ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 presented an analysis of the struggle of the EU to define the Mediterranean through its policies addressed at this area. The aim here was to critically evaluate EU Mediterranean policy as a discursive practice and in so doing to reveal the vague EU representations of this area that is here understood as an area continuously in the making. As a contribution to the explanation and critique of such international practices, Chapter 5 attempted to draw out some of the subjugated knowledges and alternative discourses on the Mediterranean that have been excluded or silenced by the EU’s hegemonic discourse. This was carried out through an examination of the discourses about the Mediterranean and Europe emanating from Greece, Malta and Morocco. It was observed that these alternative discourses on the Mediterranean often work in resistance to the dominant EU knowledge/power nexus (created through its discourse on the area). While the EU struggles to fix meaning to the Mediterranean area, the cases revealed practices of questioning this flexible concept. Moreover, the discourse emerging from the EU about the Mediterranean has been noted to be complicit with its structures of domination in certain sectors as shown in Chapter 3. The EU clearly possesses a degree of control in the economic field. (In contrast to this, the EU lacks military clout that leaves it dependent on the USA, as in the case, for example, of the Middle East.) In this manner, EU discourses have served as systems and structures of signification that construct Mediter-ranean social realities.
