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Introduction.
One of the ongoing feminist challenges is the answer to the question of what extend women face violence and how it can be unveiled and prevented. While many forms of violence against women have risen to the social, political and legal surface worldwide, there is still a wide spectrum of uncharted ground that needs to be researched. Obstetric violence (OV) has been highlighted in the political agenda of some countries in the world, with Venezuela to be the first state which legally defined and condemned OV in 2007. OV is described by the Word Heath Organization’s statement (2014) as:
“the disrespectful and abusive treatment during childbirth in facilities” that includes “outright physical abuse, profound humiliation and verbal abuse, coercive or unconsented medical procedures (including sterilization), lack of confidentiality, failure to get fully informed consent, refusal to give pain medication, gross violations of privacy, refusal of admission to health facilities, neglecting women during childbirth to suffer life-threatening, avoidable complications, and detention of women and their newborns in facilities after childbirth due to an inability to pay” (p. 1).
This definition is the result of a(n) (ongoing) research of the experiences of women who have been subjected to this kind of violence. One of the most recent and representative case of international human rights law is the SFM v. Spain, 2020 in which the term ‘obstetric violence’ is used by the decision body, giving a legitimate character to the phenomenon.
In this paper, an attempt will be made to theorize OV through three theoretical perspectives; a feminist, an intersectional and a gender neutral one. Many reasons have contributed to the choice of this form of violence as a paradigm in my analysis. OV is an under – researched form of violence towards women that only a handful of states worldwide have legally recognized. It is considered to be structural (Sadler et al., 2016) and systemic (Diaz-Tello, 2016), which shows how deep is the patriarchal (misogynistic) belief of a ‘naturally’ weak, disabled, handicapped, dependent female body (Young, 1980) that needs to be tamed “if it challenges its femininity, its condition as object, through a loud and subversive embodied subjectivity” (Cohen Shabot, 2015, pp. 234). This leads to an unquestionable authority of the medical stuff, resulting to an excessive patriarchal power over the laboring bodies. This topic has problematized me a lot during my academic years and although I, personally, look at it through a feminist perspective, this essay will approach OV within a diverse theoretical lens.

Feminist theoretical perspective: Obstetric violence as a form of gender based violence.
For this analysis I draw on Kelly (2012) and Boyle (2019) theoretical perspectives of the continuum concept of gender based violence and the continuum thinking respectively. Kelly (2012) argues that, since men’s violence is so widespread, women tend to understand specific instances of it in the context of a larger pattern of similar experiences throughout their lives. The idea of a continuum encompasses not only physical and psychological violence, but also the various forms of gendered violence that women may face even after the violent incident. For example, regarding OV, a coerced sterilization can lead to societal marginalization due to the (almost sacred) meaning fertility has for the patriarchal societies. Additionally, an unnecessary episiotomy and a following “tightening up” (the so called “husband stitch”) leads to painful sexual intercourse and to an overall diminishing of the women’s sexuality. Speaking out can also put women at risk, as the potential consequences, such as being dishonored, can even be fatal.
Boyle (2019) claims that violence against women is gendered since it targets women because they are women. If this understanding is put into a continuum, other experiences, such as interactions with whole institutions (e.g. the health care institution) can acquire a gendered character as well, illustrating the diffuse patriarchal entitlement that exists over the female body (see shape 1 in page 3). Moreover, Jonson (2007) using the intimate partner violence as the paradigm for his argument of the intersection of gender and control, argues that violence is usually about ‘taking the overall control’ over the other person. Social norms determine the value and meaning of the violent act depending on which gender embodies the perpetrator and which the victim. In the OV case the perpetrator can be understood as the health care institution as a whole institution and not as an individual health care professional, that strives to take control over the female birthing body.
Understanding OV as a form of gender based violence is a fine line legally and politically. It presupposes a theorization of violence towards women that is deep rooted in the societal structures and institutions, which is why mistreatment and abuse towards the female birthing bodies are seen as the normative, the default. The most common counter argument by the health care professionals is the appeal to the medical necessity, which is, though, already formed into an a priori pathologization of the female body; the female body is seen in an otherness condition of the sovereign male, in which an authoritative and patriarchal discourse of bodily hierarchy is constructed (Τζανάκη, 2018). As Cohen Shabot, an academic dediacted to OV research, argues, unveiling OV and recognizing it as a form of gender based violence is an ongoing process due to “the inherent difficulty of recognizing violence that happens in an ‘essentially benevolent’ setting such as the medical one, but also, and mainly, due to the pervasive sexual reification of women under patriarchy and the pervasive shame to which women are subjected” (Shabot, 2021, p. 443).

