California Italian Studies

The title of this essay may seem provocative, but in light of recent developments in Italian history, it is a legitimate question to ask. Italy has changed. Italy’s own sense of mediterraneità – and other people’s understanding of this identity – as well as the representations of memory and politics of and in the Mediterranean, beg further discussion. In an Italy increasingly defined by mass culture and a mass media that focuses on “cultural conflicts” and the “culture of fear,” discourses hinging on economic competition, production, profit, and neo-liberal victories, have increasingly obfuscated real and profound problems. This essay discusses how recent socio-economic, cultural, political and racial discourses have pushed Italy towards a place in which the original idea of mediterraneità no longer seems to have any value. Therefore the question remains: can this term be redeemed?