Abstract: Contemporary Europe is again haunted by the old stereotypes of corrupted southerners and virtuous northerners, lazy Mediterraneans and vigorous Teutons. This paper aims to survey these tropes among current academic and public debates, from postcolonial and southern studies perspectives. These labels and views have to do with discursive formations such as orientalism and meridionism, and stretch back to the Mediterranean colonial history dominated by northern modernity. Terms like “change”, “innovation”, “modernity” on one hand, and “immobility”, “tradition”, “backwardness” on the other, can be easily and predictably attributed to the two geo-cultural spaces. Nevertheless, our task is less attributing the right category to the right side than disrupting the whole paradigm, under the pressure of the migrations from the South.
Keywords: Border-dialogue; Fortress Europe; PIGS; Mediterranean, orientalism; meridionism; southern thought; modernity; modernization; tradition.
To cite the article: CAZZATO, Luigi. “For a border-dialogue in ‘fortress Europe’: The re-appropriation of mediterranean routes”. International Journal of Cross-Cultural Studies and Environmental Communication 2.2 (2013): 99-107.
International Journal of Cross-Cultural Studies and Environmental Communication 