Individual, one to one Institutional violence against
violence against women women that are targeted as a group
Shape 1: Accommodating institutional violence into a continuum of gender based violence.

Intersectional perspective: Obstetric violence as the result of multiple oppression.
Intersectionality is the term that describes the routinized, multidimensional and multilayered oppressive character of the women’s experiences, which leads to the formation of a new, enhanced dimension of oppression. As a result, the new constructed power relations hinder the ability of these women to find better alternatives in their lives (Crenshaw, 1991). Since Crenshaw, many academics shed light to the way in which inequalities are simultaneously interlocking oppressing positions for women due to their interdependent identities, especially when it comes to violence. Abu-Lughod (2011), through her analysis of honor crimes in the western settings, highlights the complexity and the multi-dimensional character gender based violence has. She reflects upon the way social interpretations tend to neglect certain identities, due to the dominant position institutional and structural racism, ableism, classism, homophobia etc have in the different social contexts. Knowledge does not occur in a geopolitical vacuum, thus it is important to reflect and acknowledge one’s position (and privileges) when approaching social phenomena. So, intersectionality refers to both the multilayered discriminatory experience women face and the way a discriminatory incident is understood afterwards.
OV is not an unbiased field of study, but it is rather closely tied to past instances of racist and eugenicist violence. Black and indigenous women’s reproductive and birthing experiences have been negatively affected by discriminatory practices and experimentation, and they still experience the negative consequences of racist beliefs and stereotypes today (Chadwick, 2021). “Pregnancy and birthing are not ‘natural’ events but socially, ideologically, and politically inscribed” (Chadwick, 2021, p. 6), as it is affirmed in these two notable case law of Alyne da Silva Pimentel v. Brazil, 2008 and Ms. AS v. Hungary, 2004. A stillborn gestating, African woman in Brazil not given the necessary, postpartum care had fatal consequences, while a birthing, Roma woman in Hungary was forced to a coerced sterilization. In these two cases, both sexism and racism have created a new dimension of discrimination, placing women to an even marginalized position in the relevant societal power dynamics.

Gender neutral perspective: Obstetric violence as a violation of the right to health.
A gender neutral approach could derive from a post – structuralist individualistic theoretical basis, which deconstructs the a priori, historically constructed binarism of the gender, and introduces a more fluid understanding of gender embodiment and power dynamics. Both femininities and masculinities are embodied by all (and none) genders simultaneously, thus the very strict circumscribed theorization of gender is not that relevant anymore. Both male and female individuals (and everything in between) are approached as “complex gendered beings’ that can be placed in both hegemonic and subordinated social locations (Cannon, Lauve-Moon & Buttell, 2015, p. 676). A gender neutral approach examines the power relations “based on the status of the relationship rather than the broader socio-cultural context in which that relationship – and the people in it – exist” (Boyle, 2019, p. 23). This means that, by situating violence in childbirth – which is experienced predominantly by women – in relation to patient abuse or neglect, birthing women’s experiences are examined analogously and are related to victims’ experiences in the health care system that are not marginalized due to their gender (Boyle, 2019).
If gender per se is not relevant anymore to the equation of OV, the scoping lens zoom out of the ‘identities’ argument and focuses on the violent/abusive incident with a more general perspective. Through a gender neutral approach, OV could be understood as the result of the unequal power dynamics between patients and healthcare providers, and may stem from a healthcare system that prioritizes profit over patient well-being (Briceño Morales et al., 2018). In this equation, birthing individuals are seen solely as patients that do not receive the appropriate care they need. In fact, the European Court of Human Rights has followed a non – discriminatory on the basis of gender, approach in three cases that concern coerced and forced sterilization of three Roma women in Slovakia; VC v Slovakia 2011, NB v Slovakia 2012 and IG v Slovakia 2013. In these cases, the Court found unnecessary an engagement with a gender discriminatory analysis and rejected the women’s argument (Patel, 2017).

