Description
Book SynopsisAn interdisciplinary interpretation of the Mediterranean as an extraordinarily fluid, heterogeneous cultural and historical formation, by a leading cultural theorist.
Trade Review“Iain Chambers is a gifted and spirited cultural flâneur whose journeys along the textual and musical shores of the Mediterranean have resulted in a book that explores the extensive connections of modern life. With insight and empathy Chambers argues that the Mediterranean is a decentered and disjunctive topos that has the capacity, and the complexity, to become the contemporary crossroads of intercultural transmission and political transformation. This is a stirring example of cultural studies blessed with the love of song and myth.”—
Homi K. Bhabha, Harvard University
“Iain Chambers is without question one of the most learned scholars working in the field of cultural studies today. In
Mediterranean Crossings, he takes us through philosophical, fictional, filmic, musical, and popular cultural texts produced over the centuries, arguing that the Mediterranean needs to be reconceptualized as a transitory, rather than stabilized, habitation and as an ever-evolving cross-cultural space. Reverberating with far-reaching philosophical implications, his readings combine critical insights with the charm of a storyteller who has traveled widely in texts as well as in physical worlds.”—
Rey Chow, author of
The Age of the World Target: Self-Referentiality in War, Theory, and Comparative Work “With
Mediterranean Crossings, Iain Chambers delineates a new line of discourse on Mediterranean Studies that is as interdisciplinary as the region is hybrid. He mediates between conflicting histories, cultures, interpretations, and events, elegantly moving between the past and present, large and small, individuals and peoples, in this impressionistic portrait of an unclassifiable, fluid region.”—
Giuliana Bruno, author of
Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and FilmTable of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
1. Many Voices 1
2. A Postcolonial Sea 23
3. Off the Map 50
4. Naples: A Porous Modernity 71
5. Between Shores 130
Notes 153
Bibliography 163
Index 173
