Mediterranean Thinking: from Netizen to Medizen^*

* I would like to thank members of the Duke Mediterranean Study Group for their feedback on this article. In particular, I am grateful to Roberto Dainotto and Eric Zakim for their intelligent reading of earlier versions and their insightful suggestions.

Abstract

The Mediterranean has traditionally been approached from a geographical and historical perspective that has collapsed the material and political differences between water and land. This conflation has been instrumental in homogenizing the diversity of this interregional arena and turning it into a geopolitical area. Aquacentric thinking brings such approaches to the Mediterranean into question. Cybertheory, which despatializes interaction and helps us think of water as place, is applied to the Mediterranean to bring its multiplicity into dialogue and to explore the possibility of creating a new epistemology of place. Mediter‐raneanizing cybertheory introduces diachronicity into theories of simultaneity.

• aquacentrism
• cyberepistemology
• diachronicity
• fixity/fluidity
• place

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Miriam Cooke

Dr. Cooke is a professor of Arabic literature at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708–0505.