Teaching Anthropology at 'Crisis' Times at the Greek Borders: Emergency Temporalities Entering the Classroom during the Refugee Crisis in Lesbos

Abstract

In this paper I examine how culturally-based forms of time in Greece were transformed by the presence of new, emergency-like categorizations of time due to ‘crisis’. Reflecting on my teaching of anthropology on the island of Lesbos during the refugees’ arrival, I analyze how Greek temporalities got disrupted and muddled by the new ones that the humanitarian crisis created. A stabilized, extended anthropological temporality that was imposed by human relationships, fieldwork and anthropological analysis, the focus-on-the-present temporality that the financial crisis created and a new, hasty, emergency-like temporality that characterized the refugee ‘crisis’ all entered university classrooms and needed coordination. Academic responses to these, often dissonant, life-rhythms exposed and expressed underlying antinomies related to time but also revealed scientific, political and moral issues, as a hyper-activist anthropology became dominant. Coping with alterity’s time-spans in ordinary life, at some times resulted in hasty academic actions, at other times in long pauses.