Appraising the “Greek Truth Committee” in the Age of Debt: Counter-Expertise, “Battle Truths,” and the Struggle Against Post-Crash Neoliberalism

Abstract:This article appraises the value of the Greek Truth Committee on Public Debt (TCPD) as a form of resistance to post-crash neoliberalism. It analyses the TCPD as a knowledge-making practice that directly confronts neoliberalism’s use of sovereign debt as a “technology” designed not only to secure itself against democratic demands but to constrain subjectivity within the model of an entrepreneur-of-the-self. Through an analysis of its Preliminary Report, I explore the TCPD’s work as a form of what Lazzarato calls “counter-expertise,” which not only destabilized dominant mythologies regarding the public debt, but constructed new “truths” about it that could cultivate new modes of political resistance.