Bibliography: 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 English Antonini, Francesca. “Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will: Gramsci’s Political Thought in the Last Miscellaneous Notebooks.” Rethinking Marxism 31.1 (2019): 42–57. [Source] Abstract: In the Prison Notebooks, Gramsci combines a “pessimistic” analysis of the growing authoritarian trends of the 1930s with an “optimistic” commitment to the potential for socialist transformation and the elaboration of an effective strategy for the workers’ movement. By discussing key texts from his miscellaneous notebooks 14, 15, and 17, this essay investigates the way in which, in the last phase of his work in prison, Gramsci interpreted the changing political and social dynamics that characterized Western countries of his time (and that are also central, mutatis mutandis, in present-day politics). In particular, the essay focuses on the complex conceptual cluster elaborated by Gramsci (with the categories of “bureaucracy,” “police,” “discipline,” and “political party”) as he explored the transformations of the mechanisms of political participation, identified the new “totalitarian” forms of political engagement of his times, and thought about possible solutions. Antonini, Francesca. “Gramsci and the ‘crisis of modernity’: double review of Gramsci e la crisi europea negli anni Trenta (Angelo Rossi) e Modernità alternative. Il Novecento di Antonio Gramsci (Giuseppe Vacca) (English).” International Gramsci Journal 3.3 (2019): 91–97. Source. Abstract: This is a double review in English by Francesca Antonini of the volumes by Angelo Rossi, Gramsci e la crisi europea negli anni Trenta [Gramsci and the European Crisis of the Nineteen Thirties] (Guida, Napoli 2017) and Giuseppe Vacca, Modernità alternative. Il Novecento di Antonio Gramsci [Alternative Modernities. The Twentieth Century of Antonio Gramsci ] (Einaudi, Torino 2017). Asgarivash, Marziyeh, and Karim Pourhamzavi. “Japanese Development and Iranian Uneven Development: A Gramscian Perspective.” International Gramsci Journal 3.3 (2019): 3–19. Source. Abstract: Why Iran is underdeveloped and significantly dominated by imperial Western powers has been debated among Iranian intellectuals for more than a century. Japan’s rise in the late 19th/early 20th centuries and its defeat of Russia in 1904-5 made it something of a model that Iran might follow in order to catch up with the developed capitalist world. Approaches which focus on this have been essentially liberal and “cultural” in nature. The aim of the current study is to re-examine the question of Iranian underdevelopment, using Gramsci’s heritage to compare the actual contexts and material/historical roots of Japanese development and Iranian underdevelopment. That is, to suggest the Japanese indigenous programme to develop the country was not significantly interrupted by foreign imperial powers. However, in the Iranian case, the emergence of multiple historical blocs and their progressive agendas were repeatedly interrupted and defeated by the dominating imperial powers, namely Britain, Russia and, from the mid-20th century onwards, the United States. The comparison between the two historical cases of Iran and Japan indicate that the global economic system played a crucial role in shaping the development of Japan and the uneven development/underdevelopment of Iran. Ausilio, Manuela. “Using Gramsci. A Pedagogical Perspective.” International Gramsci Journal 3.2 (2019): 93–102. Source. Abstract: This is an English-language review by Manuela Ausilio of Massimo Balducci’s recent book Usare Gramsci. Una prospettiva pedagogica [Using Gramsci. A Pedagogical Perspective] (Roma, Carocci). It looks at Gramsci’s relevance to current pedagogy and includes a critical examination of previous writers on Gramsci and educational topics, with a glance at others who adopted similar stances to his. Boothman, Derek. “Dizionario gramsciano / Gramsci Dictionary: Translatability.” International Gramsci Journal 3.3 (2019): 72–76. Source. Abstract: This is an English translation of the Gramsci Dictionary contribution “Translatability”. The entry outlines how Gramsci approaches the question of the extent to which natural languages as expressions of national cultures are translatable. In the Notebooks he starts from and elaborated on Marx’s position in the Holy Family, namely that specific discourses (e. g. French political literature and German classical philosophy to which Gramsci adds English classical political economy) that characterize the national culture of each of these peoples – all having, it should be noted, a similar degree of social development – reflect their social base. From the historical point of view, then, Gramsci maintains, their civilizations and the specific discourses that arise within them are mutually translatable. Burawoy, Michael. Symbolic Violence: Conversations with Bourdieu. Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2019. [ISBN: 978-1-4780-0647-3]. Abstract: In Symbolic Violence Michael Burawoy brings Pierre Bourdieu into an extended debate with Marxism—a tradition Bourdieu ostensibly avoided. While Bourdieu’s expansive body of work stands as a critique of Marx’s inadequate account of cultural domination, Burawoy shows how Bourdieu’s eschewal and rejection of Marxism led him to miss out on a number of productive theoretical engagements. In eleven “conversations,” Burawoy outlines the intellectual and biographical parallels and divergences between Bourdieu and the work of preeminent Marxist thinkers. Among many topics, Burawoy examines Bourdieu’s appropriation and silencing of Beauvoir and her theory of masculine domination; the commonalities as well as differences in Bourdieu’s and Fanon’s thought on colonialism and revolution; the extent to which Gramsci’s theory of hegemony aligns with Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic violence; and both how Freire and Bourdieu understood education as the site of oppression. In showing how Bourdieu has more in common with these thinkers than Bourdieu himself cared to admit, Burawoy offers a critical assessment of Bourdieu’s work that illuminates its paradoxes and reaffirms its significance for the twenty-first century.
