Summary

The Image of the Mediterranean Chronos/Topos and its 'differentia specifica'

The Mediterranean "world" is an open corpus of different cultures and identities of the past and today. A particular multifocalization of the interpretative axis is necessary to understand the complexity of the Mediterranean cultural continuum through civilizational and textual inter-inscription (some kind of dialogism and eclecticism). Two hermeneutic paradigms of interpreting the Mediterranean cultural tradition can be held: in one case, the totality and the historical events would be followed, and in the second, the mythical and ontological Mediterranean text, would be re-actualized. The image of the Mediterranean chronotopos can be observed from two perspectives: one is the perspective of continuity, the other of discontinuity. These perspectives of continuity and discontinuity, reflected in the concept of intertextuality, and addoption from one side, and in the concept of conflictuous differentiation, fragmentation and secularisation, from another side, are the constitutive principle of the semiotics of the Mediterranean cultural system (the Mediterranean inter-text). The Mediterranean chronotopos is, at the same time, inclusive and exclusive, dialogical and monological. But, the interchange of the systems is one of the dominant characteristic features of the Mediterranean chronotopos. This specific principle of the Mediterranean chronotopos is the central subject of this essay: juxtaposition of the complementary (inclusive) and opposite (exclusive) images of the Other in this multicultural area (model: Everybody is an Other and the Other is Me). The Mediterranean has been resistant to the establishment of mediterraneo-centric civilizational system. The semantics of the term Mediterranean expands and is supplemented with new references. The image of the Mediterranean chronotopos stores a particular encoded semiotic minimum of ontological/cosmological immanence, despite the numerous geo-political and formational transfigurations, despite the many historical revisions.

© Katica Kulavkova, 2001-2007.
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