Chi dice Mediterraneo...Eclissi o alternativa di un orizzonte

For Danilo Zolo, the Mediterranean horizon represented the space for an alternative to the imperialist legal, political and economic model promoted by the processes of globalization. In this sense, dialogue between Mediterranean cultures was not a “folkloristic” corollary of the Mediterranean question: on the contrary, it constituted its fulcrum, the main instrument for identifying strategic and peaceful alliances between intellectual and associative contexts, capable of launching innovative and original paths of mutual knowledge and shared planning. Although, at the time of Zolo’s formulation, the idea of the “Mediterranean alternative” stood as a radical contestation of the US neo-imperialist order, in the current scenario it resonates as a perspective in open contrast with the impoverishing representation of the Mediterranean as an empty space, devoid of qualifying specificities. By recovering the perspective – and the practice – of dialogue between the two shores it is possible to give substance once again to the alternative understood as the construction of international relations in a peaceful, equal and post-colonial key.