Carley, Robert F. Culture and Tactics: Gramsci, Race, and the Politics of Practice. New York: SUNY Press, 2019. [ISBN: 978-1-4384-7643-8]. Source. Abstract: Juxtaposes Antonio Gramsci’s work and critical race theory to offer a new understanding of tactics as a transformative practice.While scholars of social and political movements tend to analyze tactics in terms of their effectiveness in achieving specific outcomes, Robert F. Carley argues by contrast that tactics are, above all, what social movements do. They are not mere means to an end so much as they are a public form of expression pointing out injustices and making just demands. Rooted in a highly original analysis of the tactically mediated relationship between race and mobilization in the work of Italian philosopher and revolutionary Antonio Gramsci, Culture and Tactics demonstrates how tactics impact the organizational structures of social movements and expand the affinities of political communities. Carley looks at how Gramsci used innovative tactics to bridge perceptions of racial differences between factory workers and subaltern groups, the latter having been denigrated to the point of subhumanity by a complex Italian national racial economy. Newly envisioning Gramsci as a theorist of race within a broader context of social struggle, Carley connects Gramsci’s insights into the political mobilizations of racialized subaltern groups to contemporary critical race theory and cultural studies of racialization and racism. Speaking across disciplines and drawing on a number of empirical examples, Carley offers a battery of original concepts to assist scholars and activists in analyzing the tactical practices of protests in which race is a central factor. Chesta, Riccardo Emilio, and Michael Burawoy. “The Modern Prince and the Sociological Imagination. Michael Burawoy in Conversation with Riccardo Emilio Chesta.” Sociologica 13.1 (2019): 83–96. Source. Abstract: In this conversation, Michael Burawoy discusses how he discovered the sociology of Gramsci in radically diverse contexts — from a vibrant post-colonial Zambia to Analytical Marxism in Chicago. The British sociologist reconnects the travels of these debates to contemporary public sociology, updating Gramsci’s key sociological concepts with the critical scholarship of Pierre Bourdieu, the social anthropology of Jaap Van Velsen and Raja Jayaraman, and the political economy of Karl Polanyi. These somehow real and imaginary conversations with social theorists bring Burawoy to stress the importance of reflexivity in sociological research. This means that sociological imagination is fostered through a constant dialectical relation between the art of theorizing and the “concrete phantasies” of social movements, which are well exemplified in Wright’s “real utopias.” Moreover, in Burawoy’s view, a new “Modern Prince” is urgently needed today and it is a public sociology which recognizes the mission of his critical knowledge against marketization. Chino, Takahiro. “Gramsci’s critique of Croce on the Catholic Church.” History of European Ideas 0.0 (2019): 1–15. [Source] Abstract: Antonio Gramsci rigorously analysed the modern transformation of the Catholic Church and its strategy to spread its worldview to the Italian masses through secular means. His critique of the Church largely drew on his examination of the grounds that ensured Croce’s critique was doomed to failure. Despite its harshness, Croce’s critique failed because he did not grasp that the main target of the Church’s strategy was the common sense of the masses, while Croce pursued his critique in a highly idealist manner, appealing only to his fellow intellectuals. He thereby, according to Gramsci, helped to reinforce the Church’s strategy by endorsing the rigid separation between the intellectuals and the masses. In contrast, unlike Croce and orthodox Marxism, Gramsci did not dismiss religion as a mere absurdity, recognising it as a source of people’s common sense that, albeit confusing in nature, informed their worldview. Gramsci considered that even the common sense of the masses constituted an appropriate grasp of the world, or ‘good sense’. In this sense, Gramsci’s critique of religion echoed his preoccupation with the longstanding division of Italian society between the intellectuals and the masses, which prevented mass participation in politics. Chung, Paul S. “Orientalism, the Problematic of Marx, Subaltern Studies.” In Critical Theory and Political Theology: The Aftermath of the Enlightenment. 167–205. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2019. [Source] Abstract: With this new model of political theology in mind, this chapter discusses Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism with respect to its significance and limitations. He classifies Karl Marx as a Eurocentric thinker and attacks Marx’s mode of representation in justifying the British rule in India. Spivak follows in the footsteps of Said. This postcolonial portrayal of Marx causes a debate and becomes a domain of ‘problematic’ standing in need of further clarification. To the degree that postcolonial thinkers under French poststructuralist theory argue against the shibboleth of humanism; they still present a new form of humanism for the subaltern in reference to Antonio Gramsci. I enlarge the place of Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis in a postcolonial setting in critical review of Said and Spivak. In difference from these two thinkers, it is significant to explicate the significance and limitation of Gramsci’s theory of ideology (a la Machiavelli) and his historical materialism in view of Karl Marx’s own thought. This study facilitates political theology in its critical engagement with the postcolonial theory, providing a broader framework