Queer Responses to Austerity: Insights from the Greece of Crisis

Abstract

During the last years, Greece has implemented an unprecedented number of austerity measures affecting every domain of social, economic and political aspect of the population’s life. Together with several social movements acting during this time against austerity, queer groups found a fertile ground to explore their discourses and practices by adopting an enlarged agenda of claims, attacking simultaneously gender hierarchizations and the rise of neo-Nazism, both accentuated after austerity measures. This article focuses on ‘sexual politics of austerity’ seen from the side of queer anti-authoritarian groups in the country’s biggest cities. Based upon an empirical exploration of queer groups’ discursive production, this article shows how these groups attempt to create their own, autonomous space as a response to the politics of austerity and how this queer discourse adapts to new reconfigurations of the austerity-driven Nation based upon a Marxian reading of ‘totality thinking’.