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English
Babic, Milan. “Let’s talk about the interregnum: Gramsci and the crisis of the liberal world order.” International Affairs 96.3 (2020): 767–786.
Abstract: The liberal international order (LIO) is in crisis. Numerous publications, debates and events have time and again made it clear that we are in the midst of a grand transformation of world order. While most contributions focus on either what is slowly dying (the LIO) or what might come next (China, multipolarity, chaos?), there is less analytical engagement with what lies in between those two phases of world order. Under the assumption that this period could last years or even decades, a set of analytical tools to understand this interregnum is urgently needed. This article proposes an analytical framework that builds on Gramscian concepts of crisis that will help us understand the current crisis of the LIO in a more systematic way. It addresses a gap in the literature on changing world order by elaborating three Gramsci-inspired crisis characteristics—processuality, organicity and morbidity—that sketch the current crisis landscape in a systematic way. Building on this framework, the article suggests different empirical entry points to the study of the crisis of the LIO and calls for a research agenda that takes this crisis seriously as a distinct period of changing world orders.
Bianchi, Alvaro. Gramsci’s Laboratory: Philosophy, History and Politics. Brill, 2020. ISBN: 978-90-04-41779-3 Source.
Abstract: The purpose of Gramsci’s Laboratory is to interpret the relationship between philosophy and politics in Gramsci’s Quaderni del carcere. A milestone in contemporary Brazilian Gramsci reception, the book argues that in Gramsci’s work the unity of theory and practice is unfolded theoretically through the unity of philosophy, history and politics. Bianchi argues that this unity was developed in the research project that Gramsci carried out in prison, and was thus a product of the ‘determination in the last instance’ of politics itself. His book demonstrates that a correct understanding of this unity requires us to recognise that history and philosophy are constitutive elements of the political field from which they claim to keep their distance.
Briziarelli, Marco. “Translatability, Translational Labor and Capitalist Subsumption: The Communicative Venues of Capitalism.” Democratic Communiqué 20.1 (2020). Source.
Abstract: This essay advances a critique of current capitalism based on the operationalization of Gramsci’stake on translation and translatability and Marx’s notion of subsumption, and argues thattranslatability reveals subsumptive processes in communicative terms because it describes how theprinciple of exchange value productively interacts with language and signification, thus sheddinglight on how communication captures and is captured by contemporary capitalism. The significanceof translational labor becomes especially manifest in the context the so-called gig economy, inwhich translational labor is needed to fill the gaps between the casualization and exploitationtendencies of the gig labor process and the powerful rhetoric of entrepreneurship and flexibilityexperienced by gig workers.
Cadeddu, Davide, ed. A Companion to Antonio Gramsci: Essays on History and Theories of History, Politics and Historiography. Brill, 2020. Source.
Abstract: In A Companion to Antonio Gramsci some of the most important Italian scholars of Gramsci's thought realize an intellectual account of the Gramscian historiography. The volume is organized into five parts. In the first, an updated reconstruction of his biographical events is offered. The second part provides three different perspectives permitting an analysis of the ideas and theories of history which emerge from Gramsci’s writings. In the third section as well as the fourth section, the most explicitly political themes are considered. Finally, in the last part the timelines of twentieth century historiography in Italy are traced and a picture is painted of the reasons for the development of the principal problems surrounding the international literary output on Gramsci.
History
- Gramsci: From Socialism to Communism, by Leonardo Rapone
- Antonio Gramsci: the Prison Years, by Angelo d’Orsi
Theories of History
- The Crisis of European Civilization in the Thought of Antonio Gramsci, by Giuseppe Vacca
- Notes on Gramsci’s Theory of History, by Marcello Montanari
- The Layers of History and the Politics in Gramsci, by Vittorio Morfino
Communism
- Gramsci’s Antidogmatic Reading of Marx, by Stefano Petrucciani
- Gramsci, the October Revolution and its “Translation” in the West, by Guido Liguori
- On the Transition to Communism, by Alberto Burgio
Hegemony
- Gramsci: Political Scientist, by Michele Prospero
- The “Prison Notebooks”: Hegemony and Civil Society, by Giuseppe Cospito
- On the Productive Use of Hegemony (Laclau, Hall, Chatterjee), by Michele Filippini
Historiography
- The Influence and Legacy of Antonio Gramsci in Twentieth-Century Italy, by Marzio Zanantoni
- The International Historiography on Gramsci in the Twenty-First Century, by Davide Cadeddu
Chino, Takahiro. “Gramsci’s critique of Croce on the Catholic Church.” History of European Ideas 46.2 (2020): 175–189.
