Six. Which "Mediterranean"?
Six. Which "Mediterranean"?
A comparison of discursive practices from the European Union and the case studies
Chapter Four presented an analysis of the struggle of the European Union to define the Mediterranean through its policies addressed at this area. The aim here was to critically evaluate European Union Mediterranean policy as a discursive practice and in so doing to reveal the vague European Union 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 Five attempted to draw out some of the subjugated knowledges and alternative discourses on the Mediterranean that have been excluded or silenced by the European Union'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 European Union knowledge/power nexus (created through its discourse on the area). While the European Union struggles to fix meaning to the Mediterranean area, the cases revealed practices of questioning this flexible concept. Moreover, the discourse emerging from the European Union about the Mediterranean has been noted to be complicit with its structures of domination in certain sectors as shown in Chapter Three. The European Union clearly possesses a degree of control in the economic field. In contrast to this, the European Union lacks military clout that leaves it dependent on the United States of America, as in the case, for example, of the Middle East. In this manner, European Union discourses have served as systems and structures of signification that construct Mediterranean social realities.
In order to tie up these research results with the theoretical framework adopted in this book, this chapter seeks to summarise and compare the predications/truth statements of the Mediterranean in European Union discourses and practices (statements and texts) and discourses/practices of the Mediterranean in Greece, Morocco, and Malta.
The first section of this chapter will present and discuss a schematic outline of some of the various types of Mediterraneans that emerged from the discursive practices investigated through European Union texts/practices and through the textual analysis and interviews carried out in Brussels, Greece, Morocco, and Malta.
The following section will investigate how these different discourses/practices of the Mediterranean reflect upon the deficiencies of the European Mediterranean Policy. This will include an analysis of the implications of these diverse discourses on the Mediterranean for policy-making.
Two thousand six. Routledge.
which are here termed the effects of discourses on the Mediterranean. This section will present some ways in which the European Union Mediterranean policy can be re-analysed from a discursive-constructivist angle and in light of the findings of this research on discourses of the Mediterranean. The concluding section will rethink the reality and re-presentation of the Mediterranean in light of this research.
The various types of Mediterraneans - mapping out the various discourses uncovered through this inquiry
The various types of Mediterraneans - mapping out the various discourses uncovered through this inquiry
This book has been inspired by critical constructivist, discourse analysis and foreign policy writings in its investigation of the resulting essences and meanings of the Mediterranean from discursive practices of this area. In particular, the European Union's construction of the Mediterranean rests on a struggle to classify, organise and structure this area on the basis of some characteristics or contents that make the Mediterranean, as a community, meaningful and manageable for the European Union. This representation of the Mediterranean echoes Foucault's work that looks at how a domain can be organised and socially constructed through discursive practices and how such discourses contain a plurality of meanings. The outline presented below sketches out some of the contents or characters of the Mediterranean (not in any order of importance) that emerged from the discursive practices investigated here.