The cultural theorist Iain Chambers is known for his historically grounded, philosophically informed, and politically pointed inquiries into issues of identity, alterity, and migration, and the challenge postcolonial studies poses to conventional Western thought. With "Mediterranean Crossings", he seeks to counter the insufficiency of prevailing characterizations of the Mediterranean by offering an interdisciplinary and intercultural interpretation of the region's culture and history. The "Mediterranean" as a concept entered the European lexicon only in the early nineteenth century. As an object of study, it is the product of modern geographical, political, and historical classifications. Chambers contends that the region's fundamentally fluid, hybrid nature has long been obscured by the categories and strictures imposed by European discourse and government.In evocative and erudite prose, Chambers renders the Mediterranean a mutable space, profoundly marked by the linguistic, literary, culinary, musical, and intellectual dissemination of Arab, Jewish, Turkish, and Latin cultures. He brings to light histories of Mediterranean crossings - of people, goods, melodies, thought - that are rarely part of orthodox understandings. Chambers writes in a style that reflects the fluidity of the exchanges that have formed the region; he segues between major historical events and local daily routines, backwards and forwards in time, and from one part of the Mediterranean to another. A sea of endlessly overlapping cultural and historical currents, the Mediterranean exceeds the immediate constraints of nationalism and inflexible identity. It offers scholars an opportunity to rethink the past and present and to imagine a future beyond the confines of Western humanistic thought.
0 有用 felsina 2023-10-17 07:16:57 加拿大
鉴于个人现在的走向相对不那么理论悬空,这本书可能更多是可以作为文献综述来读的理论演绎,作者的视野还是很开阔的,有一些用,但也许最有用的地方是敦促自己看了一眼布罗代尔治地中海史和法国殖民历史的关系,可以参考一篇论文“The Colonial Cosmology of Fernand Braudel”, in The French Colonial Mind.
0 有用 felsina 2023-10-17 07:16:57 加拿大
鉴于个人现在的走向相对不那么理论悬空,这本书可能更多是可以作为文献综述来读的理论演绎,作者的视野还是很开阔的,有一些用,但也许最有用的地方是敦促自己看了一眼布罗代尔治地中海史和法国殖民历史的关系,可以参考一篇论文“The Colonial Cosmology of Fernand Braudel”, in The French Colonial Mind.