Recovered archive. Dates, ages, roles and announcements reflect the original publication; they are not current updates.
Lorenzo Declich, a specialist in the contemporary Islamic world, Arabic translator and essayist, and now a new Maydan member, explains in this post that the Mediterranean is home to a “multilingual, multicultural community of meaning that lives naturally with diversity, that does not agonise over identity even though it has many other problems. A community that understands how political knowledge is.”
In the introduction to Giulio Regeni: The Ignored Truths, a book written in a few weeks to give interested readers a basis for thinking about the young researcher tortured and killed in Cairo, I noted:
“I would have liked to write about Italians in Egypt and Italians of Egypt: those who, in the past but especially today, create culture and criticism rather than business deals.”
The remark arose from a conversation I had in those weeks with Francesca Biancani. We were reflecting on the length and depth of Mediterranean intermingling, on the centuries-old Italian communities scattered around its shores, their role over the decades and, above all, what had changed with the new generations to which Giulio Regeni belonged. I remember Erri De Luca, during Amnesty International’s gathering at La Sapienza University marking the first year since the researcher’s disappearance, reading a piece by Regeni on the Mediterranean’s unity.
That atrocious state murder was a tragic alarm for the now substantial community of researchers, activists, intellectuals and artists who in recent years have truly begun to see a world without borders: a world where what happens in Egypt concerns us all; where, without critical and intelligent eyes in that country and every other, we risk yielding to sovereignist movements, foolish identities stripped of history, and “us against them”.
For reasons of age I do not belong to that community, but I regard it with growing empathy. It is a vital resource, or at least a barrier against the advance of economic and political powers that would prefer us blindfolded. It bears witness to another way of thinking: one that survives and wants to act in an unconstrained space, considering broader unities and imbalances, such as the Mediterranean and everything that revolves around it historically, culturally and politically.
It is a multilingual, multicultural community of meaning, living naturally with diversity, not troubled by questions of identity despite its many problems. A community that understands how political knowledge is.
In that introduction I cited an article by Amro Ali entitled “Giulio and the Italians of Egypt”, translated by Internazionale as “Giulio Regeni and the Italians in Egypt Who Denounce the Regime”. It discussed the Italian presence in Egypt and, above all, the danger that the work of dozens upon dozens of Mediterranean researchers might be buried in the years ahead. Ali wrote:
“Regeni could be the first non-Egyptian to join the martyrs of the Egyptian revolution. It was the first attempt to challenge the equation between citizenship and patriotism. It matters that a member of a transnational community can claim an equal, if not greater, commitment to Egypt’s public welfare.”
Asked by Ali, Lucia Sorbera, an “Italian feminist historian from Pisa who spent many years researching in Egypt”, emphasised:
“Rebellion was needed in a Europe of austerity policies, and the act of rebellion was happening in Egypt. Egypt was inspiring us to challenge our reality.”
The wave was transnational. It is no coincidence that Occupy Wall Street and the Indignados, but also the London riots and later Istanbul’s Taksim Square, followed Tunisia and Tahrir Square. Yet 2011 is past, the uprisings have been crushed, and old and new authoritarian regimes hold sway. Syria is destroyed, its people exhausted, its bloodthirsty dictator on the verge of rehabilitation. And these days we are marking the third anniversary of Giulio Regeni’s murder.
Is it all over? I do not think so. In recent years I have met many people in their twenties and thirties. They are still there, and their attitude has not changed. Their view of the world remains the same, because that is how they were born. A few days ago I heard about the creation of Maydan, “an association of Mediterranean citizens, including activists, intellectuals, artists, entrepreneurs, researchers and other workers, committed to building Mediterranean citizenship and a shared destiny”. Its manifesto, still being developed, says:
“Over the past decade, Mediterranean nations and territories have been at the centre of numerous social struggles. Yet the demands of the many people who demonstrated against the region’s old regimes, as well as unjust socioeconomic systems and austerity measures, have often been betrayed. A lack of opportunities and prospects on both shores has widened the divide between institutions and younger generations, who have lost confidence in the political system and feel deprived of their future.
The crisis has also intensified the stigmatisation of migrants, whose numbers have risen because of the civil wars in Libya and Syria and deteriorating conditions in many African states. Meanwhile, numerous social and political groups and individuals are reorganising into identity-based formations inspired by nationalism, authoritarianism, and religious and cultural uniformity, or are seeking personal and social redemption through armed struggle. This situation endangers cooperation, the very concept of citizenship, and the idea of cultural and geographical belonging to the region.
As women and men of the Mediterranean committed to human rights and social justice, concerned about the region’s cultural and environmental heritage and dedicated to a shared Mediterranean future:
A. We have drawn positive and negative lessons from uprisings and social protests that began against austerity policies, the commodification of public goods and the erosion of social rights in many European countries, then spread to most countries on the southern shore and suddenly throughout the region. We have looked with solidarity towards new political groups whose platforms drew on the anti-austerity movements of 2008 and the demands of the revolutionary movements of 2011;
B. We are inspired by the 1941 Ventotene Manifesto, written by a group of antifascist activists and intellectuals seeking a free and united Europe. It inspired European peoples fighting Fascism and Nazism to imagine a project of European integration;
C. We pay close attention to the Porto Alegre Charter, the founding text of the World Social Forum, which encouraged strong social and civil society movements in the region and provides the platform for the anti-globalisation movement mobilising against economic exploitation and colonialism.”
There is still much we can do. Read that manifesto, help write its final version, and join the association. I have just done so.
18 January 2019.
Lorenzo Declich (1967), historian and scholar of Islamic studies, taught the History of Islam in the Indian Ocean at L’Orientale University in Naples (2002–2006). He has co-translated Arabic essays for Fandango, Neri Pozza, Sellerio and Mondadori, and introduced and edited Islam and Secularism by Abdou Filali-Ansari (Cooper-Castelvecchi, 2003). His contributions include work for Il manifesto, Confronti, Avvenimenti, Loop, Europa, Rai’s La Storia siamo noi, Limes, Limes online, The Post Internazionale and Nazione Indiana. He edits the blog Tutto in 30 secondi and created the aggregator Islametro. In 2015 he published Naked Islam: The Remains of a Civilisation in the Global Market (Jouvence). Giulio Regeni: The Ignored Truths (2018) is his latest book.
