The Construction of Southern Ruins, or Instructions for Dealing with Debt

In Greek, the word κείμενο (keímeno) has a double meaning. As an adjective, keímeno describes something that has fallen or toppled over, but the ancient adjective is also the Modern Greek noun for “text,” for words put down in writing. Hidden in the ground of Athens are many strata of foundations from the area’s different epochs: ancient Greek, Roman, Hellenistic, Byzantine, Ottoman. Indeed, in Athens, an accumulation of disparate foundations form diverging extant texts in the ground (decipherable by multiple archaeologies). The modern city can also be conceived as such reading material. When it was inaugurated in its modern version as the capital of Greece, the city was proposed as a single reading of this palimpsest of texts; nevertheless, the palimpsest offers more readings than just this one. Thus does Athens provide ample material for a rough history of ideas: the theory of Western hegemony, the rejection of idealism, the end of logocentrism, and deconstruction. More recently, however, we have encountered from this old material the newest Athenian narrative—that of the post-democratic construction of the hegemonic, with its crude acceptance of the subaltern as the “normal” or “unavoidable” human condition.