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From Fascist Overload to Unbearable Lightness: Recollections of the Military Junta as Kitsch in Postdictatorial Greece
- Journal of Modern Greek Studies
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 35, Number 2, October 2017
- pp. 339-368
- 10.1353/mgs.2017.0023
- Article
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Abstract:
Kitsch is intricately linked with the remembrance of the military junta of 1967–1974 in postdictatorial Greece. Since the 1980s, the term has been used to articulate a range of responses to the dictatorship, from refracting it as a totalitarian or fascist regime to reconstructing it as a semifarcical interlude in recent Greek history. These divergences can largely be attributed to the ambiguities of kitsch as a signifier, as well as its intersections with particular agendas of recollection at specific junctures. What these approaches share is both an attempt to situate the identities of social agents in relation to the dictatorial past and a broader interest in fostering a dialogue on questions of social complicity with the junta.