Thanos Gkaragkounis

Mediterranean Imaginations Thanos Gkaragkounis

The book discusses some of the thorny issues that concern the way the Mediterranean, as a socio-spatial and historical unit has been represented by social sciences. Divided in three parts and inspired by the general turn in social sciences generated by poststructuralism, postmodernism and deconstruction, the book firstly adheres to the imagination of Mediterranean identity in order, to deconstruct it, and then proceeds into subscribing to the unfolding of Mediterranean spatiality that will finally take up on the gender identity of the Mediterranean woman seeking a modest de-domestication. The works submitted to deconstruction come from various academic disciplines, sociology, social anthropology, geography, and political economy amongst others. The authors whose work has been used in order, to put forward the multivarious task of deconstruction are among others Derrida, Deleuze, Baudrillard and Badiou. Of course, the inspiration boils down to Said's (1978) orientalist inscriptions and Derek Gregory's (1994) geographical metonymies. Each of the three parts lives and leads an independent life but serves at the same time the purpose of unity. Like the tradition it wants to deconstruct, the book holds together, but also breaks into pieces what keeps it homogenous; a self-destructive process, the only way which can guarantee some meaning in literature and in life in general.