6 January 2026
In this blog post series, I present resnovation as a guiding concept to strategically address upcoming multidimensional challenges and crises. I am also developing a two-year collaborative think tanking project around the concept of resnovation.
The first blog post comes from a presentation I made in Malta in November 2025. The article will elaborate on the uniqueness of the resnovation concept and on ways to apply resnovation in various policy fields as well as in individual actions.
Beyond resilience
As noted in my 2018 article on cultural heritage protection, resilience has become the key word inspiring almost all (cultural) policy actions in contexts of crises and emergencies. Then, conflicts and tensions (particularly in Syria and with migrants’ tragedies) had already reached such a level that cultural heritage in the Mediterranean region had become like ‘petrified’. It appeared as very static and remote from the historical – Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Christian, Arabic, Al-Andalus, Ottoman – Mediterranean myths of cultural and interreligious coexistence under (relatively and supposedly) ‘fair’ rules of successive empires.
In 2025, the Maltese Chamber of Architects Kamra tal-Periti invited me to follow up on previous research to address the annual conference of the Mediterranean Architects Union (UMAR) focusing on cultural resilience in the region. Back in 2018, I already hinted at the idea that a resilience-based approach was not enough to design satisfactory cultural relations in the long-term.
In 2025 I thus worked on the crafting of a new concept that could be helpful to understand and conceptualise cultural dynamics in the Mediterranean region and equip ourselves for future (cultural) policies defending (cultural) rights against new rising forms of violence. By extension, it seemed that the concept of resnovation – presented now in this blog post series – had a deeper potential to guide our thinking, policies and actions in an increasingly conflictual world.
This blog post, presents the rationale behind the invention of the resnovation concept, first applied to the case of cultural relations in the Mediterranean region during my conference in Malta on 27 November 2025.
A second article explores the uniqueness of the resnovation concept. It results from the open-ended combination – or composition – of several intertwined notions (resistance, resilience, innovation and renovation) grounded both in historical philosophy and contemporary research. Resnovation provides new angles to look at the potential for human coexistence on a threatened planet.
From resilience to resistance
One definition of resilience – an extraordinarily popular and flexible concept – is the phenomenon through which a given individual, entity, group or organisation flexibly recovers from shocks, trauma or toughness. The literature on resilience, applied in numerous sectors, is extremely prolific and some experts have even compiled a genealogy of the concept.
The starting point here consists of acknowledging that levels of violence and conflicts in the region have reached such an intensity that it is not possible anymore to rely only on resilient strategies to ensure sustainable societal well-being and cultural rights. In other words, resilience is so much at threat because of various forms of violence that new concepts and new approaches are needed both to understand the world we are now living in, and to defend essential values and conditions of well-being in our societies.
The concept of resistance naturally emerged as an alternative or complementary approach to resilience. I explored this idea in a presentation at a February 2024 European Parliament’s public hearing, for culture Solutions. I remembered then an high-level EU official expressing doubts about the need to shift to resistance, clearly not anticipating the implications of Donald Trump’s second term and/or undermining the danger of populist and illiberal political forces in Europe.
New narratives about resistance (political, aesthetical, agroecological) against various forms of violence about – inter alia – Palestine, Ukraine, climate change and the threats created by aggressive MAGA-like movements are emerging.
Resistance against open and slow violence
Resilience strategies will not suffice to cope with widespread violence, conflicts and climate-related multidimensional crises. In 2025, violence against cultural and societal resilience was accelerated by at least five factors. First, political violence and extremist ideologies are creating new dividing lines within and between societies. Under Trump’s second mandate, political violence, diplomatic brutality and the use of force within and outside the US are widening gaps between social groups and countries. Ping’s China has institutionalized violent repression against minorities and widespread surveillance and has de facto supported Poutine’s aggression in Ukraine. In countries ruled by populist or ethno-nationalist forces such as India, resentment and hate narratives are flooding the public sphere. Mass atrocities in Israel and Palestine crystallize the radicalization of positions and the elimination of Palestine populations in Gaza has continued. The containment of migration flows in Europe (the EU now outsources border control) and the US has also become more repressive.
Second, fragmented geopolitics are likely to produce more international chaos and uncertainty. Foreign affairs have become unintelligible and extremely fluid. New power forces and empires are emerging while old ones are slowly declining. In such world, partnerships and alliances for resilience become more hazardous.
Thirdly, capitalistic competition based on extractive and consumerist models have become globalized and small geographical spaces like the Mediterranean region are now penetrated and influenced by global trade and productive flows, with dramatic ecological and societal consequences. Malta is a case in point: overtourism, overdevelopment and over fishing have led to biodiversity loss, heritage deterioration and decrease in well-being.
Finally, the generalized intrusion of AI technologies in all spheres of human activities is now radically impacting activities pursuing cultural and societal resilience, applying material and immaterial forms of slow violence on screens (bots), landscapes (data centres), peoples’ bodies (surveillance and monitoring), working and learning conditions. AI is also transforming efficiency and forms of violence itself, by playing a key role in warfare technology.
The combined impact of trends mentioned above is an increased risk of sudden destruction and collapse of common (social and cultural) spaces, lands, working cultures and heritage at large.
Next blog post will look at the uniqueness of the resnovation concept to address these challenges.