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.
Clarke, Simon, and Neil Dempster. “Leadership learning: the pessimism of complexity and the optimism of personal agency.” Professional Development in Education 46.4 (2020): 711–727.
Abstract: This paper’s commentary is guided by Gramsci’s distinction between, on one hand, the pessimism of the intellect and, on the other, optimism of the will. Accordingly, we seek initially to convey some of the intractable challenges that tend to be encountered by school leaders in the contemporary education context. In doing so, we argue that these leaders can no longer rely exclusively on codified knowledge, but require more flexible approaches to leadership engendering new ways of learning, dispositions and behaviours. In keeping with the optimism of the will, we then examine ways in which professional learning for school leaders may be enhanced to deal with the complexities identified. For this purpose, we describe a more personalised approach to school leaders’ professional learning than has been customary, harnessing knowledge, dispositions, and performance deemed valuable for leadership in more complex circumstances. In particular, the importance of school leaders developing self-agency in their learning is emphasised. Contiguously, attention is devoted to ways in which metacognitive awareness may be acquired so that experiences present opportunities for learning. This agenda, we argue, encourages school leaders to take responsibility for, and ownership of, their own professional learning, undoubtedly an essential backdrop to the learning of others.
Cloud, Dana L. “Critical Rhetoric| The Critique of Domination and The Critique of Freedom: A Gramscian Perspective — Commentary.” International Journal of Communication 14 (2020): 831–849. Source. PDF
Abstract: This article recounts the significance of Raymie McKerrow’s article “Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis” for scholars in the field of communication studies. In contrast to the Foucauldian stance on domination and freedom put forward by McKerrow, I argue that the Marxist and antifascist activist Antonio Gramsci offers an account of domination and freedom in the theory of hegemony that is internally consistent. In addition to its coherence, hegemony theory is rooted in historical materialist practice that urges challenges to capitalism as a system rather than exercising contingent judgments without a clear goal, or telos. Gramsci’s “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will” is an urgent corrective to the “critique of freedom” and poststructuralist thought more generally in the present political moment.
Coletta, Michela, and Malayna Raftopoulos. “Latin American readings of Gramsci and the Bolivian indigenous nationalist state.” Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 16.1 (2020): 47–62.
Abstract: This article engages critically with recent theories on the eclipse of Gramsci’s notion of hegemony in the face of twenty-first-century practices of grassroots activism. It demonstrates how hegemony, and other concepts reworked from Gramscian thought, have been used as the theoretical basis for assimilating indigeneity into a new form of nationalism in Bolivia. The first section of this piece examines the role of Gramscian thought in the emergence of Latin American decolonial thinking, while the second section maps out its most influential Bolivian interpretations. Finally, the third section shows how these principles have played out in the MAS movement and Evo Morales’ presidencies (2006–2019). This article argues that the Morales administration, by weaving concepts of Gramscian provenance such as ‘motley society’ and the ‘apparent state’ into the Plurinational principle, created a new nationalist conservatism in the form of a hegemonic indigenous state that contradicts the basic theoretical and legal premises of Plurinationality.
Croeser, Eve. Ecosocialism and Climate Justice: An Ecological Neo-Gramscian Analysis. 1st edition. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge, 2020.
Abstract: This book investigates the broader climate movement to contextualise the role played by its climate justice wing, focusing specifically on the theoretical and practical contributions of ecosocialists. Ecosocialism and Climate Justice provides an account of the shift from the Holocene to the Anthropocene in the context of the global spread of capitalist relations of production. Croeser begins by critically analysing the root causes of anthropogenic climate change and identifies the origins and development of the current climate movement within civil society. She then focuses on the climate justice movement, analysing the ways in which anthropogenic global warming may be challenged in a way that is socially just. Overall, this book provides further insight into the effectiveness of ecosocialist theory and activism in the context of existing global, national and local power relationships. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate justice, climate politics, critical global political economy studies and environmental activism.
