Discursive uses of ‘abnormality’ in the Greek crisis

In crisis-ridden Greece, a strict austerity program has been applied, from 2010 onwards—when the global and mainly European economic crisis hit the shores of the Aegean—under the supervision of the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (the so-called troika). In order to provide an adequate framing and legitimization to this program, the crisis was discursively constructed not only as an economic one but also as a moral and a cultural crisis. Within this framework, the implementation of the austerity program became increasingly associated with discourses about ‘normality.’