Spaces of transmission: Storytelling and remembrance of the 1973 Athens Polytechnic Uprising

This article explores creative remembrance practices within the 39 and 40th commemoration of the 1973 Athens Polytechnic uprising. It draws on interviews, cultural artefacts, and fieldnotes to focus on tactile forms of storytelling with an attentiveness to their potential to generate different affective encounters in a context of prolonged crisis, and rising neo-fascist, structural and police violence. The article discusses the ways in which the annual coming together on the site of the uprising creates a meaningful, intergenerational space of encounter, a time for reflection and sharing discontinuous histories of resistance, oppression, and solidarity. I propose that the specificities of the annual coming together can be considered a “space of transmission,” a concept that brings recent scholarship in urban geography on storytelling and spaces of encounter into dialogue with Walter Benjamin's work on tradition. This article contributes to urban studies through highlighting the importance of sustaining “spaces of transmission” in the context of wider situated practices of everyday urban politics. •Focuses on remembrance practices of the 1973 Athens Polytechnic Uprising in the context of “prolonged crisis”.•The annual commemoration as a “space of transmission” that generates specific forms of storytelling and affective encounter.•Urban geography's understanding of remembrance benefits from engaging with Walter Benjamin's work on history and tradition.•The importance of sustaining “spaces of transmission” in relation to situated practices of urban everyday politics.