Gender Perceptions during an Urban Riot: December 2008 in Athens
Type de matériel :
76
On 6th December 2008, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15-year-old student, is shot to death by two policemen in the center of the leftist neighborhood of Athens, Exarchia. The riots followed as a reaction to this brutal assassination marked the recent political history of Greece. People from various backgrounds shared their enthusiasm for this ‘uprising’ by going out in the streets and demonstrating. Within the broader anarchist/anti-authoritarian movement, however, some voices were raised against the sexism and patriarchy that some male companions were reproducing. These initiatives raised a series of reflexive questions for the wider movement and its strategies, bringing to light issues such as violence, gender performance and masculinities. In this paper, I analyze the discourse produced by these activists who functioned either spontaneously or collectively. The critiques cover a wide range of issues, such as the kind of slogans shouted in front of the policemen, the use of physical violence inside the movement from male against female activists, the use of violence against state institutions and agents, the intersection of multiple identities onto single bodies.The analysis is made mainly on the basis of four written sources and secondarily from various academic and journalistic sources, as well as from four interviews conducted in December 2010 in Athens. Three of these written sources circulated in Athens in December 2008 and afterward in the form of tract and poster, but they can be found on Internet in Greek and some of them in English as well. The fourth is a gender analysis of the riots made by an anarcho-autonomous collective from Thessaloniki written in English and published on their website in December 2010. These sources present a particular interest since they explore and analyze from within the gender relations between the activists coming from the same political space. One common point between these sources is the frequent use of concepts such as sexism and patriarchy. In my paper, I adopt theoretical tools and methodological practices associated with post-structuralism. I try to see how the concepts used are meant to be understood by the discourse producers. At the same time, I attempt to examine how these meanings are interpreted by me. Feeling in solidarity with many of the activists’ claims, I suggest that other interpretations of the texts which could be based on concepts such as hegemonic masculinities and intersectionality would be able to raise further questions and critiques for the broader movement and the future gender relations within it.
Réseaux sociaux