Mediterraneanism

There is a view of the Mediterranean steeped in prejudice regarding the oriental backwardness of its peoples. And there is a lyrical, aestheticizing view that envisions the Mediterranean as a sea standing firm against the oceanic power of capitalism. This book is a philosophical guide in order to deconstruct these two forms of ‘Mediterraneanism’: the first relegates the South of Europe and the whole Mediterranean to a position out of space and time, out of history and out of the West (because history can only be Western history). The second form is the reversal of the first, or the reversal of the stigma. Thus, the critique against the Mediterranean’s slowness turns into praise in contrast to the speed of capitalism; emotion and irrationality become features of new non-logocentric philosophies of nature, no longer played out by separating but by blending mind and body, reason and passion. Both of these forms have created an imaginary Mediterranean, ventriloquizing its peoples.