ABSTRACT
Current study of the Mediterranean seems to be affected by a continuous dichotomy. When Horden and Purcell (2000: 39-43) stated that Braudel’s (1972) magnum opus marked the ‘end of the Mediterranean’, they meant that it was increasingly difficult to study it as an intelligible unity. Since then, the notion of the Mediterranean has repeatedly been called into question as a modern construct. Herzfeld (1984; 1987) and de Pina-Cabral (1989; 1992), for example, consider any unitary perception of the region as an illusion resulting from the marginalisation of the Mediterranean vis-à-vis northern Europe, in mainly Romantic representations. ˆe material and ideological French interests of the nineteenth and twentieth century have also been highlighted as a source of this unified image (Ruel 1991), and similar views have recently been signalled in modern art (Jirat-Wasiutynsky 2007). ˆe Mediterranean has also been presented as a modern product of discursive hegemony, like the Orient before it (Said 1978), and the term ‘Mediterraneanism’ might be seen as one way of describing this situation (Knapp and Blake 2005: 2). Other scholars, however, have directed their efforts to establishing new methodological and theoretical frameworks to reassess the historical study of this region (Horden and Purcell 2000; Blake and Knapp 2005; Harris 2005). ˆis apparently irreconcilable dichotomy between constructivist and practical
approaches makes the Mediterranean an elusive and slippery notion. It disappears under discursive scrutiny but it makes sense if used ‘on the go’. ˆe Mediterranean might therefore be considered a ‘black box’ as described by the French sociologist Bruno Latour (2005: 26). For him, scientific facts and theories that from the outside appear coherent in practical scientific activity are like closed black boxes. If
considered from a critical perspective, however, they appear to be contingent and dependent on their sociological trajectory – as a box that is opened. In a broad sense this scheme could be applied to all scientific productions but, in practice, this situation is more characteristic of scientific controversies (Latour 2005: 29). ˆe only way to evaluate all the implications behind a controversy is thus to analyse its practical formation, that is, to study scientific production as it is being made. Although it is obviously impossible to analyse directly an intellectual process that took place in the past, the opportunity remains to analyse the social formation of its categories within a historical context. ˆe aim of this study, therefore, is to offer a brief look at that process of scientific
representation of the Mediterranean. ˆe key role of classification in modern epistemic regimes makes the ‘order of things’ particularly interesting for this purpose (Foucault 2004: 126-46), as the material connections established by classificatory practices throughout the Mediterranean may give us some idea of the repercussions of this process upon the formation of identities. I focus on the scientific missions that accompanied the French military exploits of the nineteenth century across the Mediterranean, as these interventions are widely regarded as fundamental for the modern scientific representation of this region (Bourguet et al. 1998; 1999). A closer look at the particular circumstances surrounding the processes of mobility and materiality offers interesting insights into many aspects of modern Mediterranean identities. In the concluding section I suggest how the dichotomies of these representations might be overcome.
