Proxy Brigands and Tourists: Visualizing the Greek-German Front in the Debt Crisis

This article explores Greek social imagination and daily experiences during the debt crisis particularly in relation to Germany, which is increasingly the object of public suspicion with reference to its role in Greece's bailout program. The essay investigates the prevailing Greek fantasy of nativism and the role of the visual in its constitution and conception during a period characterized by anxiety over national sovereignty. Furthermore, the article explores Greek-German social relations in western highland Crete, which lies at the intersection of cultural investments, as an archetype of the native. The essay especially focuses on photography and other material practices in unraveling the complexities, circularities, and ambivalences in the relationship between Cretans and German tourists and between Greek national imagination and German cultural representations.