Ecologies of Ruin: (Re)bordering, Ruination, and Internal Colonialism in Greek Macedonia, 1913-2013

Abstract

Modern Greece and its nation-building institutions have been associated with actual and symbolic, external and internal colonial-like projects within a double nationalist/colonialist critique. However, the ruins produced in the process are less explored despite their enduring effects among local communities. This is particularly the case in Greek Macedonia, where a major internal colonial project was carried out through a series of acts of spatial demarcation, erasure and re-inscription. The remains of this project, from military outposts to deserted villages, have an ambivalent nature: there are both institutional markers of state interventions with still felt consequences and resistive loci of counter-narratives.