Conclusion.
May all three approaches share the goal of addressing and preventing OV, but they have different focus points and theoretical perspectives. There are fundamental differences between the theories, regarding which identities highlight as significant of discrimination, who embodies the victim and who the perpetrator, how is violence interpreted and by whom, and under which epistemological background the violent experience is valued. Like in other forms of gender based violence, naming and defining the phenomenon plays a crucial role in the legitimization of violence as such and at the unveiling of its epistemic, structural and institutional roots. The attempt to capture and describe the various experiences at the intersection of gender and violence has been challenging, that is why more research upon OV is required. Finally, I would like to finish this essay with a part of Carmen Maria Machado’s short story “The Husbant Stitch” which I believe delineates a breathtaking phenomenological illustration of the appropriation of the female birthing body:
“There is a story about a woman who goes into labour when the attending physician is tired. There is a story about a woman who herself was born too early. There is a story about a woman whose body clung to her child so hard they cut her to retrieve him. There is a story about a woman who heard a story about a woman who birthed wolf cubs in secret. Stories have this way of running together like raindrops in a pond. They are each borne from the clouds separately, but once they have come together, there is no way to tell them apart.

(If you are reading this story out loud, move aside the curtain to illustrate this final point to your listeners. It’ll be raining, I promise.)” (Machado, 2014, p. 16).

Reference list.
Abu-Lughod, L. (2011). Seductions of the “Honor Crime.” Differences, 22(1), 17–63. https://doi.org/10.1215/10407391-1218238
Boyle, K. (2018). What’s in a name? Theorising the Inter-relationships of gender and violence. Feminist Theory, 20(1), 19–36. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700118754957
Briceño Morales, X., Enciso Chaves, L. V., & Yepes Delgado, C. E. (2018). Neither Medicine Nor Health Care Staff Members Are Violent By Nature: Obstetric Violence From an Interactionist Perspective. Qualitative Health Research, 28(8), 1308–1319. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732318763351
Cannon, C., Lauve-Moon, K., & Buttell, F. (2015). Re-Theorizing Intimate Partner Violence through Post-Structural Feminism, Queer Theory, and the Sociology of Gender. Social Sciences, 4(3), 668–687. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci4030668
Chadwick, R. (2021). Breaking the frame: Obstetric violence and epistemic rupture. Agenda, 35(3), 104–115. https://doi.org/10.1080/10130950.2021.1958554
Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241. https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039
Diaz-Tello, F. (2016). Invisible wounds: obstetric violence in the United States. Reproductive Health Matters, 24(47), 56–64. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rhm.2016.04.004
Johnson, M. P. (2007). Domestic Violence : The Intersection of Gender and Control. In L. L. O’Toole, J. R. Schiffman, & M. L. K. Edwards (Eds.), Gender violence: Interdisciplinary perspectives (pp. 257–268). New York University Press.
Kelly, L. (2012). Standing the test of time? Reflections on the concept of the continuum of sexual violence. In J. M. Brown & S. Walklate (Eds.), Handbook on Sexual Violence (1st ed., pp. xvii–xxvi). Routledge.
Machado, C. M. (2014). The Husbant Stitch. In Her Body and Other Parties (pp. 3–31). Graywolf Press. https://bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.cofc.edu/dist/d/1041/files/2021/01/Her_Body_and_Other_Parties_extract.pdf
Patel, P. (2017). Forced sterilization of women as discrimination. Public Health Reviews, 38(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40985-017-0060-9
Sadler, M., Santos, M. J., Ruiz-Berdún, D., Rojas, G. L., Skoko, E., Gillen, P., & Clausen, J. A. (2016). Moving beyond disrespect and abuse: addressing the structural dimensions of obstetric violence. Reproductive Health Matters, 24(47), 47–55. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rhm.2016.04.002
Shabot, S. C. (2020). Why ‘normal’ feels so bad: violence and vaginal examinations during labour – a (feminist) phenomenology. Feminist Theory, 22(3), 443–463. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700120920764
WHO. (2014). The prevention and elimination of disrespect and abuse during facility-based childbirth. Retrieved January 12, 2023, from https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/134588/WHO_RHR_14.23_eng.pdf
Τζανάκη, Δ. (2018). Φύλο και σεξουαλικότητα : ξεριζώνοντας το ‘ανθρώπινο’ (1801-1925) : ακροβατώντας με την κυβερνητικότητα στα άδυτα της Δικανικής Αφροδίτης, της Ψυχιατρικής, της Εγκληματολογίας, της Σεξολογίας, της Ψυχανάλυσης και της Ψύχωσης. (Gender and sexuality: uprooting the ‘humanity’ (1801-1925): acrobating with cyberneticness in the shelters of Judicial Venus, Psychiatry, Criminology, Sexology, Psychoanalysis and Psychosis). Ekdoseis Asinē.
Case law:
Alyne da Silva Pimentel v. Brazil, No 17/2008, 2008. https://www.escr-net.org/sites/default/files/CEDAW-C-49-D-17-2008.pdf
IG v Slovakia. No. 15966/04. 2013. https://www.refworld.org/cases,ECHR,50a289e22.html
Ms. AS v. Hungary, No 4/2004, 2004. https://www.escr-net.org/caselaw/2009/v-hungary-communication-no-42004-cedawc36d42004
NB v Slovakia. No. 29518/10. 2012. https://www.globalhealthrights.org/n-b-v-slovakia/
S.F.M. v Spain, No. 138/2018, 2018. https://juris.ohchr.org/Search/Details/2710
VC v Slovakia. No. 18968/07. 2011. https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/4a648cb42.pdf

Introduction.
“This country has been dealing with the migration crisis of unprecedented intensity, has been saving hundreds, if not thousands, people at sea . . . while at the same time, yes, we are intercepting boats that come from Turkey, as we have the right to do in accordance to European Regulation . . . you should put the blame on others and not at us” (Η ΑΥΓΗ Εφημερίδα της Αριστεράς, 2021).
This was the answer of Greece’s Prime Minister (PM) Kyriakos Mitsotakis in the straightforward question of the Dutch journalist Ingeborg Beugel, regarding the illegal pushbacks in the Aegean Sea. With this answer, the PM has indulged in a biopolitical rhetoric of who has the power to control the non – European lives sailing in the Aegean borders, who has the power to form policies around a foreign national’s right to life and a European state’s border sovereignty, and whose responsibility is it when this biopolitical control results to some ‘collateral damages’, i.e. the government’s action or inaction when it comes to the right to life of the Other.
In 2015, in a time of political and economical uncertainty, the European Union (EU) found itself in the difficult position of controlling and managing the increasing migratory and refugee inflows, originating primarily from the Middle East and Africa. Through a series of immigration and refugee policies and regulations, the EU has created the image of a ‘Fortress Europe’, in which migration is allowed and enhanced inside its internal borders, while the non – European incomers are harshly prevented from entering and staying in the European land, under the rhetoric of securitization of migration (for more see the Schengen Borders Code Regulation 2016/399 and the European Border and Coast Guard Agency – ‘FRONTEX’ Regulation 2016/1624). Since the Dublin III Regulation (604/2013/EU) determines that the first EU Member State, whom borders the foreign nationals cross, shall be responsible for the examination and control of the incoming asylum seeker, a political and humanitarian pressure has been put to the external European borders, that is the borders of Spain, Italy and Greece.
Notwithstanding, these attempts to control which lives should be subjugated outside and inside the European borders, this biopolitical (and necropolitical as it will be discussed later on) approach, has led to serious human rights violations, like in the case of Safi and Others v. Greece, as it will be studied in the final chapter.

