Crisis of Representation within the Greek Context: Ties and Disconnections between Movements and Party Politics

In the context of an ongoing crisis, which in the case of Greece coincides with the consolidation of neoliberal politics, the occupation of Syntagma Square (also known as ‘Aganaktismenoi’ or ‘Syntagma Square Occupation’) came to the forefront of worldwide publicity in 2011. Reflecting a crisis of representation and resulting in the articulation of pluralistic political and social demands oriented to social change, this protest movement is not in any case irrelevant to political developments. The snap-elections of January 2015 in which the leftist political party Syriza managed to form a coalition government put in the limelight certain aspects and effects of that protest movement. Syriza is widely recognized as being associated with social movements and was in fact active as an agent of government opposition during the emergence of the Syntagma Square protest movement. The proposed paper attempts to undertake a comparison between the discourse of the Greek ‘Aganaktismenoi’ of Syntagma Square and that of Syriza in order to explore possible transformative impacts on Syriza’s political discourse and the policies outlined in its pre-electoral campaigns deriving from the political and social demands of Syntagma Square protest movement. In particular, the paper employs a discourse analysis method (mostly based on the approaches of Michel Foucault and Ernesto Laclau-Chantal Mouffe) which examines three distinct sets of empirical subject-matters: 1. The manifestos of the general assembly in Syntagma Square which cover several days from May to July 2011, in comparison with Syriza’s press releases in the days following each assembly and how the party positioned itself with regard to the assembly’s manifestos, decisions and declarations. 2. Syriza’s pre-electoral press releases towards the general elections in May 2012 and January 2015. 3. SYRIZA’s pre-electoral press releases before the general elections held in September 2015. This paper proposes to examine the key themes articulated by the assemblies of the Syntagma Square in their possible discursive transformations in Syriza's politics (2012, 2015), aiming at detecting ties and disconnections between protest movements and party politics. Moreover, the paper investigates how these transformations now reflect an ongoing crisis of representation both discursive and political. Finally, we will provide wider conclusions concerning the consequences of the crisis of representation on the contentious dynamics in the Greek case.