for the political theology to take into account subaltern studies and Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis. Doucette, Jamie. “Political will and human geography: Non-representational, post-political, and Gramscian geographies.” Progress in Human Geography (2019): [Source] Abstract: Inspired by philosopher Peter Hallward’s call for a renewed focus on political will, this article examines its conceptualization within three areas of the discipline: non-representational theory, post-politics, and Gramscian geographies. Non-representational theorists draw attention to the role of affect in shaping political life, but have little to say about conscious collective volition. In contrast, post-politics scholars offer an extensive vocabulary for understanding political will as a prescriptive form of agency, but risk confining the political to an abstract, regulative idea. Meanwhile, Gramscian geographies’ dialectical approach to political will can complement both by mediating between extremes of objective and subjective determination. Egan, Daniel. “Rosa Luxemburg and the Mass Strike: Rethinking Gramsci’s Critique.” Socialism and Democracy 33.2 (2019): 46–66. Source. England, Christopher. “Hegemony, Ideology, Governmentality: Theorizing State Power after Weber.” Spectra 7.1 (2019): 13–23. [Source] Francioni, Gianni. “Structure and Description of the Prison Notebooks.” International Gramsci Journal 3.2 (2019): 65–82. Source. Abstract: This is an English-language guide to Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. The original guide was originally modified and made available in English for an exhibition in Moscow earlier in 2019, in which some of the Notebooks were on show. The English-language version for the Moscow exhibition was more generic in nature than the Italian one on which it was based. The current English version contains integrations from the Italian text to bring it more into line with the original text (see previous article). The guide illustrates the structure of the Notebooks, lists the general contents of each of them and, as far as possible, indicates why given notes are found in given sections of the Notebooks, often special sections set aside on purpose, sometimes with Gramsci’s own titling, for second draftings. Such notebook titles and section sub-titles, if in italics, are Gramsci’s own; otherwise they are later editorial additions. Particular attention is paid to the division between miscellaneous, special and translation notebooks; the article includes the most up-to-date information available on when and where each notebook was written. Fraser, Nancy. The Old is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born: From Progressive Neoliberalism to Trump and Beyond. London ; New York: Verso, 2019. [ISBN: 978-1-78873-272-7]. Abstract: Neoliberalism is fracturing, but what will emerge in its wake?The global political, ecological, economic, and social breakdown—symbolized by Trump’s election—has destroyed faith that neoliberal capitalism is beneficial to the majority. Nancy Fraser explores how this faith was built through the late twentieth century by balancing two central tenets: recognition (who deserves rights) and distribution (who deserves income). When these begin to fray, new forms of outsider populist politics emerge on the left and the right. These, Fraser argues, are symptoms of the larger crisis of hegemony for neoliberalism, a moment when, as Gramsci had it, “the old is dying and the new cannot be born.” In an accompanying interview with Jacobin publisher Bhaskar Sunkara, Fraser argues that we now have the opportunity to build progressive populism into an emancipatory social force. Fusaro, Lorenzo. Crises and Hegemonic Transitions: From Gramsci’s Quaderni to the Contemporary World Economy. Crises and Hegemonic Transitions. Brill, 2019. ISBN: 978-90-04-29702-9. Source. Abstract: Crises and Hegemonic Transitions reworks the concept of hegemony at the international level and analyses its relation to world market crises. Returning to the critical edition of Gramsci’s Quaderni and maintaining that the author’s work is permeated by Marx’s Capital and the law of value, Fusaro argues that imperialist states strive to constructing hegemonic relations in order to secure capital accumulation using domination and leadership, coercion and consensus, and that economic crises have only the potential to provoke crises of hegemony. Tracing the vicissitudes of US hegemony from the interwar period to the present and assessing the Great Depression’s and the Great Recession’s impact, Fusaro provides a novel way to interpret past and present developments within the world economy. Gontijo, Caio, and Leonardo Ramos. “Caesarism, populism, and the 2018 election in Brazil.” Capital & Class (2019). Source. Abstract: This article seeks to foster a critical engagement with the current Brazilian political scenario, mobilizing for the analysis concepts like crisis, Caesarism, and populism. Hence, we start from the Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment process as the departing point to think about the debacle of PT’s government as well as Lula’s left Caesarism, passing through Michel Temer’s government, its neoliberal reforms and the scenario previous to the 2018 presidential election in order to contextualize the rise of Jair Bolsonaro and present the Caesarist polarization between Bolsonaro and Haddad (Lula’s political heir). Hesketh, Chris. “A Gramscian Conjuncture in Latin America? Reflections on Violence, Hegemony, and Geographical Difference.” Antipode 51.5 (2019): 1474–1494. [Source] Abstract: This article addresses whether the concepts of Antonio Gramsci still “travel” to Latin America. During the 20th century, Gramsci was one of the most important social theorists