The Performative Politics of Greek Debt

After demonstrating that the sphere of finance more broadly and politics of debt more particularly build on performance and theatricality, I shed light on the illusions that are, I argue, constitutive of Greek debt. I make the case that Greek debt is about a perpetually failing pay-back inseparable from Greece's western creditors' postcolonial interests and the orientalizing logics of finance capitalism. I examine how this "performative misfire" of Greek debt is legitimized by the staging of Greece's structural dependence upon the west as "independence" - a spectacle often maintained by narratives that frame Greece as the "birthplace" of western civilization and as a direct and continuous extension of Greek antiquity. I map connections between these notions of "performative failure" and finance capital's elusive promise to autonomize itself from industry and production. Finally, I introduce the concept of performance economy in order to conceptualize economies that build on acts disruptive of these illusions.