The Colonels' Dictatorship and Its Afterlives
This is a postprint version of the following published document: Antoniou, D., Kornetis, K., Sichani, A.M. and Stefatos, K. (2017). Introduction: The Colonels' Dictatorship and Its Afterlives. Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 35(2) pp. 281-306. DOI: 10.1353/mgs.2017.0021 © 2017 by The Modern Greek Studies Association Introduction: The Colonels’ Dictatorship and Its Afterlives Dimitris Antoniou, Kostis Kornetis, Anna-Maria Sichani, and Katerina Stefatos A half century after the coup d’état of 21 April 1967, the art exhibition docu- menta 14 launched its public programs in Athens by revisiting the Colonels’ dictatorship. The organizers chose the former headquarters of the infamous military police (EAT/ESA) to host the “exercises of freedom,”1 a series of walk- ing tours, lectures, screenings, and performances that examined resistance, torture, trauma, and displacement in a comparative perspective. The initia- tive was met with mixed feelings, and its public discussion raised import- ant questions about the past. Why is it urgent today to revisit the junta as a period of acute trauma? Can we trace the roots of Greece’s current predicament to its non-democratic past? What remains unsaid and unsayable about the dictatorship and its enduring legacies?2 While the junta has been a favorite subject for public history (broadly understood here to include literature, film, personal testimonies, and so on), research on it has remained on the margins. Initially, it was marked by sporadic attempts to respond to the pressing public interest to understand the dictator- ship as a contemporary phenomenon (Tsoucalas 1969; Clogg and Yannopoulos 1972; Poulantzas 1976; Mouzelis 1978) and, most importantly, to explain how the Colonels came to power and why they managed to govern Greece for seven years.
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