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The European Central Bank, machinic enslavement, and the Greek public sector

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2024

Radman Selmic
Radman Selmic*
Affiliation:
Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
*
Corresponding author: Radman Selmic, Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, SE14 6NW, UK. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

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This article investigates the role of the European Central Bank (ECB) in transferring financial and moral responsibility for the Eurozone crisis from the private to the public sector. Focusing on Greece, I argue that the ECB constructed the morality of the public debtor in such a way as to make this transfer of responsibility easier and the imposition of austerity measures justifiable. This in part relied on a shift in the ECB's discourse, which came to define the crisis exclusively in terms of public sector responsibility. However, the ECB also employed a range of non-linguistic policy measures aimed at intervening in the crisis. To interpret these measures I draw on Deleuze and Guattari's concept of ‘machinic enslavement’, arguing that the ECB contributed to the Greek crisis not only by defining it discursively but also by reshaping the country's financial infrastructure in crucial ways.

Keywords

European Central Bankdebtorpublicprivatemoralitymachinic enslavement
Type
Article
Information
Finance and Society , Volume 2 , Issue 1: Ethics of debt , 2016 , pp. 45 - 61
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Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
© 2016 The Author(s)

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