California Italian Studies

Over the past decade a new form of pensiero meridiano (southern thought) has emerged affirming an image of Mediterranean-ness as a “different,” rather than “incomplete” or “opposite” form of modern identity. This article clarifies that southern thought should not be understood as an instance of localism or ethnic nationalism, but as a response to the pressures of globalization by means of a renewed connection to the characteristics of Mediterranean territoriality. If Occidentalization can be identified primarily as a critical process of uprooted-ness and de-territorialization, the experience and concept of confine (border, contact-zone) peculiar to the Mediterranean entails the impossibility of a single encompassing identity and the idea of a space of contamination. This is why –the author argues— Mediterranean-ness does not refer exclusively to a place of birth or belonging, but can be found wherever one opens herself to a plural and welcoming form of identity.