Research question.
In this essay the following problematization will be discussed; how is race and nationality entangled in Greece’s necropolitical violation of the right to life? In more details, this research question will be constructed by other questions; what kind of racialized and nationalized bodies construct the Other in Greece, so their right to life can be exploited and dehumanized? What is the role of the human rights as an institution in this necropolitical arena? Is gender relative to this discussion? This research topic will be studied and unpacked and it will be applied in the case of Safi and Others v. Greece, judged by the European Court of Human Rights (ECrHR) on July 7, 2022.

Key concepts and presentation of literature.
What kind of racialized and nationalized bodies construct the Other in Greece?
While race and nationality were both sensitive concepts for the geopolitical redefined, post – WWII and post – Nazi Europe, exclusionary immigration policies were nevertheless rising against the eastern Europeans. Being European was (and still is) interwoven with being White, but not any kind of White, rather the one originating from the west and the north (Rastas, 2019). Although, race and racism have taken many forms across the years, the unavoidable political trajectory around a state’s sovereignty often goes hand in hand with the identity of being native and a state’s national citizen. The interesting point here is that Eastern Europe became and, in a way, still is the European Other (but, nevertheless, it remains European). Although, many of the Eastern European countries are now part of the EU and the eurozone, many contradictory feelings about their whiteness, and hence Europeaness, were in the political surface in the post – WWII era.
Greece was never immune to the overwhelming glare of the globalized, neoliberal capital economy and the Europeaness this economy breathed. The state’s troubling historical and political past led to an impatient feeling of belonging to the West. At the end of the 20th century, the political agenda of the Greek governments was to be part of the then European Economic Community (EEC), and dismiss its non – European and non – White identity, a goal which was achieved in 1981 (Dalakoglou, 2013). “Greece, politically, defensively, economically, culturally, belongs to the West”, declared Karamanlis in 1976 (ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΟ ΗΜΕΡΟΛΟΓΙΟ-ΕΛΛΗΝΟΪΣΤΟΡΕΙΝ, 2015). Racism against the Albanian migrants at the end of the 20th century, and some years later towards the migrants and refugees from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, shows that Greece had adopted its new identity as a white (?), European state and it could now play in an upgraded level in the globalized geopolitical power dynamics.
The “Others” became the non – Europeans, the non – whites, the non – Greeks, who “invade” the Greek territory (see ETHNOS, 2021; Kathimerini, 2020) and put in danger the pure “Greek – orthodox Nation” with their “dirty” efforts to “islamization and population alteration” (see Protagon.gr, 2020). These are some of the main political and religious narratives that construct the Other in the Greek daily news. The incoming migrants and refugees can never be at home in a European territory, thus will always be othered, because as Tudor (2018) points out “thinking about racism in Europe only in terms of migration and national belonging, then, has the effect of racially homogenising Western/European nations as white and excluding Europeans of colour” (p. 1059). This means that other nationals and non – whites who attempt to “invade” this homogenization are not welcome, thus their lives are narrated as a threat to the natives’ lives, the national security and the state’s sovereignty (Mbembe, 2019). It is this narrative that leads to the necropolitical and racist agendas and the state’s imaginary belief of having the right to act in this way.

