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Class, negativity, and becoming; the poetic counter-archives of Samson Rakas and Antonis Antonakos
In this chapter, I examine class-related aspects in the work of two contemporary “minor” Greek authors/artists, Samson Rakas and Antonis Antonakos. The study offers theoretical reflections on the work of both authors and its situated context, today’s Greece, a country of the European periphery caught in a perpetual and polyvalent state of economic, political, and social crisis. Both authors depart from the grim realities of today’s Greece, as they unfold in a global historical circumstance that carries particularly low expectations for the future. Poetry and arts have been on the rise in Greece during the long crisis decade (2009- nowadays [2023]), growing within the crisis and restructuring processes, defying recession, and aspiring different realities. Both authors largely remain outside the artistic establishment. Hence, their work is understood as minor in the sense of Deleuze and Guattari (2009), where minor is conceptualized as a complex position being dissociated from powerful institutions and exclusive structures. This study offers a theoretical reflection on both form and content, based on the study of selected works and interviews of these authors.