invoked to understand forms of social order in Latin America, as well as providing resources to reflect upon subaltern culture, resistance and the construction of alternatives. However, over the past two decades there have been several theoretical and practical challenges to the hegemony of Gramsci. These challenges are multifarious, but can be reduced to several important contentions that are explored in this article. These include the enduring role of violence, the alleged decline of ideology and finally the challenge of state-centrism in the face of geographical difference. In the current regional conjuncture, marked by the return to power of right-wing social forces, I therefore examine whether Gramscian concepts are still apposite for understanding the political economy of Latin America in the 21st century. Ives, Peter. “Gramsci and ‘Global English.’” Rethinking Marxism 31.1 (2019): 58–71. [Source] Abstract: This essay focuses on the way Antonio Gramsci is invoked in the burgeoning research and debates concerning the rise of “global English”—that is, the massive increase in the use of English across the globe, especially by so-called nonnative speakers since the middle of the twentieth century. The essay explores the way Gramsci’s concept of “hegemony” is used within sociolinguistic, applied linguistic, and language education research as an example of some of the downsides of too great a focus on this one concept at the expense of a broader understanding of Gramsci’s thought and methods. As a small counterexample, the essay ends with a discussion of Gramsci’s argument that “there is no parthenogenesis in language … innovation occurs through the interference of different cultures.” It uses this rather enigmatic contention in an attempt to illuminate how a deeper engagement with Gramsci’s writings and method can produce richer results. Jackson, Robert P. “Violence and Civilization: Gramsci, Machiavelli, and Sorel.” In The Meanings of Violence: From Critical Theory to Biopolitics. 48–64. New York: Routledge, 2019. Source. Abstract: Antonio Gramsci’s writings represent a rich repository for re-thinking the meanings of violence in relation to the political and the ethical in our present conjuncture. Despite a tendency in some quarters to reduce Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to a theory of consent, his Prison Notebooks exhibit a deep concern with the ‘armour of coercion’. Thus, in his reflections on Niccolò Machiavelli’s Centaur, Gramsci regards this figure as symbolic of a dual perspective, half-animal half-human. For Gramsci, political thought should seek to elaborate the dialectical unity of these two levels: force and consent. This chapter considers the formation of this nexus of violence and civilization in Gramsci’s writings through his encounter with two thinkers, Machiavelli and Georges Sorel. Gramsci takes up Machiavelli’s use of militaristic terminology and the Florentine’s emphasis on the military basis of political struggles, expressed in the semantic field of concepts such as ‘war of manoeuvre’ and ‘war of position’. However, Gramsci balances this tendency with a recognition of the relationship between arms and religion, or, in Benedetto Croce’s ethico-political terms, between the universal (state) and the individual (church). Gramsci also draws vitality for his re-articulation of a historical materialist framework from a second source, Sorel’s Reflections on Violence (1906). Examining Sorel’s distinction between myth (a ‘body of images capable of evoking sentiments’) and Utopia (a ‘deceptive mirage of the future’), I consider Gramsci’s efforts to transform Sorel’s political myth by deploying his own reading of Machiavelli’s Prince. While Gramsci accepts Sorel’s case that only the political myth is able to mobilize the strongest inclinations of a people, to create a violent force that can cleave the social fabric, Gramsci also elaborates a constructive aspect to this process. Finally, I deploy the terms set out by Walter Benjamin in his Critique of Violence to evaluate whether we can describe Gramsci’s destructive/constructive notion of political myth as a form of mythical violence or as a form of divine power. La Porta, Lelio. “Dizionario gramsciano / Gramsci Dictionary: Modern Prince.” International Gramsci Journal 3.2 (2019): 39–45. Source. Abstract: This is an English-language translation of Lelio La Porta’s entry on the “Modern Prince” in the Dizionario gramsciano (ed. G. Liguori and P. Voza, Roma: Carocci 2007). Las Heras, Jon. “International Political Economy of Labour and Gramsci’s methodology of the subaltern.” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 21.1 (2019): 226–244. [Source] Abstract: Gramscian International Political Economy scholarship has predominantly focused on studying capital’s power to subsume labour under different hegemonic projects. Various Autonomist Marxists have recently sought to fill such gap by proposing a disruption-oriented International Political Economy. However, the article argues that it mirrors domination-oriented International Political Economy approaches for overemphasising labour’s disruptive potentiality and for paying little attention to the limitations that labour faces in its own empowerment. To escape from the unilateralism of these two mutually exclusive perspectives, the article reviews Gramsci’s ‘Methodology of the Subaltern’ in order to propose a Gramscian or strategic International Political Economy of Labour. Hence, the article shows that it is possible for International Political Economy scholars to study uneven capitalist development as the result of the agency of (dis)organised labour as well as to account better for the emancipatory potentiality of working-class strategies in specific contexts. Marasco, Robyn. “Althusser’s