Some Observations on the Greek-Australian Cultural Paradigm

Abstract

In this paper we examine the general weltanschauung of the Greek Australian intellectual and academic community and their inability to construct concrete cultural symbols which would express the mixed social reality they live in. This inability is understood in the context of the post-war formation of immigrants who arrived to Australia after the 50’s. The conditioning of the large majority of them under the state ideology of General Metaxas and his nationalistic discourse didn’t allow the politicization of individual and collective identity. On the contrary, the Greek Australian quest for identity was trapped in the grand narratives of national continuity and more specifically in the constant insistence on the Hellenicity of modern Greeks. The trauma of immigration never became a political force and was restricted to the narrow perception of a self-excluded community which believed in the superiority of its language and its culture.

Only few people succeeded in establishing new perceptions of identity and therefore symbols of collective recognition. The paper ends by mentioning the political factors which contributed to the creative immobility of the Greek-Australian community and to the absence of a political counter-proposal to the hegemonical Anglo-Celtic cultural paradigm.