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Practical Mediterraneanism 61
In an article that otherwise faithfully reproduces the classic
Mediterraneanist position, Anton Blok makes the very interesting
point that ideas about honour in industrial societies tended
to disappear from the local level and become instead part of the
apparatus of national identity. 38 National identity became the
only legitimate kind. Blok clearly sees this as a sort of Eliasian
civilizing process, one that can be plotted along a more or less
unilinear model of evolutionary progression. (Contrary to what
they appear to think, Horden and Purcell and I are actually in
agreement in rejecting this kind of evolutionism.) On that logic,
we may suppose, once certain Mediterranean countries become
powerful modern states in their own right, we should expect the
same development to occur there as well. The point is not that it
does so as a matter of (evolutionary) course, but that the evolutionary
argument becomes part of the overall logic of the assumption
of state power—and this is a rhetoric that the most
absurdly self-Mediterraneanizing of regimes, that of the Greek
colonels (1967–74), was very happy to use, with its defensive
posture rejecting every exposure of internal cultural intimacies
as an insult to national pride. The expression of outraged dignity
is clearly the privilege of those with the power to do
something about it, while those whose power is literally emasculated
by a repressive system appear to ‘compensate’ by competing
in a game of honour. 39 That game, while it allows weaker
players to gain small stakes in a face-to-face game, condemns
them to perpetual marginality on larger stages. In this sense,
what works for the rural poor facing a national elite also works
for weak countries facing international power brokers; and at
both levels, too, the mantle of ‘tradition’ becomes instead the
dead weight of ‘traditionalism,’ the honour of past glory transmuted
into the opprobrium of present backwardness. This is a
non-evolutionary and discursive adaptation of Blok’s argument
that will, I think, work quite well in explaining why the stereotype
of Mediterrnean culture and society has continued to
38 Anton Blok, ‘Rams and Billy-Goats: A Key to the Mediterranean Code
of Honour’, Man (ns) 16 (1981), 427–40.
39 See especially David D. Gilmore, ‘Introduction: The Shame of Dishonor’,
in David D. Gilmore (ed.), Honor and Shame and the Unity of the
Mediterranean (Washington, 1987), 14.