THE MEDITERRANEAN AND CRITICAL SHIPWRECKS | By Iain Chambers
Who has the right to narrate, map and explain the Mediterranean?
Answering requires removing critical practices from the calculations of Western objectivity and relocating them within currents that constitute a historical density and cultural complexity that cannot be reduced to a single language or perspective, however universal its claims may be.
Renegotiating the Mediterranean, which is not automatically authorised by Occidental lexicons, leads to questioning and interrupting the linearity of the empty, homogeneous spacetime of “progress”. Here, the colonial clock is confronted with the temporalities and rhythms of other histories and lives.
Iain Chambers is an independent writer and researcher. He previously taught Mediterranean, cultural and postcolonial studies at the University of Naples, L'Orientale. His latest books are Lampedusa/Gaza. L’orologio coloniale e i linguaggi interrotti (2025) andThe Mediterranean Question (2025), co-authored with Marta Cariello. He writes regularly for the Italian daily IlManifesto.
Speaker: IAIN CHAMBERS
Discussant: ABDOUMALIQ SIMONE
Chaired by: CATERINA CIARLEGLIO
The meeting is part of the Beyond Inhabitation Lab seminar series Spring 2026.
The Beyond Inhabitation Lab provides an infrastructure to facilitate a process of collective study around the shifting terrain and politics of inhabitation globally, and is directed by Michele Lancione and AbdouMaliq Simone.
- To participate in person or online, you must register at this link
- More info Beyond Inhabitation Lab seminar series Spring 2026 at link Events – Beyond Inhabitation
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