Colonial, post-colonial, neo-colonial Mediterranean: historical, archaeological and iconographical sources for a micro-history of an uncomfortable thought

Abstract

Even in its most neutral meanings, the term “colonial” leads to questioning the cultural and ideological purpose of its use. This also concerns its derivatives, post-colonial and neo-colonial, whose prefixes are not to be interpreted in a merely chronological sense. This paper investigates the remote origins of a mental attitude that has resulted both in a “colonial” reading of some phenomena and in a post-colonial new interpretation. The aim is to highlight the common cultural bases of these two very different conceptions (in theory opposite and non-superimposable). Also, the interpretations which are apparently far from imperialism are not totally immune from the danger of a form of racism, even unintentional or unconscious, that has its roots in antiquity. From ancient Greece to the present day, the assumption for a cultural and political (or cultural then political) supremacy consisted in bringing together the other self in a sort of indistinct category, canceling its specificity. Leaving apart the obvious semantic shift, from the most general “Barbarians” to the apparently most specific “Semites” or “Arabic” all are terms used improperly, if not intentionally twisted. The purpose is to affirm a presumed mankind's superiority. The path from “proto-racism” to the actual racism has been largely supported by images. The reclaiming of the past did neither concern just its symbolic value nor its significance as model for propaganda. Even those historical reconstructions with a scientific approach and not necessarily related to the ideology of colonial regimes suffer from a much older prejudice. I will try to highlight how the “colonizer” can become, this time not necessarily in an unconscious or involuntary manner, a “colonized”, without this implying a taking of possession of a territory.