Ekers, Michael, Kipfer ,Stefan, and Alex and Loftus. “On Articulation, Translation, and Populism: Gillian Hart’s Postcolonial Marxism.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 110.5 (2020): 1577–1593. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2020.1715198
Abstract: This article reviews Gillian Hart’s unique anticolonial Marxism, which she deftly deploys to explore questions regarding development, capitalism, and the post-apartheid trajectories of South Africa, focusing in particular on the articulations of race, class, gender, and nationalism therein. We argue that Hart’s careful engagement with Gramsci’s work enables her to be particularly attentive to both materiality and meaning in particular historical and geographical conjunctures. In so doing, we focus on how Hart enrolls and furthers understandings of articulation, language, and populism to develop a conjunctural analysis that is sensitive to the differentiation and politics of racialized capitalism.
Fischer, Leandros. “Gramscian perspectives on citizenship: snapshots from the experience of regional migrants in the Republic of Cyprus.” Citizenship Studies 0.0 (2020): 1–20.
Abstract: This article conceptualises citizenship in Gramscian terms, as a contested element of struggles for hegemony within civil society. Based on ethnographic snapshots from Cyprus, it is shown how the agency of migrants from the nearby region not only subverts a restrictive border regime, but also challenges a hegemonic paradigm of citizenship shaped by colonialism, ethnic conflict, as well as crisis and austerity. At the same time, struggles for legal recognition occur in a state of relative autonomy from this social contestation of citizenship. They rather express a desire for freedom of movement as a right in itself, in a context where legal citizenship is becoming synonymous with mobility.
Francese, Joseph. “Antonio Gramsci, Scritti (1910-1926), Sezione Diretta da Leonardo Rapone, Vol. 1. 1910-1916.” Italian Culture 38.2 (2020): 200–202.
Haider, Asad. “Pessimism of the Will.” Viewpoint Magazine, 28 May 2020.
Abstract: “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will” has become one of the classic clichés of politics. It is supposed to suggest that one should have clear-eyed recognition of how bad things are, without losing hope; it means the conscious volition for changing the world nevertheless. Nevertheless, it might be wise to be somewhat suspicious of a slogan which seems so reassuring, applicable to every context without modification.
Holst, John. “Toward a theory of race, change, and antiracist education.” Adult Education Quarterly 70.2 (2020): 175-192. doi:10.1177/0741713619884580
This article is an effort to build on academic theories of race and antiracist education. Using a Gramscian theoretical framework that emphasizes perspectives from organic intellectuals, this article puts the academic literature on race and adult education in conversation with the theory generated on race from select U.S. working-class organic intellectuals and scholar activists. The principal argument of the article, drawn from the dialectical and materialist work of select organic intellectuals and scholar activists, is that race seen as a social construct captures the subjective aspect of race but does not capture the internal relationship of the subjective aspect with the objective aspect of race. All social constructs must be seen objectively and subjectively to consider the prospects for change and antiracist adult education in specific historical and geographical contexts.
Huo, Shuhong, and Inderjeet Parmar. “‘A new type of great power relationship’? Gramsci, Kautsky and the role of the Ford Foundation’s transformational elite knowledge networks in China.” Review of International Political Economy 27.2 (2020): 234–257. Source.
Abstract: Challenging conflictual Realist and optimistic liberal-internationalist arguments about full-scale integration of China into the US-led order, this article uses Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and Kautsky’s concept of ultra-imperialism to explore US hegemony’s influence in transforming China and to characterize the relationship. Original archival research shows that China’s elites were gradually integrated into the US-led order from 1978, with a special role played by elite knowledge networks built by the Ford Foundation, particularly in Chinese economic policy reform, diffusion of free market thinking, and the development and teaching of Economics as a technocratic, policy-oriented academic discipline. Ford funded Sino-American elite knowledge networks closely connected with Chinese globalizing elites, with and through which liberal tendencies penetrated China, adapted to local conditions. We argue that these networks played significant yet neglected roles in managing change in China, and Sino-US relations during a time of global power transitions. This is inexplicable in either Realist or Liberal-internationalist terms, but provides the substance of what might be a ‘new type of great power relationship’, perhaps explicable in Kautskyian ‘ultraimperialist’ terms. Though conflict and turbulence remain in the relationship due to changing economic conditions and global strategies, this need not result in inter-hegemonic military conflict.