Necropolitics and Human Rights
Necropolitics is a term introduced by the Cameroonian political philosopher Achille Mbembe. This term is a complementary term to Foucault’s biopolitics, and refers to the “contemporary forms of subjugation of life to the power of death” (Mbembe, 2019, p. 92). It is the exercise of the political power that has control over the life, not only through the choice of who is allowed to live and who’s not, but also through the construction of the notion of life per se. This power, primarily motivated by racism, degrades the value of life of certain groups and the government acts in a state of exception, having the right to curtail or abrogate people’s constitutional rights. This state of exception is applied in certain, urgent periods of time. One such urgent period, which put Greece in a state of exception, could be the 2015 “refugee crisis”. For the necropolitical narrative:
“there is no one to blame for the suffering of that which becomes killable like an extinguished cigarette, except for the self-responsible willing individual. It is as though to kill slowly” (through intercepting refugee boats in the Aegean), “without bearing the responsibility for murderous laws and policies, is not only contingent on the possible threat that the killable subject poses to the population whose life is worth protecting, but it also requires desire and willingness on the killable subject’s part.” (Shakhsari, 2014, p. 93).
It is the willing refugees and migrants who choose to enter ‘Fortress Europe’ and thus put one’s government sovereignty in a state of exception, which needs to defend and protect itself from the political, national and religious intrusion. It is in our common imaginary representation of the other as they who are opposed to our democratic, christian and ethical values, and adopt their barbaric, un – democratic, terrorist values (Meliopoulos, 2022) which constructs a canonical image of the Other as less human and thus not worthy of their humanly rights.
Through the necropolitical narratives and practices the Others, the ones who become migrants and refugees in Greece are striped of their humanity and their inherent human rights. Human rights do not exist in a vacuum but rather the people who have (or not have) them and those who have the power to exercise them, exist in a specific geopolitical and historical position. For the German political philosopher Hannah Arendt, human rights are not just abstract notions that exist outside a state’s national and geographical sovereignty. The subject that can have human rights is the one that is bound by their surrounding political context and the state’s political agenda. In other words, the right to have rights depends on the political community which will willingly recognize the foreign migrant and refugee as someone who belongs in this community, thus they politically deserve to have rights and being protected. Human rights are instrumentalized as political weapons, as the American political scientist Clifford Bob argues, against the enemy that threatens a state’s sovereignty (Meliopoulos, 2022).
Having said that, under a necropolitical agenda, human rights are being ordered hierarchically (which is justified under the state of exception of the government) and are instrumentalized in order to prioritize the protection of the existence and interests of certain national groups, so as the state’s national and geopolitical sovereignty can remain untouched. Finally, the right to life is just another political arena for the state in order to justify its necropolitical actions and in – actions towards the non – nationals, whose right to life hinders the state’s political interests and for that, it needs to be reconstructed as less valued. “Non-citizen populations are assumed to be outside of the state’s responsibility in a way that citizens are not, and it is this logic that continues to legitimize the idea that ‘states can, and in many respects should, treat their citizens differently from foreigners” (Rygiel, 2016, p. 548).

Is gender relative to this discussion?
When politics are discussed, gender is always relevant. Under the racist political rhetoric that sees migrants, first and foremost, as political subjects that invade the nation and they alter it through their racialized, uncontrolled reproduction, the national and cultural cohesion is considered under threat. Positions of political power and influence that are held primarily (if not exclusively) by white, European (or at least western), men, are irrigated with narratives of custodian responsibility for the nation’s homogeneity, i.e. the white, European, christian identity. It is the racialized generational reproduction of the nation that consists a problem under the biopolitical agenda. As Umut Erel (2018), an English sociologist, points out “women play an important role in constructing national identities: on one hand as symbols of the nation, embodying its values, on the other, in their role as mothers, women transmit culture and values to the next generation, as well as biologically reproducing the group” (p. 174). Women are seen as carrying the future of the nation, through their national and racial purity, which needs to be protected by the state. On the other side of the coin, men are portrayed as “the modernising and progressive aspects of the nation” (p. 174). This gendered narrative is very much relevant to the racialized necropolitical actions of the state. Migrant women’s reproductive activity threatens the national homogeneity, while men as carriers of cultural and religious heritage, are approached with hostility and are being marginalized. In both cases, their lives are less valued and not protected, their rights are not recognized, and they are literally in between life and death (when death is not literally there), since they cannot fully exercise their right to life.

