Bridge, Wall, Mirror; Coexistence and Confrontations in the Mediterranean World

Abstract

This article examines three contradictory images of the Mediterranean: the “polyphonic” one of exchange, convivenza, diffusions, and cohabitation; the “cacophonic” one of conflict, incompatibility, hostility, aggression, and ethnic cleansing; and the “anthropological” one of underlying cultural complicities. Each image has had its own literary exponents, and selectively draws upon its own source examples. The author then explores some of the problems associated with each model. For example, for the first model, the notions of hybridity or metissage are criticized because they are incompatible with the logic of the religions of the book, and because the social fluidity contained in these concepts is not borne out by practices and the sentiments of group membership and identity. Whilst the author agrees that the criticisms of the Mediterranean as a uniform cultural area with static attributes and limits (the “Anthropological Mediterranean”) are justified, he nevertheless suggests what gives coherence to the Mediterranean world is not so much the evident similarities but the differences that form a system. These complementary differences, inscribed in a reciprocal field, allow us to speak of a Mediterranean system. Attempting to synthesize Freud's notion of “the narcissism of minor differences” with Wittgenstein's concept of “family resemblances”, the article suggests the image of the insupportable twin, the one who is too much like us. Everyone is defined in the Mediterranean in a game of mirrors (customs, behaviours, affiliations) with his neighbour. All neighbours are close relatives who share Abrahamic origins and their behaviour only makes sense in this relational game. The article concludes by suggesting that to approach the Mediterranean it is essential to examine both its constitutive “family resemblances” and contradictions, and to analyze the interplay of reciprocal differences that now rigidify and then relax. The article thus attempts to explain how such opposed models of “polyphony/harmony” and “cacophony/hostility” could have been constructed based upon some degree of valid (but partial) evidence, and to move beyond and synthesize them into a dynamic anthropological analytical programme.

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