Gavriilidis the Greek

Akis Gavriilidis (Άκης Γαβριηλίδης) is Greek, born in Thessaloniki, in 1964. He studied law at Aristotle University and completed a PhD in Law Philosophy, on Spinoza.

Since 1995 he is living mostly in Brussels, Belgium, where he work as a translator and as an amateur DJ at a radio station.

All these years he has written extensively, including 5 books (in Greek), on such diverse subjects as a psychoanalytically based approach of Greek nationalism, trauma, the memory of the civil war, and film director Billy Wilder, as well as many articles on more direct and current political issues.

1. Have you ever visited Republic of Macedonia?

I have never been in Republic of Macedonia. To be honest, I do not know much about the country itself and its inhabitants. My only knowledge is through readings and (limited) oral exchange with people from there whom I have met in Greece, Belgium or other third countries.

2. So you do have Macedonian friends?

I have met a few people from Republic of Macedonia, all of which are academicians. I am hesitating to use the word “friends”, not because I do not appreciate them, but only because unfortunately I don’t have a regular contact with these people (unless through Facebook sometimes).

3. What do you think of them?

My impression was that they are very generous, open-minded and motivated people. I cannot generalize, but this was my impression.Apart from that, I had the impression that, in spite of the different language and background, we share a lot of things, which are immaterial, almost hidden, on a second level, like gestures, body language, similar metaphors … things still surviving from a period when nation states and their boundaries were not so strictly imposed.

4. Do you personally mind the name of the Republic of Macedonia?

Not only I do not mind, but I think it is the only suitable and possible name. And apart from that, I find almost obscene the fact that any country or other actor objects the way another country and/ or a people call themselves. It is not up to us, or to anybody, to dictate this.

Of course, this puts me among a very small minority in the Greek society

5. What are the things that connects Republic of Greece and the Republic of Macedonia and the both nations?

My feeling is that all over the Balkans there is an underground current, a “tank” of common “biopolitical” memories, related to language, cooking, music, attitudes … from the period before nation states; a current that links (all those later constructed as) “pure” Greeks, Macedonians, Serbs etc.

Until recently, all modern nation states, including Turkey, tended to disregard these common elements as they thought they were remnants from a “pre-modern”, authoritarian, almost shameful period that we should soon forget and leave behind –the Ottoman Empire. But I think –and I hope- that now this rejection starts getting less absolute...

6. How every one of us can help Greeks and Macedonians to be friends instead of enemies? What should we change or made?

The hatred and mistrust produced for 20 years now, is a very complex and heavy load, and I don’t have easy solutions or recommendations. Of course it is essential, and valuable, to keep –or create- horizontal links between non-state actors from the two (or more?) sides, between individuals, groups, artists, academicians etc. But it will take also an internal work to be carried within each side, because, as often happens, when we hate somebody, we usually hate in him what we find unbearable within ourselves. A practical recommendation I would have, though, is that it would be better to disengage the identity issue from questions about antiquity, archaeology, inscriptions, Alexander and Philip etc. These questions are impossible to answer definitively, so insisting on them will only perpetuate disagreements. But even if they were 100% clarified, they could not provide the solution for a current political issue. What happened 2000 years ago cannot determine what we should do today. I believe the Macedonian people and state should be recognized the right to call themselves like that, not because of some essence they have kept intact in them for centuries, but because of a political desire they have now. This narrative about an “ancient nation being at the same place and speaking the same language for 2500 years” was a construction of Greek nationalism of the 19th century, and I think the Greek society is still “paying the bill” for this obsession. There is nothing to be envied and imitated in that, believe me … I understand that the pressure of comparison is strong and contaminating, but if the Macedonian society resists it and avoids reproducing a similar folly, the better for them.

7. Do you like to say something to the Macedonian readers?

The only thing I would like to add is that these are very complicated issues, it is impossible to exhaust them in a few sentences, so if your readers are interested to read more, I refer them to a longer article I have written in English and will soon appear, along with the articles of several other scholars, in a collective volume to be published this year at Skopje by the Macedonian Information Centre, under the title “The name issue revisited”.

A.S.

Translated in Macedonan and in Greek