The Politics of Debt and Europe’s Relations with the ‘South’

While debt has the capacity to sustain social relations by joining together the two parties of a debt relation, it also contains the risk of deteriorating into domination and bargaining. Throughout history, different understandings of debt have therefore gravitated between reciprocity and domination, making it a key concept for understanding the dynamics of both social cohesion and fragmentation. The book considers the social, spatial and temporal meanings of this ambiguity and relates them to contemporary debates over debts between North and South in Europe, which in turn are embedded in a longer global history of North-South relations. The individual chapters discuss how debts incurred in the past are mobilised in political debates in the present. This dynamic is highlighted with regard to regional and global North-South relations. An essential feature in debates on this topic is the difficult question of retribution and possible ways of “paying” – a term that is etymologically connected to “pacification” – for past injustice. Against this backdrop, the book combines a discussion of the multi-layered European and global North-South divide with an effort to retrieve alternatives to the dominant and divisive uses of debt for staking out claims against someone or something. Discovering new and forgotten ways of thinking about debt and North-South relations, the chapters are divided into four sections that focus on 1) debt and social theory, 2) Greece and Germany as Europe’s South and North, 3) the ‘South’ between the local, the regional and the global, and 4) debt and the politics of history. "An annual collection of the best research on European and global themes, the Annual of European and Global Studies publishes issues with a specific focus, each addressing critical developments and controversies in the field. Combines a discussion of the multi-layered European and global North-South divide with an effort to retrieve alternatives to the dominant divisive use of debt as staking out claims against another party. Explores the consequences of the erasure of historical temporality in the recent period of "globalization" and "individualization" as well as new registers for political uses of the past under current conditions. Draws on socio-political, moral-philosophical and literary-artistic analyses, tracing the genealogy of debt through European history. Focusing on Europe in a global context to offer critical, historical and philosophical perspectives on debt and guilt. Debt enables individuals and collectives to function and to expand their space of manoeuvre, but it also creates hierarchies and possibilities for domination. By drawing on analyses in political philosophy, political science, sociology, history, social theory and media studies, the essays in this collection discover new and forgotten ways of thinking about debt and North-South relations. They combine a discussion of the European and global North-South divide with an effort to retrieve alternatives to the dominant divisive uses of debt in staking out claims against someone else and as a means of social control."-- Résumé de l'éditeur The Politics of Debt and Europe’s Relations with the ‘South’ 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 Schemas 8 Contributors 9 Acknowledgements 13 1 The Two Faces of Debt 14 PART I DEBT AND SOCIAL THEORY 32 2 The Indebted Subject and Social Transformations: The Possibility of Resistance and Empowerment 34 3 Debt, Democracy and the Pharmacology of Money 48 PART II GREECE AND GERMANY AS EUROPE’S SOUTH AND NORTH 70 4 Europe’s Debt to Refugees 72 5 Causes, Critique and Blame: A Political Discourse Analysis of the Crisis and Blame Discourse of German and Greek Intellectuals 93 6 The Tragedy of Recognition: Debt, Guilt and Political Action 131 7 The Soul of Europe: Two Different Ways of Thinking Germany’s Debt to Greek Culture 153 PART III THE LOCAL, THE REGIONAL AND THE GLOBAL ‘SOUTH’ 174 8 The ‘South’ as a Moving Target: Europe’s Debt to the Former Colonies 176 9 Debating the South in Unified Italy 199 10 Economic Theory as Morality: Europe’s and the World’s North and South 228 PART IV DEBT AND THE POLITICS OF HISTORY 258 11 Europe’s Debt Denied: Reflections on 1989 and the Loss of Yugoslav Experience of Direct Democracy 260 12 The Use of the Past under Conditions of Disorientation and Instability: The Spanish-Catalan Political Conflict 291 Index 320 Combining a discussion of the multi-layered European and global North-South divide with an effort to retrieve alternatives to the dominant divisive use of debt as staking out claims against another party, this text explores the consequences of the erasure of historical temporality in the recent period of 'globalization' and 'individualization' as well as new registers for political uses of the past under current conditions. It draws on socio-political, moral-philosophical and literary-artistic analyses, tracing the genealogy of debt through European history