A riveting ethnographic account of the experiences of dissidents of the
Greek state in the course of the twentieth century. The insights of
Panourgia's new book promise to change the way in which anthropologists read and engage with social theory. This book should become compulsory reading for any course in anthropology and European studies.
- —Yael Navaro-Yashin, Cambridge University
. . . An anthropological approach to the G reek state's response to the Greek left. - —H-War List-serv
Columbia anthropology professor Neni Panourgia's new project takes the concept of an 'interactive conversation' a step further. The recent online release of Dangerous Citiznes: The Greek Left and the Terror of the State by far exceeds the publication of the book by the same name in being revolutionary. Instead of being your average Kindle e-book or online PDF, the new Website is a freely accessed interactive, multimedia text that exemplifies an exciting but problematic pathway for published scholarship. - —The Eye
A most challenging reflection about the presence of the past in society,
Panourgia's new book relates the singular story of the Greek Left,
bringing out its multiple voices and often conflicting narratives. In this
ethnography, based both on the author's past experiences and on extensive
fieldwork in Athens, the narrator/anthropologist explores the tension
between individual voices and collective representations and boldly
confirms -again- that the writing of anthropology can always be an
innovative experience.
- —Maria Couroucli, Research Fellow CNRS, University of Paris-Ouest-Nanterre
Dangerous Citizens is several brilliant books at once: meditation, memoir, ethnography, an intricate political history of Modern Greece. But it has a single subject: what happens to persons who are defined by others as dangerous and yet feel themselves to be powerless, banished to a social margin. Neni Parourgia's goal is to reconstruct and understand the daily (and nightly) lives of these persons, and to orchestrate their eloquent but all too rarely heard cries. - —Michael Wood, Princeton University
Dangerous Citizens is a simultaneous indictment of the "liberal" nation-state's blithe pretensions and willful self-ignorance; of the political and discursive relegation of modern Greek history to the historical margins of the colonial "civilizing mission"; and of inhuman simplifications of the past everywhere. In an evocation of Oedipus that owes nothing to crass invocations of continuity with the ancient world, Neni Panourgiá writes with the ethical passion of a partial witness who nonetheless claims no special privilege other than that of the common humanity denied by the state to those it repeatedly configures as its enemies. In posing this appealingly controversial challenge to the liberal self-imagination, moreover, Panourgiá -- who has honed her distinctive writing idiom into a compelling mix of careful scholarship and stylistic adventurism -- calls anthropology itself to account. - —Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University
Dangerous Citizens is a powerful and unforgettable book. It is at once a horrific history of nearly a century of state violence in Greece that few people may be aware of; a profound meditation on the conditions of possibility for both the idea and the reality of concentration camps; and a text that intertwines ethnography, history, and personal memoir to very powerful effect. - —Sherry Ortner, University of California, Los Angeles
Intimate, fascinating, and inventively analytic . . . A worthy and brilliant successor to Panourgia's much acclaimed Fragments of Death, Fables of Identity: An Athenian Anthropography. - —George E. Marcus, University of California, Irvine
Dangerous Citizens assembles paradoxical evidence of leftist
formations in Greece, long waged and suppressed. A multi-scaled history
of political suffering, this fascinating text is plain-spoken yet
gnomic, with adroit comparative asides to wrap non-specialist readers in
drastic episodes artfully unfurled. Neni Panourgia resists sanitized
geopolitical generalization; she lodges patently nationalist loci (e.g.,
war-waging) in radically skewed intimacies of experience. Revisiting
fabled scenes of violent encounter and more-than-traumatic memory, this
gifted critic offers uncompromising ethnography of manifest dissidence,
everyday resilience, and specificities of terror (sometimes unwitting)
endlessly difficult to fathom.
- —James A. Boon, Princeton University
Dangerous Citizens is several brilliant books at once: meditation, memoir, ethnography, an intricate political history of Modern Greece. But it has a single subject: what happens to persons who are defined by others as dangerous and yet feel themselves to be powerless, banished to a social margin. Neni Parourgia's goal is to reconstruct and understand the daily (and nightly) lives of these persons, and to orchestrate their eloquent but all too rarely heard cries.---—Michael Wood, Princeton University
Dangerous Citizens is a powerful and unforgettable book. It is at once a horrific history of nearly a century of state violence in Greece that few people may be aware of; a profound meditation on the conditions of possibility for both the idea and the reality of concentration camps; and a text that intertwines ethnography, history, and personal memoir to very powerful effect.---—Sherry Ortner, University of California, Los Angeles
Intimate, fascinating, and inventively analytic . . . A worthy and brilliant successor to Panourgia's much acclaimed Fragments of Death, Fables of Identity: An Athenian Anthropography.---—George E. Marcus, University of California, Irvine
A riveting ethnographic account of the experiences of dissidents of the
Greek state in the course of the twentieth century. The insights of
Panourgia's new book promise to change the way in which anthropologists read and engage with social theory. This book should become compulsory reading for any course in anthropology and European studies.
---—Yael Navaro-Yashin, Cambridge University
Dangerous Citizens assembles paradoxical evidence of leftist
formations in Greece, long waged and suppressed. A multi-scaled history
of political suffering, this fascinating text is plain-spoken yet
gnomic, with adroit comparative asides to wrap non-specialist readers in
drastic episodes artfully unfurled. Neni Panourgia resists sanitized
geopolitical generalization; she lodges patently nationalist loci (e.g.,
war-waging) in radically skewed intimacies of experience. Revisiting
fabled scenes of violent encounter and more-than-traumatic memory, this
gifted critic offers uncompromising ethnography of manifest dissidence,
everyday resilience, and specificities of terror (sometimes unwitting)
endlessly difficult to fathom.
---—James A. Boon, Princeton University
Dangerous Citizens is a simultaneous indictment of the "liberal" nation-state's blithe pretensions and willful self-ignorance; of the political and discursive relegation of modern Greek history to the historical margins of the colonial "civilizing mission"; and of inhuman simplifications of the past everywhere. In an evocation of Oedipus that owes nothing to crass invocations of continuity with the ancient world, Neni Panourgiá writes with the ethical passion of a partial witness who nonetheless claims no special privilege other than that of the common humanity denied by the state to those it repeatedly configures as its enemies. In posing this appealingly controversial challenge to the liberal self-imagination, moreover, Panourgiá -- who has honed her distinctive writing idiom into a compelling mix of careful scholarship and stylistic adventurism -- calls anthropology itself to account.---—Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University
A most challenging reflection about the presence of the past in society,
Panourgia's new book relates the singular story of the Greek Left,
bringing out its multiple voices and often conflicting narratives. In this
ethnography, based both on the author's past experiences and on extensive
fieldwork in Athens, the narrator/anthropologist explores the tension
between individual voices and collective representations and boldly
confirms -again- that the writing of anthropology can always be an
innovative experience.
---—Maria Couroucli, Research Fellow CNRS, University of Paris-Ouest-Nanterre