ABSTRACT
To frame the Mediterranean as a sea of voices is to affirm a heterophonous continuity with thinking past and present. In the preface to the first English edition of Fernand Braudel’s iconic two-volume tome on Mediterranean history, the conceit of “many voices” conveyed multiplicity—and indeed, mutability—at both historical and historiographical levels. In recent decades, research conducted within Mediterranean frameworks has proliferated against the background of yet additional perspectives and paradigms, ranging from postcolonial studies to comparative world history. Goffredo Plastino has offered a striking example of a musical practice that operates under the rubric of the Mediterranean, which nevertheless resists the Mediterranean’s geographical delimitation—even one defined by histories of social and stylistic encounter. The “post-World Music” band Dounia, in Plastino’s reading, evokes the Mediterranean while operating on a principle of “dislocation,” reflexively avoiding stylistic or discursive references to discrete Mediterranean localities.
