Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

We Have Made the Mediterranean; Now We Must Make Mediterraneans

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Critically Mediterranean

Part of the book series: Mediterranean Perspectives ((MEPERS))

  • 457 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter aims to explore the contribution of Italian critical theory to the idea of Mediterranean-ness. Informed by the performative discoursive mold of “making Italians,” the writings of Franco Cassano (Southern Thought) and Iain Chambers (Mediterranean Crossings) have projected the image of an equivalence between Southern-ness and Mediterranean-ness in the name of a counterhistoricist discourse in which the South finally finds itself to be the subject of its own thought. Building on their insights, this chapter proposes that the geocritical connection between South and Mediterranean is rooted historically in the permanence of an ancient matrix of non-identitarian form of belonging that has eluded precise definition, but has found echo in almost any literary or scholarly expression of the Mediterranean imaginary.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 99.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    As an example of this Mediterranean conversation, we may think of the authors of the splendid series of ten volumes on Les Représentations de la Méditerranée (Representations of the Mediterranean), published by the Maison Méditerranéenne des Science de l’Homme: Mohamed Afifi, Edouard al-Kharrat, Muhammad Barrada, Ahmad Beydoun, Eduardo González Calleja, Feride Çiçekoglu, Edhem Eldem, Thierry Fabre, Jean-Claude Izzo, Elisa Khuri, Gregor Meiering, Rania Polycandrioti, ‘Abd al-Magid Qadduri, Wolfang Storch, Takis Theodoropoulos, and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán.

  2. 2.

    This imbalance has been partially rectified by the publication of Norma Bouchard and Valerio Freme’s Italy and the Mediterranean: Words, Sounds, and Images of the Post-Cold War Era (2013).

  3. 3.

    In 1860, General Garibaldi commanded a military expedition of some 1000 volunteers that left by sea from Genoa and landed at Marsala (Sicily), and then successfully defeated the Bourbon army, thereby setting the stage for the unification of Italy.

  4. 4.

    Erika Garibaldi, Qui sostò Garibaldi (Fasano, It: Schena Editore, 1982).

  5. 5.

    Before this translation , Cassano’s work had appeared in English only once in a short article entitled “Southern Thought” (2001).

  6. 6.

    Slow Mediterranean time, by contrast, is symbolized for Cassano by Odysseus, the hero of “return.”

  7. 7.

    Implicit in Cassano’s enterprise, we therefore find the recognition, assertion, and even exploitation of the configuration that positions Italy as a global signifier of Mediterranean-ness. In fact, the geophilosophical premises of Pensiero meridiano have been developed by Cassano in later works, such as Paeninsula (1998) and L’alternativa mediterranea (2007)—not yet translated into any other language—in which he has proposed a more sustained reflection on the geopolitical implications of Italy’s physical aspect and position in the Mediterranean (Cassano 1998: 45–58; 2007: 78–110). This geophilosophical development in his thought has not changed the basic tenets of southern thought for Cassano . Rather, as evidenced by his 2005 introduction to Pensiero meridiano , it has signaled a lively and productive conversation by Cassano with other Italian and Mediterranean thinkers such as Massimo Cacciari , the Italian philosopher most closely associated with geophilosophy.

Bibliography

  • Abulafia, David. 2014. Thassalocracies. In A Companion to Mediterranean History, ed. Peregrine Horden and Sharon Kinoshita, 139–153. Sussex: Wiley Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Botta, Anna. 2010. Predrag Matvejević’s Mediterranean Breviary: Nostalgia for an ‘Ex-World’ or Breviary for a New Community? Italy in the Mediterranean, ed. Claudio Fogu and Lucia Re. Special issue of California Italian Studies 1 (1). Retrieved from http://escholarship.org/uc/item/7qs4x1v0

  • Bouchard, Norma, and Valerio Freme. 2013. Italy and the Mediterranean: Words, Sounds, and Images of the Post-Cold War Era. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Cacciari, Massimo. 1997. L’Arcipelago. Venice: Adelphi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cassano, Franco. 1998. Paeninsula. L’Italia da ritrovare. Bari: Laterza.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2001. Southern Thought. Thesis Eleven 67: 1–10.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2005. Pensiero meridiano. 1996. Bari: Laterza.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2007. Necessità del Mediterraneo. In L’alternativa mediterrânea, ed. Franco Cassano and Danilo Zolo, 78–110. Milan: Feltrinelli.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2012. Southern Thought and Other Essays on the Mediterranean, ed. and trans. Norma Bouchard and Valerio Freme. New York: Fordham University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chambers, Iain. 2008. Mediterranean Crossings: The Politics of an Interrupted Modernity. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Choate, Marc I. 2008. Emigrant Nation. The Making of Italians Abroad. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Citarella, Armand. 1968. Patterns in Medieval Trade: The Commerce of Amalfi Before the Crusades. The Journal of Economic History 28 (4): 531–555.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dainotto, Roberto. 2003. Asimmetrie mediterranee. Etica e mare nostrum. NAE 3: 3–18.

