Dissecting the Barbarian

Abstract

Author(s): Miliou-Theocharaki, Marina | Abstract: Abstract This piece investigates the connections between the socio-political crisis in contemporary Greece and the lamentation embodied in Euripides’s Ancient Greek tragedy, The Trojan Women. It suggests that the notion of the barbarian and pinpointing the other have been diachronic symptoms of Greek society. The voice of this writing is a fusion of standpoints in an attempt to mirror the blurred space between multiple perspectives and definitions of truth.Through conducting a critique on ideology and nationalism, I describe the development of the Greek economic meltdown and its growth into a humanitarian disaster through the reinforcement of the Golden Dawn, a prevalent neo-Nazi party in Greece that is perpetuating violence. My voice is of an observer who is intellectually and emotionally attached to the current socially disenfranchised members of society, the othered immigrants and refugees residing in Greece. One of the objectives of this piece is to remind and reveal the barbaric acts of fascism that interlink contemporary Greek social conditions to these of the ancient world.