Gramscian Debt: On Reading Out Loud.” Rethinking Marxism 31.3 (2019): 340–362. [Source] Abstract: This essay measures Louis Althusser’s debt to Antonio Gramsci in light of his general theory of reading and his reflections on the science, philosophy, and politics of Marxism. It considers their respective approaches to reading, highlighting the differences between a “philosophical reading” in Althusser’s sense and a “political reading” in the spirit of Gramsci. Further, it considers how some of Althusser’s key concepts—ideology, the state, conjuncture, utopian realism—are elaborated through a critical engagement with Gramsci’s political thought. Martin, James. “The Post-Marxist Gramsci.” Global Discourse: An interdisciplinary journal of current affairs 9.2 (2019): 305–321. [Source] Meulbroek, Chris, and Majed Akhter. “The prose of passive revolution: Mobile experts, economic planning and the developmental state in Singapore.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space (2019): [Source] Abstract: During the Cold War, a barrage of globally mobile development professionals proliferated throughout the decolonizing Third World to both assist in economic development and to constrain the geopolitical spread of communist-sympathetic regimes. This paper considers a document authored by one such professional, Albert Winsemius, and draws on Antonio Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution to theorize the process of state formation in Singapore. By examining Winsemius’ role in Singapore’s development planning, we demonstrate how globally sourced, ideological anti-communism and transnational economic expertise were inscribed into the institutional structure of the Singaporean state under Lee Kuan Yew and the People’s Action Party. Basing our analysis in a close reading of a key economic planning document, we argue that Winsemius and the Industrial Survey Mission demonstrate a political understanding of state formation rooted in the need to suppress labour strife and maintain political stability. This paper contributes to a more spatially nuanced understanding of East Asian industrialization and state transformation through a theorization of the influence of transnational expertise on an archetypal ‘developmental state’. Mirshak, Nadim. “Authoritarianism, education and the limits of political socialisation in Egypt:” Power and Education (2019). Source. Abstract: President al-Sisi has declared 2019 to be the ‘Year of Education’, whereby a National Project is to be launched to reform the education system. These proposed reforms are crucial, yet the politics driving them and their implications for al-Sisi’s regime remain unclear. Discussions surrounding how education is political and can help protect authoritarian regimes have largely been understated in the existing literature. This paper’s objective is to encourage a critical outlook through utilising a Gramscian approach that considers education to be a politically contested domain. This approach views education as a hegemonic apparatus capable of developing consent through politically socialising the populace into accepting certain knowledge, attitudes and behaviour conducive to the regimes in power. By analysing the education system under Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak, I illustrate the extent to which education has been politicised through its attempts to serve and legitimise their regimes and objectives, and outline the challenges that hindered their abilities to protect their hegemony and assume complete control over education. Questioning the political, economic and socio-cultural basis on which the Egyptian education system is premised can enable us to avoid reproducing its existing problems, and importantly, reconsider the relationship between politics and education under al-Sisi’s Egypt. Mirshak, Nadim. “Rethinking resistance under authoritarianism: civil society and non-contentious forms of contestation in post-uprisings Egypt.” Social Movement Studies 18.6 (2019): 702–719. Source. Abstract: In 2018 President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi secured a second presidential term in a constrained political environment exacerbated by his control over the media, prosecution of journalists and activists, and his crackdown on civil society. As a result of such resilient authoritarianism, the optimism that once defined the Egyptian uprisings has turned into cynicism. This article contributes to the literature surrounding civil society and resistance in authoritarian contexts by offering an examination of the interplay between authoritarian tendencies and their resistance in post-uprisings Egypt. I argue that we should view al-Sisi’s regime as representing an authoritarian system that is not absolute, despite its soft and hard repressive methods, but one that still offers limited space for civil society organizations (CSOs) to function. This limited space importantly comprises covert resistance methods which can offer Egyptian CSOs opportunities to resist the state’s legal and extra-legal restrictions. The resistance methods considered in this article need to be understood in Gramscian terms as they encompass the limited means available by which CSOs can negotiate the terrain of hegemonic contestation under the existing authoritarian context. Given al-Sisi’s re-election and the sustained crackdown on Egyptian civil society, the need to analyse such forms of resistance is pertinent. Mirshak, Nadim. “Education as Resistance: Egyptian Civil Society and Rethinking Political Education Under Authoritarian Contexts.” Critical Sociology (2019): 0896920519856398. [Source] Abstract: This article explores political education in civil society organisations (CSOs) in post-uprisings Egypt. By employing the work of Peter