“Something Was Going to Change”

Abstract

The subject of the article is a critical presentation of aspects of the Democratic Transition period (Metapolitefsi) in Greece through interviews and e-mails exchanged by subscribers to the mailing list of the magazine Disability Now, collected from April to July 2000. At the heart of these dialogues lies the discourse about the lifting of accessibility barriers for disabled people in Greece during the 1990s. Through the use of contemporary political theories on populism, the author explains that the discourse on accessibility barriers becomes “a place of political opportunity.” The participants develop a kind of populist discourse inspired by the ideology of the political theory of Modernization, as well as by the possibilities and disadvantages of Greece within the politico- economic framework of the EU. These elements imbue the meaning of the disabled self with a dual content: They connect and unite disabled individuals by producing the expression of an emancipatory discourse which, however and at the same time, is maintained through traces of an ablenationalistic rhetoric, activated by notions of Greekness and Europeanness.