The self in crisis: the experience of personal and social suffering in contemporary Greece

The current Greek crisis is not only financial or economic, but also political, and touches on deeply entrenched social and cultural values and processes. Obviously, the Greek society is in a fluid and prolonged state of suffering, precariousness, and transition. But the same applies to the Greek self that confronts the strong and painful dismantling of dominant sociocultural structures, narratives and imaginaries. The central aim of the present work is to demonstrate and discuss the complex relationship between self-suffering and such dismantling, from an interpretive phenomenological standpoint, with special reference to health professionals, members of the Greek middle class. In this regard, the paper elaborates on the analytical basis of the four main imaginaries of Metapolitefsi, namely the imaginaries of the boss, of economic growth, of occupational stability, and of representative civil democracy. The conclusion arguably calls for the reflexive embracement of diffused uncertainty, as well as for the critical exploitation of emergent biographical risks.