Mayo and Adam Morton, I develop a Gramscian framework that argues for the need to rethink political education where it can take direct and indirect forms. Direct political education explicitly teaches about politics and rights, and is more likely to be repressed by the Egyptian state. Indirect political education is more covert, taking the forms of games and simulations which can appear, in hindsight, to be apolitical but could have numerous contradictory political implications. Through analysing the different forms of political education provided in Egyptian civil society, I seek to understand how CSOs are able to adapt their educational methods to function, survive and educate under authoritarian contexts. This way, the article offers an insight into the interplay between authoritarianism and resistance through the medium of education. Pass, Jonathan. “A (Liberal) Sheep in (Marxist) Wolf’s Clothing? Reassessing Antonio Gramsci’s Conceptualisation of Hegemony.” Daimon Revista Internacional de Filosofia77 (2019): 73–88. [Source] Pourhamzavi, Karim. “Gramsci and the root of passiveness in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution 1906–1911.” Critique 47.2 (2019): 353–363. [Source] Abstract: Culture is frequently used to explain socio-political underdevelopment in the Peripheral countries, including Iran. In particular, national culture is viewed as retarding modernisation of the political and economic systems and the society generally. This paper regards such approaches as being essentially Orientalist. Instead, it suggests, Iranian underdevelopment is best analysed through the Core–Periphery lens adopted by critical theorists. Accordingly, the case of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906–1911 is examined through this lens, via Gramsci’s concept of ‘passive revolution’. The paper also uses Trotsky’s insights regarding combined and uneven development. It argues that the Iranian constitutionalists were able to establish an ‘historic bloc’, as identified by Gramsci, but this bloc was unable to become hegemonic and modernise and develop Iran’s economy and society. This failure was due to the power of the Anglo-Russian imperial forces that dominated Iran for over a century and a half and the concomitant weakness of the kind of bourgeoisie and allied social layers that had led democratic, modernising revolutions in what are now First World or Core countries. Underdevelopment in Iran is therefore the product of the impact of imperialism rather than the product of Iranian culture. Ramos, Leonardo et al. “Social Forces and the International Political Economy after the 2008 Financial Crisis: The Case of Business Summit 20 (B20).” Brazilian Political Science Review 13.2 (2019). Source. Abstract: The 2008 financial crisis stands out for being a crisis that occurred not in developing countries, but in the core capitalist countries, thus assuming greater proportions and with broader ramifications. In this context, the G20 gained new impetus, and, as a result, several studies have sought to understand not only the crisis but the role of the reformed G20 in the process of resolving it. Despite the relevance of this literature, little attention has been paid to the G20 outreach process, in particular to the growing dialogue established between the G20 and B20 (Business Summit 20), a group that represents the business sector in these exchanges. This article seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the engagement of business elites with the actions taken by the G20 to deal with the 2008 financial crisis – that is, the role of social forces in the (re)construction of contemporary international political economy. It seeks, in a concise and exploratory way, to sketch the relationship between the B20 and G20 in the period between 2010 and 2017, in order to better understand processes associated with the transnationalization of the capitalist class. It starts from the hypothesis that during this period it is possible to identify the constitution of a ‘B20 Nucleus’, constituted by the business sectors present at most B20 summits, and to a large extent based in the countries of the North Atlantic. In this sense, the B20 acts as a point of integration for the global corporate elite.Key words: B20; G20; hegemony; transnational capitalist class; crisis Saresella, Daniela. “Gramsci and the issue of religion: Catholic modernism and the Italian Partito Popolare.” History of European Ideas 45.8 (2019): 1143–1155. Source. Abstract: Gramsci’s interest in Italian politics led him to tackle a key issue in the present-day discourse: the relationship between the Holy See and the national State. Additionally, he paid close attention to internal issues of Christianity, from its origins to his own times and – similar to many other socialist thinkers – he believed that there were several echoes between the early Christian experiences and contemporary socialism. From this arose his concern with the religious crisis of the early twentieth century – so-called ‘Modernism’ – as well as the story of the Partito Popolare (Popular Party, PPI), the organization founded by the priest Luigi Sturzo after the First World War, which was marked – especially amongst its left-wing components – by its anti-fascist positions. Shock, Max. “‘To address ourselves “violently” towards the present as it is’: Stuart Hall, Marxism Today and their reception of Antonio Gramsci in the long 1980s.” Contemporary British History 0.0 (2019): 1–22. Source. Abstract: Throughout the 1980s, a group associated with Marxism Today, spearheaded by Stuart Hall, developed new analyses of politics and society based upon the political thought of Antonio Gramsci. Their reading led them to adopt the method of ‘conjunctural analysis’; to acknowledge the realms