The case of Safi and Others v. Greece.
On July 7, 2022 the European Court of Human Rights (ECrHR) unanimously condemned Greece for the sinking of a fishing boat on January 20, 2014 which was transferring 27 foreign nationals, 11 of whom lost their lives in the sea. According to the applicants, the Greek coastguard vessel was trying to push (or rather intercept?) the fishing boat back to the Turkish waters (as they had the right to do?) by increasing speed, resulting to the overturn of the boat. The applicants were nationals of Afghanistan, Syria and Palestine. The ECrHR judged that there had been a violation of Article 2 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) (right to life) and of Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment) (European Court of Human Rights, 2022).
In more details, the ECrHR condemned the Greek state for not providing the adequate response to the incident of the sinking boat, for not taking into serious consideration the risk for the passengers’ lives, for not conducting the proper investigation for their deaths and for re – victimizing the survivors by imposing them to body searches. Under this inadequate response of the Greek Coast Guard Agency, eight children and three women, some of them being relatives of the applicants, lost their lives. The substantive aspect of the right to life was violated, according to the Court, since there was no adequate explanation of the Greek Coast Guard Agency to use a speed boat which was lacking the appropriate rescuing equipment and to not act in time, since they were informed of the incident immediately. Yet, they arrived at the scene over an hour later (Katsoni, 2022).
The bodies of the dead carry political meanings through their existence and non – existence, through their suffering and the way they lost their lives, through the constitutional position of ignorance and remissness by the state. The fact that the people who survived and those who lost their lives in the Safi and Others case, were all nationals from Afghanistan, Syria and Palestine is an accurate example of the exclusionary, racialized political agenda of the Greek state. Through a necropolitical point of view, these nationals, being all people of color, with no national and/or race connections to Greece or Europe, were recognized as a political threat by their “illegal” transnational movement. The bodies of these dead carry a plethora of political meanings, since they were all women and children, thus they breathed a continuity of life; non – European women who would be reproductive inside the European borders and they would claim their rights as mothers carrying a European citizen, and children whose life could not have yet carry a concrete political identity, thus it could be formed inside the European borders with all the subsequent rights this implies. The Greek state found itself in a state of exception, being threatened by their racialized presence, and decided to not recognize them as political subjects who belong in Greece’s political community. Thus they do not have the right to claim their rights and be protected.

Conclusion.
“I thank Greece for acting as the shield of Europe”, said Von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission at the end of her visit to the area (Evros) (Mascarenas, 2021, p.7)

“Greece has become a dumping ground for the men, women, and children that the European Union has failed to protect. What was once touted as a ‘refugee emergency’ has given way to inexcusable levels of human suffering across the Greek islands and on mainland Greece. The EU and Greek authorities continue to rob vulnerable people of their dignity and health, seemingly in an effort to deter others from coming. This policy is cruel, inhumane, and cynical, and it needs to end.” (Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), 2022)

