The Eastern Mediterranean: towards a transcultural dialogue paradigm. The Italian-Egyptian case

Abstract

This paper seeks to analyse the transcultural scenario of the Mediterranean as a ‘constellation of histories’ that fits within a less rigid vision than that imposed by geography and official history. The universe of literary voices, particularly in the Eastern Mediterranean, transcending political borders and national barriers, creates through history various dialogical, thematic and linguistic practices that conceive ‘unity in multiplicity’, adopting Morin's expression. Within this framework, the paper takes Italian-Egyptian transcultural literature as a model, starting from the Italian theatre written in Egypt in the 19th century, and focusing on the Oriental ‘lingua franca’ well rooted in the Country. We then move on to the work of two second-generation migrant writers of Egyptian origin in Italy, Ingy Mubiayi and Randa Ghazy, analysing the identity mechanism underlying the current interaction between the two shores of the Mediterranean. It is a literature that re-reads itself in a transcultural key that considers the so-called ‘seven pillars of Egyptian identity’ specified in the volume of the same name published by compatriot writer Milad Hanna in 2007, and presents different moments on the road to integration between different cultures and languages.