The Players: Greeks vs Germans

Abstract

Chapter 2 explores the multifaceted ways conjured up by Greeks and Germans to represent each other in the newspaper coverage of the Greek debt crisis. It is structured around five thematic patterns, each exhibiting a different kind of entanglement between the images of the Self and the Other: the emergence and contestation of the stereotypes of lazy but merry Greeks versus hard-working and miserly Germans; the different ‘moral languages’ invoked on each side; the psychosocial undercurrents of identifying the Other with one’s own innermost demons; the politics and manipulation of memory; and the topoi of power and resistance.