Il pensiero meridiano come mediterraneismo anti-popolare

About five years after the publication of my book Mediterraneismo. Il pensiero

antimeridiano (Meltemi 2017), I still wonder whether it was necessary to publish such a text. This

contribution is an attempt to formulate an answer to that question. An answer that, in my opinion, is

affirmative. And it is so because not only are the traces of what I had defined in the book as

Mediterraneanism of the first kind (of backwardness) still widespread; but above all because what I

had defined as a second form of Mediterraneanism (of redemption), that is, the process of the

reversal of the stigma, which was the central focus of the book, does not receive adequate critical

attention. Here I attempt to contribute to that discussion, pointing out how Mediterraneanism of the

second type (which we can identify here with the expression 'Meridian thought') does nothing

more, in its attempt to construct a 'Meridian' identity, than re-propose those same stereotypes of

Mediterraneanism of the first type, only overturned and re-semantitised. Meridian thought continues

to produce its aesthetic and political effects.