Kapadia, Karin. “Notes towards a Gramscian analysis of a pandemic year in India.” Materialismo Storico: Rivista di filosofia, storia e scienze umane 9.2 (2020): 123–205.
Abstract: In 2020 the authoritarian Hindu-supremacist BJP party was in its second term. With Modi leading it, the party won a landslide in 2019 and a majority in Parliament. Modi and the BJP were relatively restrained in their first term, however in their second term they vigorously implemented their coercive agenda and their ultra-neoliberal program of total deregulation and privatization. They were assisted by the Covid-19 pandemic which became their universal excuse for (1) shutting down political protests, (2) rushing through laws attacking workers, farmers and the rights of women, (they had passed laws attacking Muslims in 2019) and (3) arresting lawyers, trade unionists, journalists, university students, grassroots organizers, and organizers/leaders of subaltern groups, especially Dalits and Adivasis, on terrorism charges, denying them bail or trial. Modi and the BJP are using shock-doctrine-tactics to frighten the public and to blame Muslims for the virus. They have been successful because they control the media. Astonishingly, even though the government did shockingly little to help the starving millions who lost their jobs, the government has not lost its popularity. Its passive revolution strategies and its amazingly firm hegemonic power are examined within this conjuncture: a new neoliberal form of Hinduism is flourishing today.
Köpping Athanasopoulos, Harald. “The Margins of History – Rediscovering the Subaltern.” In EU Migration Management and the Social Purpose of European Integration: The Spillover of Misery. Ed. Harald Köpping Athanasopoulos, 65–79. IMISCOE Research Series. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020. Source.
Abstract: This chapter discusses the Gramscian concept of subalternity, which is a useful tool for studying the experiences of transnational migrants. While Gramsci’s narrative of the practice of hegemony has recently been recovered (e.g. Thomas P: Hegemony, passive revolution and the modern prince. Thesis Eleven 117(1):20–39, 2013), his treatment of ‘subalternity’ has sometimes been inaccurately depicted. There has been a tendency to equate subalternity with inferiority and the Marxian lumpenproletariat. Gramsci however discusses subalternity in terms of its potential to emerge from its own subordination, continually pursuing an emancipatory agenda. The chapter also addresses neofunctionalism’s view on the subaltern. Indeed, Haas’s theory lacks the theoretical tools to deal with class issues, delegating the subaltern to the vague category of exogenous factors. The final part of this chapter discusses different ways by which neofunctionalism actually produces subalternity if put into political practice. Specifically, the concepts of commodification, reification and biopolitics are addressed.
Mayo, Peter. “Gramsci: Power, culture & education.” ACTIO NOVA: Revista de Teoría de la Literatura y Literatura Comparada 4 (2020): 23–45. doi:10.15366/actionova2020.4.002
Abstract: This paper traces the connection between cultural work and power in the thinking and writing of Italian socio-political theorist and strategist, Antonio Gramsci. His rootedness in Marxism and a deep humanistic culture are emphasised as well as how his main conceptual tools (e.g. Hegemony, Intellectuals, ‘Popular Creative Spirit’, Critical Appropriation and ‘National-Popular’) are central to his analyses of different forms of cultural production, intellectual activity and educational developments in his time. The paper dwells on his musings on the ever so pertinent issue of Migration as it found expression in the literature of his time and their implication for reflection on the same issue in more recent times. Importance is given to the role of political and artistic movements of the period such as Futurism and their legacy for present day life. Parallels are drawn between Gramsci’s cultural views and those of later thinkers such as Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall and Henry A. Giroux who often adopt a Gramscian lens in their economic-social-cultural analysis. The core theme of this paper is the influence of culture and cultural workers/intellectuals in the process of social transformation.
McKay, Ian. “To the Pillars of Hercules? C.B. Macpherson, Antonio Gramsci, and the pandemic as an ‘organic crisis’ of the global neoliberal order.” Materialismo Storico: Rivista di filosofia, storia e scienze umane 9.2 (2020): 263–304.
Abstract: C.B. Macpherson developed the concepts of «possessive individualism» and «transfer of powers» in his highly influential work on seventeenth-century English political thought, wherein he found core elements of doctrines of property that exerted a lasting influence over the global liberal order. Antonio Gramsci devoted many pages in his Prison Notebooks to the contradictions inherent in that order, which if combined in a given conjuncture, might constitute its «organic crisis», in which capitalism’s consistent contradictions are qualitatively transformed by new elements so that the entire system itself is placed in question. Covid-19 can be represented as an organic crisis of the global neoliberal order which, since the 1970s, has made possessive individualism a veritable secular religion: it presages, although it does not itself inaugurate, a systemic challenge to bourgeois civilization. Macpherson; Possessive Individualism; Gramsci; Organic Crisis; Covid-19.
Morris, Joshua T. “Veteran Solidarity and Antonio Gramsci: Counterhegemony as Pastoral Theological Intervention.” Journal of Pastoral Theology 30.3 (2020): 207–221.
Abstract: In the current political theater of the United States, one in which the de rigueur is partisan deadlock and a refusal to ‘reach across the aisle,’ nothing brings both major political parties together like war. At the center of this theater is the heroic veteran. This reification overlooks the lived experience of veterans. For some veterans, their experience has entailed multiple combat deployments, frayed relationships, and moral injury. Veterans deserve to see creative change in the support given them. This essay in pastoral theological intervention explores one possibility. Borrowing from Antonio Gramsci, I will argue for the positionality of military chaplains to stand in as Gramscian organic intellectuals in order to accompany veterans through trauma and to move toward not only their own liberation but also an end to these, our longest, wars.
Moussaly, Omer. “The Lessons of Gramsci’s Philosophy of Praxis.” Dialogue and Universalism 30.1 (2020): 119–138. Source.
Abstract: For many intellectuals, including the philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis, the historical destiny of Marxism-Leninism has discredited the philosophy of praxis. It can no longer serve as a source for radical political thought. Analyzing the theoretical contributions of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, we argue that a renewal of Marxism is both possible and needed. After more than forty years of neoliberal capitalism, a revitalized Marxism can contribute to the critique of contemporary forms of economic exploitation and statist domination. We propose that it is the concepts developed by Castoriadis that need to be translated and adapted to this reformed philosophy of praxis.
Nicholson, Jenifer. “The ‘Other’ Prison of Antonio Gramsci and Giulia Schucht.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Auto/Biography. Ed. Julie M. Parsons and Anne Chappell, 415–432. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020. Source: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31974-8_18
Abstract: This chapter examines the prison experience of Antonio Gramsci, focussing on his awareness of the changes to his ‘self’ which he had feared from his observation of the effects of prison life and his struggle to maintain his relationship with his wife Giulia and their sons. Her silences tormented him. Using not only Gramsci’s Letters from Prison, but those of Tatiana, his sister-in-law and favoured correspondent, and unpublished letters from Giulia his wife, I shall also look at her situation. Did Gramsci come to realise that the ‘other prison’ he complained of, the ‘unforeseen’ one, the loss of control, the effects of prolonged illness, the sense of isolation, hostile pressures, might also describe Giulia’s life?
Pearson, Richard. "Reappraising Anderson on Gramsci". Studies in Marxism 15 (2020). Edited by Mark Cowling. ISBN: 9798601255592
Abstract: This essay is a discussion of Perry Anderson's 1976 New Left Review article, "The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci". Anderson's article has been reissued in book form in 2017. We take account of historical changes since 1976 and consider relevant literature by other writers. We seek to challenge views expressed by Anderson. These include Anderson's claim that Gramsci did not clarify his rejection of reformism. Furthermore, we discuss Anderson's claim that Gramsci did not clarify the distinction between bourgeois democracy and fascism. Another claim by Anderson that we address is that Gramsci did not consistently understand the differences between conditions in the East and the West. Hence we consider how Gramsci did perceive these differences and the related need for socialists in the West to win hegemony in civil society. Our essay is also concerned with clarifying the distinction between state and civil society in Gramsci's notebooks. We also seek to clarify the relationship of coercion and consent in the operation of bourgeois class rule. Furthermore, we also consider Anderson's adoption of neo-liberal views in recent writing.
Ramos, Leonardo. “Gramscian IPE.” In The Routledge Handbook to Global Political Economy: Conversations and Inquiries. Ed. Ernesto Vivares, 262–277. New York: Routledge, 2020. Source.
Rogers, Samuel. “Hungarian authoritarian populism: a neo-Gramscian perspective.” East European Politics 36.1 (2020): 107–123. Source.
