greece’s entry into the European Community in 1981.