Xenia – Debt at home, debt is always foreign

The concerns of this article are twofold: first, it examines the nature of debt as a social and economic force that fosters conditions of alienation in persons and institutions. Debt is also considered ontologically to be pertinent to the institution of the family as well as general conditions of kinship, of what determines what is ancestral and what is foreign. Second, it examines the conditions of financial and cultural crisis in Greece in recent years, where debt emerges as a prominent force that works not only at a geopolitical level but on the micro level of society as well. This inquiry is conducted primarily through an elaboration of key instances in recent Greek cinema.