Mare nostrum touches which continents

Military patrols using live ammunition against unarmed men, women and children scaling barbed wire fences, captains dumping their human cargo in the sea after being detected by the navy, left-to-die boats and mass deportations in the high seas: these are scenes not from the Second World War, but from the modern-day Mediterranean.

The externalization of borders is a result of this policy. The non-EU countries are essentially asked to hold back irregular migrants and prevent their entry into European territories in return for financial aid. However, for Balibar, the fact that borders have been blurred does not mean that they tend to disappear.

On the contrary, they tend to become ubiquitous Colluccello et al. Hostile feelings towards migrants are politically constructed in a delicate strategy of social manipulation. Throughout Europe, migrants are being scapegoated as the cause of national unemployment and, hence, they figure as a national pollutant. The gut reaction to social insecurity and economic crisis is thus fostered by media prejudice and public discourses Basso, The state of exception is the dominant paradigm of government in crisis or emergency contexts.

The relation of the exception is a relation of ban. He who has been banned is not, in fact, simply set outside the law and made indifferent to it but rather abandoned by it, that is, exposed and threatened on the threshold in which life and law, outside and inside, become indistinguishable.

Agamben, The words pronounced by Tineke Strik, member of the Council of Europe, perfectly summarize this tremendous paradox:. The Guardian , March 28, The economic model of late capitalism takes advantage, therefore, of political practices and cultural forms that enable it to preserve its extreme dynamism and, at the same time, to acquire features sufficiently organized to work in a coherent way.

Human experience is considered to be organized on the basis of a conceptual scheme that actually makes its translation into another scheme impossible, because the experiential data of one might lack their equivalent in the other. On the basis of this theoretical approach, therefore, there is no world, but only manifold representations of it, each one irreducible to the other. The denial of the existence of a common horizon which might be more or less wide, but not totally absent undermines any chance of agreement and interaction among individuals.

In fact , this is overlooked because the subject. Finelli, Briefly, it is a class that lives entirely separated from the everyday life of common people in their countries. Daniel Heller-Roazen. Agamben, Giorgio , State of Exception. Translation by Kevin Attell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Alcaro, Mario , Filosofie della natura. Naturalismo mediterraneo e pensiero moderno. Roma: Manifestolibri. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Accessed on Stati Uniti, Europa, Italia.

Milano: Franco Angeli, Borders, Conflict and Memory in a Transnational World. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Paris: Flammarion. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, Milano: Feltrinelli, Finelli, Roberto , Tra moderno e postmoderno. Saggi di filosofia sociale e di etica del riconoscimento. Lecce: Pensa Multimedia. Fortini, Franco , Extrema ratio. Note per un buon uso delle rovine. Milano: Garzanti. The Hague: Kluwer Law International, Harvey, David , The Condition of Postmodernity. Cambridge-Massachusetts: Basil Blackwell. Brussels: Centre for European Studies.

Latouche, Serge , La sfida di Minerva. Each artist presents works inspired by the theme of the project: the dialogue between different peoples who share the fact that they all belong to this extraordinary place. The large planisphere entitled Viaggio nei progetti , painted by Mario Schifano , has been the main source of inspiration for the exhibition, as the heart of its project is the Mediterranean seen as a fertile arena for innovation and the interpretation of the new technologies.

The work was featured in the official catalogue of the exhibition, published by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore. Domus Domus. The sea is my land The work of 22 artists from the Mediterranean area will be exhibited at the MAXXI in Rome in order to envisage this area also as a crossroads connecting different civilisations.