    Google Scholar 

  • De Donno, Fabrizio. 2006. La Razza Ario-Mediterranea. Ideas of Race and Citizenship in Colonial and Fascist Italy, 1885–1941. Interventions International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 8 (3): 394–412.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Derrida, Jacques. 1992. The Other Heading: Reflections on Today’s Europe. Trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael B. Naas. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • El Younssi, Anouar. 2014. An Exoticized World Literature: Ben Jelloun at the Two Shores of the Mediterranean. Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 34: 225–250.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferrante, Ezio. 1987. Il mediterraneo nella coscienza nazionale. Roma: Rivista Marittima.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fogu, Claudio. 2008. Futurist mediterraneità Between Emporium and Imperium. Modernism/modernity 15 (1): 25–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2010. From Mare Nostrum to Mare Aliorum: Mediterranean Theory and Mediterraneism in Contemporary Italian Thought. Italy in the Mediterranean, ed. Claudio Fogu and Lucia Re. Special issue of California Italian Studies 1.1. Retrieved from http://escholarship.org/uc/item/7vp210p4

  • Frascani, Paolo. 2008. Il mare. Bologna: Il Mulino.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gabaccia, Donna. 2000. Italy’s Many Diasporas. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Herzfeld, Michael. 1984. The Horns of the Mediterraneist Dilemma. American Ethnologist 11: 439–454.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2005. Practical Mediterraneism: Excuses for Everything, from Epystemology to Eating. In Rethinking the Mediterranean, ed. William V. Harris, 45–59. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hom, Stephanie Malia. 2013. On the Origins of Making Italy: Massimo D’Azeglio and ‘Fatta l’Italia, bisogna fare gli Italiani’. Italian Culture 31 (1): 1–16.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Horden, Peregrine. 2005. Mediterranean Excuses: Historical Writing on the Mediterranean Since Braudel. History and Anthropology 16 (1): 25–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Horden, Peregrine, and Nicholas Purcell. 2000. The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Matvejević, Predrag. 1987. Mediteransky brevjiar. Zagreb: Graficki Zavod Hrvatske.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moe, Nelson. 2002. The View from Vesuvius Italian Culture and the Southern Question. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nitti, Francesco Saverio, and Domenico De Masi. 2005. Napoli e la questione meridionale (1903–2005). Guida Editori: Napoli.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pirenne, Henri. 1954. Mohammed and Charlemagne. London: George Allen & Unwin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pourgouris, Marinos. 1988. Mediterranean Modernisms: The Poetic Metaphysics of Odysseus Elytis. Furnham: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Purcell, Nicolas. 2014. The Ancient Mediterranean. In A Companion to Mediterranean History, ed. Peregrine Horden and Sharon Kinoshita, 59–76. Sussex: Wiley Blackwell.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Rancière, Jacques. 1994. The Names of History: On the Poetics of Knowledge. Trans. Hayden White. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Re, Lucia. 2010. Italians and the Invention of Race: The Poetics and Politics of Difference in the Struggle Over Libya, 1890–1913. In Italy in the Mediterranean, ed. Claudio Fogu and Lucia Re. Special issue of California Italian Studies 1 (1). Retrieved from http://escholarship.org/uc/item/96k3w5kn

  • Rickman, Geoffrey. 2011. The Creation of the Mare Nostrum. In The Mediterranean in History, ed. David Abulafia, 127–154. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Valérian, Dominique. 2014. The Medieval Mediterranean. In A Companion to Mediterranean History, ed. Peregrine Horden and Sharon Kinoshita, 77–90. Sussex: Wiley Blackwell.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Yourcenar, Marguerite. 1954. Memoirs of Hadrian. 1951. Trans. Grace Frick. New York: Ferrar, Straus, and Giroux.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Claudio Fogu

Authors
  1. Claudio Fogu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

    yasser elhariry

  2. Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA

    Edwige Tamalet Talbayev

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Fogu, C. (2018). We Have Made the Mediterranean; Now We Must Make Mediterraneans. In: elhariry, y., Talbayev, E. (eds) Critically Mediterranean. Mediterranean Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71764-7_10

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71764-7_10

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-71763-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-71764-7

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation