Southern Thought and Other Essays on the Mediterranean
Price:
$28.00 (01)A Fordham University Press Publication
Description
In 1996, with the publication of Southern Thought, Italian writer Franco Cassano became widely recognized as one of the most important voices in the contemporary Italian and European intellectual scene. In this engaging and provocative book, which ranges effortlessly between the fields of sociology, political science, philosophy, cultural anthropology, and literature, Cassano offers a critique of normative models of modernization derived from Eurocentric and North Atlantic paradigms, while claiming that autonomous paths to modernity exist in the Mediterranean and the so-called Global Souths. Cassano's rethinking of the South seeks nothing less than to reverse the North-South relationship: not to think of the South in light of modernity, but rather to think of modernity in light of the South.In this work, the South is no longer a belated, imperfect, incomplete, and not-yet North but the space of a differential, autonomous identity to be recovered and rediscovered. Thus, Southern Thought not only exemplifies a brilliant critique of Occidentalism but represents a valiant attempt to restore agency and dignity to the heritage and legacies of Southern civilizations and cultures. Four additional essays supplement this English translation of the original Italian book.Features
- Italian writer Franco Cassano has became widely recognized as one of the most important voices in the contemporary Italian and European intellectual scene
- Cassano rethinks the south of Italy--showing the South no longer as a belated, imperfect, incomplete, and not-yet North but the space of a differential, autonomous identity to be recovered and rediscovered
- Four additional essays supplement this English translation of the original Italian book
Reviews
Cassano's book furnishes a theoretical and sociohistorical map whereby marginality, silence, difference, and other forms of cultural suppression can finally articulate a discourse aimed not solely at deconstructing Northern European modernity, but at shaping a new understanding of the complex relation between peoples, cultures and the environment. These perspectives have long been locked up in the Souths of the world, and in the Mediterranean in particular.-Peter Carravetta
Franco Cassano Il pensiero meridiano was a pioneer work of today's talks and debates on the Global South. His insightful thoughts and clear prose remind us that the Southern Question includes Europe and the US and not only the ex-Third World. From Gramsci's Southern Question to Cassano's Il pensiero meridiano and to Roberto Dainotto Europe (In Theory), a powerful genealogy of geopolitics of knowledge is a trade mark of Italian de-colonial thinking. This translation is a welcome and needed contribution to enlarge the spectrum of European critical thoughts.-Walter Mignolo
This remarkable translation of Franco Cassano's Southern Thought,supplemented by other essays on the Mediterranean, offers to theEnglish speaking world the long awaited and much needed access to one of the most original and provocative minds of our times. Written with verve, intelligence and passion against all fundamentalisms, religious and economic alike, Cassano's pages are as invaluable to scholars inthe growing field of Mediterranean Studies as they will be stimulating to the general reader.-Roberto Dainotto
About the Author(s)
Franco Cassano, is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Bari. Norma Bouchard is Associate Professor of Italian Studies and Chair of Modern and Classical Languages at the University of Connecticut. Valerio Ferme is Associate Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at the University of Colorado.
