Otherworlds (mediterranean Lessons On Escaping History)

By (author) Campagna Federico
Short description/annotation:
A philosophical guide to contending with the end of the world and how new world or ''otherworlds'' can be born using the history of the Mediterranean as inspiration.
Description:

What can survive the end of the world?

In Otherworlds, philosopher Federico Campagna constructs extraordinary stories and alternative histories of the Mediterranean, nexus of migrations and odysseys, ruins and romances, to depict a world in which the imagination is the only engine of survival.

Chapter by chapter, Campagna chronicles the existential challenges posed by history and the inventive and radical responses of people facing the ruin of their world. From the earliest myths with which the inhabitants of the kingdoms around the Mediterranean constructed a shared social reality, the stories of the Mediterranean are dominated by cataclysm and collapse in which fugitive fragments become the building blocks of resilience and renewal. Alexander the Great’s cataclysmic conquests seed a cycle of existential romances; pagan philosophers fleeing the fall of Rome give rise to new visions of reality; translators across the Islamic world, Iberia and Italy use stories to bridge the gap between cultures at war and pirates, slaves, renegades and publishers expand the imaginative horizons of human possibility through modernity and beyond.

In Campagna’s lyrical, novel and expansive work – part history, part philosophy, part love letter to a heritage of seasonal migration and searches for belonging – the challenges of disintegration and destruction are time and again met with the creation of new and radical realities. As rich and various as the philosophy, myths, literature and art of the Mediterranean itself, Otherworlds traces the tales of these attempts to reinvent the world – and reveals how, at the most dramatic and decisive junctures of Mediterranean history, it was the ability to set sail for these other worlds which prevailed

Table of contents:

0. Introduction: Seasons.
1. Mortals – The Bronze Age
2. Foreigners – Hellenism
3. Cosmonauts – Late Antiquity
4. Translators – The Middle Ages
5. Traitors – Modernity
6. Migrants – The Contemporary Age

Bibliography and Further Reading Endnote

Review quote:
Federico Campagna’s Otherworlds is a crucial book for the 21st Century. It’s a book about Mediterranean togetherness as its own reality system, through which we can understand existence. Campagna’s system are not absolute, but always subject to change.
Biographical note:
Federico Campagna is an Italian philosopher based in London. His latest books, Prophetic Culture (Bloomsbury, 2021) and Technic and Magic (Bloomsbury, 2018) explored how ‘worlds’ can be born, destroyed, and created anew. He is a Lecturer in Intellectual History at the art university ECAL in Lausanne, Associate Fellow at the Warburg Institute in London, and Critical Fellow at the Royal Academy Schools in London. He is the co-founder of the Italian philosophy publisher Timeo and a director at the Anglo-American radical publisher Verso. He frequently collaborates as public speaker, podcaster and writer with some of the main international museums, contemporary art galleries and biennales.
Promotional headline:
A philosophical guide to contending with the end of the world and how new world or ''otherworlds'' can be born using the history of the Mediterranean as inspiration.
Feature:
As the world seems increasingly exposed to catastrophes - pandemics, environmental, political and beyond - a sourcebook/guide to surviving seismic shifts is very timely
Feature:
The tone, approach and scope of this book is utterly unique - it is a history, a philosophy, a guide and a