Re-Imagining Union in Europe: The Politics of Body, Family, and Reproduction in Sotiris Dimitriou’s Short Stories

Abstract

In an era of intense migrant labor flow followed by economic crisis in Greece and in several other European countries, Sotiris Dimitriou’s short stories reflect on the affective influence of these changes on the fragile body of the individual as well as on social and sexual reproduction. As the body becomes a receptacle of social tensions, the ideals of healthy reproduction and communitarian identity, an ideal “union” based on family, are disrupted in Dimitriou’s work. The author’s dystopias of reproduction provide an insightful portrayal of the way neoliberal regimes of production in contemporary Europe bring migrants and the underclass together: both groups are subject to the violent politics of disposability of bodies under an economy obsessed with efficiency. Dimitriou’s short stories, elusive as they are to social and political analysis, render visible a population excluded from the promise of prosperity in post-Cold War Europe and propose alternative forms of community.