Mediterranean season: towards a geopolitics of culture

The official opening of the cultural seasons is always marked by speeches full of thanks. We expected no less for that of the Mediterranean Season, inaugurated at the Palais du Pharo, in Marseille, Friday May 15 in the evening. The endless list of political figures and cultural actors thanked by the mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan, was almost an artistic performance. This is because the Mediterranean Season does not take half measures: aiming to highlight the quality of the relations maintained by the Republic with the countries of the southern shore of the Mediterranean, the event is the result of a transnational collaboration between France, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon, as well as with their respective cultural institutes, their ministries of Culture, Foreign Affairs and Defense. “This is the first time that a Season is not with a country, but with a geographical and cultural space.”recalled the president of the French Institute, Eva Nguyen Binh. Seventy years after the independence of Morocco and Tunisia, almost sixty-five years after that of Algeria, a little more than fifteen years after the Arab Spring, but also less than eight months after the recognition of the State of Palestine by France, and less than three months after the start of the Israeli offensive in Lebanon, if this season was “Long overdue”as the Minister of Culture, Catherine Pégard, pointed out, no one could have predicted the scope and urgency when it was announced by Emmanuel Macron, on June 27, 2023, in Marseille. Three years later, the…