I decided to close this essay with these two contradictory quotes. While politicians narrate a political reality that suits them better, the reality of the people living it has some serious human rights violations. Although Greece’s racial identity could still be in the verge of adopting whiteness, by entering EU this verge took a political turn to the European identity, which is bound together with the coveted whiteness. Greece is one of the external borders of Europe, a geopolitical position which is embedded with the responsibility of protecting the racial and national homogeneity of Europe by protecting the racial and national homogeneity of the Greek state itself. In this political agenda, the non – white, non – European, migrants and refugees become the Other, whose rights are narrowed, if not dismissed at all, once they (try to) enter “Fortress Europe”. The Aegean Sea is the invisible geopolitical arena in which the state fights for its sovereignty, in a state of exception. Non – white and non – European people’s attempts to migrate to Greece and Europe are automatically considered illegal, invasive and threatening for the nation’s integrity. A combination of racism, Islamophobia and racism, construct the pieces of the necropolitical actions of Greece’s government.
Eleven Afghan, Syrian and Palestinian women and children, in the case of Safi and Others, lost their lives in an attempt of intercepting their boat by the Greek Coast Guard Agency. At the beginning of this essay, PM Kiriakos Mitsotakis claimed that Greece has the right to intercept non – nationals boats in the Aegean Sea, a right which has been given by the EU itself. “You should put the blame on others not us”, a blame which no political organization, no Western state, no European government wants to take. Finally, this necropolitical game, isn’t it always an institutional game between the life of the state itself and the lives of the migrants and refugees? How these power dynamics can be overturned?
Reference list.
Dalakoglou, D. (2013). ‘From the Bottom of the Aegean Sea’ to Golden Dawn: Security, Xenophobia, and the Politics of Hate in Greece. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 13(3), 514–522. https://doi.org/10.1111/sena.12054
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). (2022, March 11). Greece: Three years of “cruel, inhumane, and cynical” treatment of migrants and refugees. Doctors Without Borders – USA. https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/greece-three-years-cruel-inhumane-and-cynical-treatment-migrants-and-refugees
Erel, U. (2018). Saving and reproducing the nation: Struggles around right-wing politics of social reproduction, gender and race in austerity Europe. Women’s Studies International Forum, 68, 173–182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2017.11.003
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While reading the work of Lisa Guenther on solitary confinement as a form of social death many thoughts came into my mind. Lisa Guenther analyzed the violence in solitary confinement through a the lens of critical phenomenology. She argued that solitary confinement destroys the intersubjective bodily relations on which personhood depends through the “the prolonged deprivation of a concrete, everyday experience of other people.” When the sense of individuated personhood threatens to dissolve in such experiences, people tend to have the same symptoms: anxiety, confusion, depression, hallucinations, fatigue, headaches and uncontrollable trembling. Do these symptoms sound familiar?

Deriving from the work on solitary confinement, the experience of violence as a solitary event and the idea of critical phenomenology that individuated personhood is intersubjected (i.e. subjectivity is not fixed, rather constantly (co)constructed in time and in space by and with others), I argue that mental disorders can be viewed as an extreme, violent disruption of intersubjectivity which can lead to a solitary experience of one’s self. Mental disorders is the result of fractured joints of an embodied, interrelational subjectivity, mirroring the experience of individuals in solitary confinement. Once one’s sense of individuated personhood is threatened to dissolve, mental disorders, with a highly dysfunctional symptomatology, serve as an extreme warning in order the what’s-left-of sense of self to be back connected with the external world, with others.

Individuals with mental disorders often find themselves in a state of emotional and psychological solitude, isolated from the shared constructions of social life. These individuals cannot connect meaningful with others leading to a survival mode of relying solely on the resources of one’s own subjectivity. This is not sufficient for our human existence. If neither subjects nor objects have substance or meaning outside of the field of relations, then how one may survive outside of these relations? Thus, mental disorders should not be described as a living social death, but rather as a condition in limbo where people seek their connection back to the world.

Nowadays many social structures condemn people to a sense of a Cartesian self that is valued and tied upon by its materialistic substance. Capitalism, patriarchy, racism, ableism to name a few. Many social groups are condemned to marginalization within the broader societal frameworks, creating a dense of alienation. This disconnection leads easier to a disordering of bodily relations, communal space and power relations. Besides, bodies and spaces are interdependent in such a way that this interdependence makes them vulnerable to disordering. A body that is forced in a straitjacket of a psychiatric clinic is ‘in’ the building of the clinic in a way that profoundly alters the dynamics of autonomy, agency and embodied experience, introducing a complex interplay between the individual, the ‘therapeutic’ environment and the relationship with the world.