of culture and civil society as important terrains for politics; and to develop a more appreciative approach towards the new social movements. In unpacking their analysis, this article provides the background to many current understandings of Thatcherism and of the 1980s, which are heavily-influenced by these Gramscian analyses developed by Hall and others affiliated with Marxism Today. Smith, Joseph. “Community and contestation: a Gramscian case study of teacher resistance.” Journal of Curriculum Studies 0.0 (2019): 1–18. [Source] Abstract: This paper focuses on a specific example of an all-too-rare phenomenon in education studies: the successful resistance by ordinary classroom teachers of policy change at the macro-level. Focusing on the withdrawal of the 2013 Draft National Curriculum for History in England, it considers the views of six teachers who were personally involved in active resistance.Furthering the view that teacher resistance can represent ‘good sense’, it is suggested that teachers’ self-described conceptualisations of this resistance are best understood in Gramscian terms. The paper does not propose the political theory of Gramsci as a blueprint for effective resistance, but instead suggests that categories which Gramsci associated with resistance to capitalism might emerge organically within other sites of resistance, and even among those unfamiliar with Gramsci’s work. Furthermore, it implies that theoretically-informed transformative intellectuals of the kind described by Giroux (1988) might still be found working in neoliberal education systems. Sorgonà, Gregorio. “‘Gramsci and the critique of political economy’ by Giuliano Guzzone (English).” International Gramsci Journal 3.3 (2019): 81–84. Source. Abstract: This is a review in English by Gregorio Sorgonà of Giuliano Guzzone’s volume Gramsci e la critica dell’economia politica. Dal dibattito sul liberismo al paradigma della “traducibilità” (Roma: Viella, 2017). Sotiris, Panagiotis. “Is a ‘Left Populism’ Possible?” Historical Materialism 27.2 (2019): 3–39. [Source] Sotiris, Panagiotis. “The Modern Prince as Laboratory of Political Intellectuality.” International Gramsci Journal 3.2 (2019): 2–38. Source. Abstract: The aim of this article is to return to Antonio Gramsci’s highly original contributions in the Prison Notebooks concerning questions of organization and especially his conceptualization of the Modern Prince. In particular, I want to stress the importance of a certain conception of the intellectuality of politics that emerges in the Prison Notebooks, and which I consider to be one of Gramsci’s more original contributions. Since Gramsci’s texts were written against the background of the various debates around the “organization question” in the history of the working class movement, the article begins by revisiting some the answers offered to this question, in order to stress that the question of a certain intellectuality of politics from the beginning has been central to these debates. Then, I move forward to Gramsci’s own intervention, in an attempt to show how a conception of organization as a laboratory of political intellectuality and experimentation emerges and how it is linked to the entire conceptual framework of Gramsci’s work-in-progress. Finally, I attempt to show how all these are relevant to contemporary debates regarding radical left political parties and fronts. Stahl, Rune Møller. “Ruling the Interregnum: Politics and Ideology in Nonhegemonic Times.” Politics & Society (2019): 0032329219851896. [Source] Abstract: This article offers reinterpretation of the current economic and political crisis through the lens of Gramsci’s concept of “interregnum,” departing from the model of “punctured equilibrium” to analyze the specific political dynamics of nonhegemonic periods between the breakdown of one ideological order and the emergence of a new one. Although political science has a range theories about periods of hegemony and paradigmatic stability, the periods between stable hegemonies remain distinctly undertheorized. A theoretical concept describing periods of interregnum is offered and applied to the changes in economic ideology and political alignments that followed the breakdown of the liberal order in the interwar period and the postwar Keynesian consensus of the 1970s. The concept is then applied to the current juncture, in which the hegemony of neoliberalism has been shaken by the 2008 financial crisis but no clear successor has emerged. Staricco, Juan Ignacio. “Class dynamics and ideological construction in the struggle over fairness: a neo-Gramscian examination of the Fairtrade initiative.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 46.1 (2019): 96–114. [Source] Abstract: This paper develops a neo-Gramscian conceptual framework in order to examine the ideological constructs and political dynamics that frame the day-to-day workings of the certification-based Fairtrade initiative. To accomplish this goal, the paper resorts to the notion of a ‘comprehensive concept of control’, which accounts for the main ideological elements that constitute the Fairtrade vision of the world. The analysis of these imaginaries is complemented with an examination of the concrete ways in which they have been institutionalized in the Fairtrade system and the specific power relations between class fractions they promote. This is followed by an exploration of the way in which Fairtrade articulates the contradictory interests of a variety of class fractions, bringing them together under the shared objective of advancing the situation of small producers and workers in the global South. The paper finishes with a reflection on the main limitations inherent to Fairtrade’s concept of control and the political dynamics it entails. Van Den