Fascist modernity and Ottoman afterlives in the Eastern Mediterranean

Abstract

This chapter examines the politics of time-or chronopolitics-deployed by Italian authorities in the Dodecanese and the local reactions this elicited. An examination of this chronocenosis, or confrontation between references to time past and future, invoked both by the fascist administration as a title to rule and by the Dodecanesians themselves as a claim to entitlements, offers important insights into Italian colonial governance in the interwar period. In this case, it explains that despite Italian efforts to replace it with “modernity,” a pre-Italian, “Ottoman” past perpetuated itself in the power relations and the institutions created in the archipelago. © 2025 selection and editorial matter, Valerie McGuire and Aron Rodrigue.