Beirut: The Mediterranean Sea and the Imagination of the World-Ecology

Abstract

This article suggests incorporating into the considerations of the imagination of the world a conception of the environment as a product of the violent and long-lasting transformations produced by the capitalist system. To this end, I propose an analysis of the Mediterranean as a region shaped by overlapping forms of domination; an ambiguous environment that, despite having played a central role for historical and political cartographies, harbors unconventional readings of the world from interesting aesthetic-political approaches, often not contemplated in world literature debates. Through attention to its environmental production–that is, its uses and transformations as disposable nature– in this article I explore the representation of the Mediterranean as a place of movement and displacement, (neo)colonial subjugation and anticolonial resistance. Specifically, I analyze its representations in Zena el Khalil's Beirut, I Love You, a story between fiction and memoir that, through singular formal and generic solutions, reflects on the displaced condition of the Lebanese people, their integration into the global neoliberal system and the persistence of neocolonial violence.