Abbeele, Georges. “The Post-marxist Gramsci: A Reply to James Martin.” Global Discourse: An interdisciplinary journal of current affairs 9.2 (2019): 323–328. Source. Abstract: ames Martin astutely reads the haloed place Gramsci holds in the post-war Western Marxist tradition as exactly where strident divergences in that tradition have emerged, most particularly between those who, according to him, remain mired in varying modes of left melancholia and those who have successfully mourned the loss of what we used to call the socialist alternative. My response questions the validity of this alternative by reconsidering Traverso’s arguments in defence of left melancholia as a call to action, on the one hand, and by questioning why we should mourn the loss of real world socialism rather than seizing upon Gramsci’s pessimistic utopianism as a way to reenergise socialist strategy in an era of escalating inequality and populist authoritarianisms. Wainwright, Joel. “Capital and Social Difference in Gramsci and Luxemburg.” Rethinking Marxism 31.1 (2019): 20–41. [Source] Abstract: Antonio Gramsci’s prison notebooks are widely celebrated for their theorization of the political and of hegemony in capitalist society. We may also read the notebooks as works analyzing conditions where capitalist social relations are prevalent, but where pre- and noncapitalist social relations have only partially decomposed. This opens the way for situating them alongside Rosa Luxemburg’s less well-known writings, including her unpublished prison manuscript “Introduction to Political Economy.” Her analysis of the political and imperial dynamics of capitalist societies centers upon the question of the origins and formation of capitalist social relations. Although his prison notebooks suggest a capacious interest in global dynamics, Gramsci’s focus is generally Italy, and the complexities of transition are thereby narrowed. By contrast Luxemburg’s writings on political economy—like Gramsci’s, left incomplete by her imprisonment and subsequent murder by fascists—consistently emphasize the historical evolution of distinct social formations, their geographical diversity, and the importance of the specific emergence of capitalist social relations from precapitalist societies. Williams, Alex. Political Hegemony and Social Complexity: Mechanisms of Power After Gramsci. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019/2020 Abstract: How can we understand power in a world of ever-growing complexity? This book proposes that we can do so by rethinking the theory and practice of political hegemony through the resources of complexity theory. Taking Gramsci’s understanding of hegemony as its starting point, the book argues that the intricacies of contemporary power can be mapped by applying concepts drawn from complexity theory, such as emergence, self-organisation, metastability, and generative entrenchment. It develops an original account of social complexity, drawing upon critical realist sociology, analytic philosophy of science, Marxist and continental philosophies, and neoliberal and anarchist thought. It then draws out the elements of Gramscian hegemony that already align with complexity concepts, such as the balance of forces, common sense, and the historic bloc. On this basis, the book sets out the different dimensions of complex hegemonic power before using this theory to interpret the nature of the power of neoliberalism since 2008. Zompetti, Joseph P. “The Fallacy of Fake News: Exploring the Commonsensical Argument Appeals of Fake News Rhetoric through a Gramscian Lens.” Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric 9.3/4 (2019): 139–159. PDF. Abstract: Thanks to Donald Trump, fake news has become a buzzword that allows for the dismissal of facts which are inconvenient to a person’s worldview. When used to characterize media sources, this rhetorical maneuver becomes an essentially irrefutable argumentative technique - a “trump” card that ends a discussion because the opposition’s premise is depicted as false. Since deploying the concept of fake news reinforces ideology and systems of power, this paper explores the phenomenon from the perspective of Gramscian hegemony. More specifically, Gramsci’s notion of common sense helps us understand the fallacious appeal of fake news. As a result, the paper discusses the implications of fake news in the context of hegemony and provides suggestions for potential ways to articulate good sense as a means to challenge the common sense of fake news. Armenian None to report. German None to report. Greek ... Italian See Gramsci Project > Bibliografia. News of Italian publications should be sent to Michele Filippini. Japanese La Città Futura, Tokyo Gramsci Society Bulletin No. 71 (May 2019) - "Brief Commentary on Two Articles of Raya Dunayevskaya," by Koichi Ohara
- "Can Humanity be Free? The New Marxism and Freedom," by Raya Dunayevskaya. Translated by Koichi Ohara
- "The Theory of Alienation: Marx's Debt to Hegel," by Raya Dunayevskaya. Translated by Koichi Ohara
- "Socialist Change Under the Democratic System," by Susumu Kurebayashi
- Book Review: Seiya Morita, Hegemony and Permanent Revolution by Takemi Miyashita
- Report at the Gramci Reading Circle: Subalterns and Ainus (July 28, 2018), delivered by Senkoh Tsuda
- Report at the Gramci Reading Circle: Prison Notebook 21, Related with Popular Literature (September 30, 2018), delivered by Keiko Murakami
- Report at the Gramci Reading Circle: Considering Japanese Style Workers' Representative System in Relation to the Gramscian Factory Council Movement (October 27, 2018), delivered by Kazuo Oh-ishi
Portuguese ... Spanish None to report. Thai None to report. Turkish Feyzullah Yilmaz has compiled a list of Turkish Gramsci publications at Neo-Gramsian Portal. |
