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ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: TRAGEDYMACHINE(S ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: TRAGEDYMACHINE(S): PERFORMANCES OF POWER AND RESISTANCE IN INDEBTED GREECE Christina Banalopoulou, Doctor of Philosophy, 2018 Dissertation directed by: Dr. James Harding, School of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies TragedyMachine(s): Performances of Power and Resistance in Indebted Greece looks at the negotiations between Greece and its international creditors, street protests and demonstrations, refugee camps, and theatre productions in Greece within the larger context of the 21st century European debt-economy. Building upon Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s works on Nietzsche’s notion of tragedy, it introduces a concept of tragedy valid in contemporary frames of European neoliberalism. TragedyMachine(s) argues that the relations between Greece and its international creditors are non-resolvable power relations between a creditor and a debtor, hidden beneath the appearance and seeming promise of a resolution that nonetheless remains elusive. In the first chapter, titled “The Tragedy of the Greek Debt Crisis” I contend that the works of Deleuze and Guattari on Nietzsche’s notions of tragedy help us grasp the conceptual foundations of the 21st century European debt-economy. In the second chapter titled “Dromocratic Democracies,” I draw upon the tensions between Austin’s notion of a “happy performative” and Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of “order word” and “collective assemblages of enunciation.” I closely examine why the NOs of both the “NO” demonstration—the demonstration that took place two days before the Greek bailout referendum of 2015—and the Greek referendum of 2015 did not succeed in their resistance against Greece’s international creditors. The third chapter titled “Imperceptible Performances” focuses on the flows of forced migration that emerge from the Syrian War. In the fourth and last chapter of my dissertation titled “Theatres of Dramatization” I look at Zero Point Theatre Group’s—one of the most popular Greek avant-garde theatre companies—production of Buchner’s Woyzeck and Yiannis Houvarda’s—a well-known Greek director—production of Aeschylus’ Ορέστεια. I argue that these two productions dramatized the destruction of promises of resolution of the non-resolvable power relations between Greece and its international creditors. TRAGEDYMACHINE(S): PERFORMANCES OF POWER AND RESISTANCE IN INDEBTED GREECE by Christina Banalopoulou Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2018 Advisory Committee: Professor James M. Harding, Chair Professor Esther Kim Lee Professor Faedra Chatard Carpenter Professor David L. Andrews Professor Caitlin Marshall © Copyright by Christina Banalopoulou, 2018 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Daniel Dilliplane for the infinite support. Iakovos and Despoina Banalopoulou for the endless phone calls. Maryam Houshyar for our FaceTime sessions. Sudesh Mantilake for the hugs and the curries. James Harding for the intellectual stretching. Karen Bradley for saving me. Leslie Falbein for the inspiration. Po-Hsien Chu for the bubble teas. Les Gray for the vegan ice cream. Brittany Ginder for our play dates with Mo. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................................. ii Table of Contents ...................................................................................................................................... iii Anti-Prologue .............................................................................................................................................. 1 Refrains of Tragedy ............................................................................................................................... 1 TragedyMachine(s): Refrains and Machines .............................................................................. 14 2015-2016 Greece and The Relevancy of TragedyMachine(s): Nietzsche, Deleuze, Guattari .................................................................................................................................................... 31 Chapter Break Down ........................................................................................................................... 38 Chapter 1: The Tragedy of Greek Debt Crisis .............................................................................. 41 1.1 The Need for a Non-Dialectical Philosophy of Tragedy in 2015-2016 Indebted Greece ...................................................................................................................................................... 41 1.2 SYRIZA and The Tragedy of Greek Debt Crisis ............................................................... 53 1. 3 Antigone in Indebted Greece: An Unwritten Archive of Resistance .......................... 63 1.4 IMF, EC and ECB: Staging the “Ethography” of Un-payable Debt OR Memorandum Stage Right? ............................................................................................................... 71 Chapter 2: Dromocratic Democracies ............................................................................................ 83 2.1 Affirming Negation and Negating Affirmation: The “YES” and the “NO” Demonstrations Before the Greek Referendum of 2015 ......................................................... 83 2.2 The “NO” of the “NO” Demonstration and Greek Referendum: Celebrating an Infelicitous Performative ................................................................................................................... 96 2.3 Dromocratic Democracies: Demos and the State on the Dromos .............................. 106 2.4 Anouilh’s Antigone One Year After the “NO” of the Greek Bailout Referendum ................................................................................................................................................................. 120 3.4 MARCH IN SOLIDARITY WITH MIGRANTS/ REFUGEES AND SELF ORGANIZED SOLIDARITY PROJECTS .............................................................................. 150 Chapter 4: Theatres of Dramatization ......................................................................................... 157 4.1.1 Drama Has Always Been Post- .......................................................................................... 157 4.1.2 Zero Point Theatre Group: Woyzeck Degree 0 ............................................................. 162 4.1.3. Zero Point Theatre Group’s Woyzeck In-Between Lukács, Adorno and Deleuze and Guattari ......................................................................................................................................... 169 4.2.1 Oresteia in Post-Referendum Greece .............................................................................. 182 4.2.2 Oresteia Machines and the Eurozone .............................................................................. 184 4.2.3 The limited chorus, the unuttered intervention of Athena and the indebtedness of Orestis and Erinyes ........................................................................................................................... 193 4.2.4 Jan Fabre and the 2016 Athens & Epidaurus Festival ............................................... 203 Non-Epilogue .......................................................................................................................................... 208 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................... 215 iii Anti-Prologue Refrains of Tragedy Tragedy: Since the first memorandum between Greece and its international creditors in 2010, both national and international discursive spheres have been saturated with narratives of “tragedy.” Like a constant refrain that is produced by an invisible gramophonic machine, “tragedy” is picked up by activists, elected members of Greece’s current government, elected representatives of Greece’s official opposition, Greece’s international creditors, refugees, members of both the far right and the far left, national and international press and performance art and theatre artists, so to enunciate very different collective experiences and initiate very different performances of power and resistance. This contingent relation between various enunciations of tragedy and different initiations of collective performances of power and resistance was particularly intensified after the Greek snap elections in January of 2015. This dissertation will trace this intensification of the non-causal contingency between different enunciations of tragedy and different initiations of power and resistance in four different spheres: in the spaces of negotiation between Greece and its international creditors, in street protests and demonstrations, in the refugee camps, and finally in theatre spaces. These four different spheres will also lay the pathway for the four chapters of this dissertation. Depending on what the performances of power and resistance that emerged from these four different spheres intended to achieve, in 2015-2016 Greece, these spheres became the stage for different conceptualizations and enunciations of tragedy. More particularly in 2015-2016 Greece, tragedy fluctuated between notions of poetic praxes that have the capacity to challenge the status quo and notions
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