Antifascist Mediation: Practices of Affirmative Biopolitics in Lesbos, Greece

Abstract

The practices of antifascists in Lesbos, Greece have highlighted, on the one hand, the biopolitical practices of the humanitarian sector and authorities and, on the other hand, they have shown the potentiality for an "affirmative" biopolitics. The different biopolitical orientations operational in Lesbos came clearly to the fore in the two cases of the Occupation of Sapphous Square and the Occupation of SYRIZA offices in Mytilene, Lesbos in autumn of 2017. The two cases additionally showed that mediation, too, is biopolitical, and therefore subject to the same bi-directionality insofar that both the humanitarian sector and the antifascists acted as mediators, albeit serving different political objectives. Furthermore, these practices in Lesbos allow us to understand biopolitics as bi-directional insofar that on the ground in Lesbos, which we also find in theoretical reflections, attempts have been made to disentangle life from the apparatuses that control, manage, and even exterminate life.