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.

Francescomaria Tedesco teaches political philosophy at the University of Camerino, Italy. He has worked and taught at several Italian universities, including the University of Florence, SUM (now Scuola Normale Superiore), University of Naples “Suor Orsola Benincasa” and Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, and has given lectures abroad. In addition, in 2022 he was Visiting Professor at Universität Bielefeld, Germany; for the academic year 2024–2025 he was Fulbright Distinguished Chair at Northwestern University, USA, where he taught the classes Politics and Mass Culture and Topics in Italian Culture and Literature. He has published five books and numerous essays and articles in Italian and English, with translations in German and Portuguese. Among his monographs: Introduzione a Hayek (Laterza 2004), Diritti umani e relativismo (Laterza 2009), Sovereign Excess, Legitimacy and Resistance (Routledge 2019, translated by Karen Whittle). He writes for the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano.