Greek Hauntologies and Disjointed Times: Temporality and Tropes of Indebtedness from British Aestheticism to the Current European Crisis

This article explores the ways in which the cultural capital of classical antiquity informs political, ideological, and literary discourses on the current multifaceted crisis in Europe. Such discourses are also compared to late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century aestheticist interrogations of hegemonic, capitalist economic principles. The main focus of the paper is on Greece and its ambivalent position in Europe, which the author defines in terms of what he calls ‘paramarginality’. In this article, it is argued that ‘paramarginality’ in contemporary ideological debates is closely connected to problematised conceptualisations of time and indebtedness. Economic crisis is, thus, often perceived and represented also as a crisis of temporality — a major symptom of post-capitalist dividualism.