Abstract: This article analyses post-2010 Hungarian populism from a neo-Gramscian perspective. Stuart Hall’s authoritarian populism is discussed because the critical role of (transnational) capital in maintaining and stabilising populist regimes. The result is a unique approach that partially captures how the Fidesz-KDNP government has instigated changes to the external dimensions of the political economy. This analysis has the potential to be applied to similar regimes in post-socialist Europe, graduating from accounts of populism that often underplay (a) factors that maintain regimes, (b) regimes’ relationship with (transnational) capital and, (c) the role of capital relations in achieving regime consolidation.
Roy, Suddhabrata Deb. “Locating Gramsci in Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh: Perspectives on the iconic women’s protest in India.” Capital & Class (2020): 0309816820971119.
Abstract: The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019, in India was widely contested by both political parties and various civil society formations. Shaheen Bagh, a sit-in protest demonstration which continued for over a hundred days in the nation’s capital from mid-December 2019 to late March 2020, occupied the central position within the corpus of these protest demonstrations. The protests at Shaheen Bagh were led by poor, Muslim working-class women, who had come out on the streets protesting and asserting their rights amidst the dominant ruling-class communal politics. The Shaheen Bagh protests were a potent force of the working-class and oppressed minorities of the country. The paper brings in Marxist and Gramscian perspectives to explain how Shaheen Bagh has contributed to Indian left-wing politics. The paper argues that the women in Shaheen Bagh have been successful in bridging the gap between the civil society and political society in the country and has to an extent, altered the very nature of Indian politics. Moreover, the assertive nature of the Muslim women regarding their religion and the support which they garnered from the Indian left, widely accused by many of being Islamophobic in nature, has wide repercussions as far as political and social alliances between the left and Muslim politics in India is concerned. The present paper locates the protest within the notion of subaltern unity and tries to analyse the possible impacts of the support for the protests, within and beyond the anti-CAA protest movement, from the Indian left.
Salem, Sara. Anticolonial Afterlives in Egypt: The Politics of Hegemony. Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2020
Abstract: This study presents an alternative story of the 2011 Egyptian revolution by revisiting Egypt’s moment of decolonisation in the mid-twentieth century. Anticolonial Afterlives in Egypt explores the country’s first postcolonial project, arguing that the enduring afterlives of anticolonial politics, connected to questions of nationalism, military rule, capitalist development and violence, are central to understanding political events in Egypt today. Through an imagined conversation between Antonio Gramsci and Frantz Fanon, two foundational theorists of anti-capitalism and anticolonialism, Anticolonial Afterlives in Egypt focuses on issues of resistance, revolution, mastery and liberation to show how the Nasserist project, created by Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Free Officers in 1952, remains the only instance of hegemony in modern Egyptian history. In suggesting that Nasserism was made possible through local, regional and global anticolonial politics, even as it reproduced colonial ways of governing that continue to reverberate into Egypt’s present, this interdisciplinary study thinks through questions of traveling theory, global politics, and resistance and revolution in the postcolonial world.
Salem, Sara. “Gramsci in the Postcolony: Hegemony and Anticolonialism in Nasserist Egypt:” Theory, Culture & Society (2020). Source: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0263276420935178
Abstract: This article traces Gramsci’s concept of hegemony as it travels from Southern Italy to Egypt, arguing that the concept ‘stretches’, following Fanon, through an ...
Smith, Joseph. “Community and contestation: a Gramscian case study of teacher resistance.” Journal of Curriculum Studies 52.1 (2020): 27–44. doi:10.1080/00220272.2019.1587003
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.
Sau, Andrea. A Marxist Theory of Ideology: Praxis, Thought and the Social World. Routledge, 2020
Abstract: This work explores the question of defining ideology from a Marxist perspective. Advancing beyond the schemas of discussion presented in current Marxist literature, the author offers an account of how the concept of ideology should be defined and what role it plays within historical materialism. Through a close reading of Karl Marx’s relevant writings, this volume demonstrates that while there is no coherent, single account of ideology in Marx’s work, his materialist framework can be reconstructed in a defensible and ‘non-deterministic’ way. The definition of ideology presented is then articulated through a close reading of Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. Efforts are also made to demonstrate that Gramsci’s interpretation of historical materialism is indeed consistent and compatible with Marx’s. A systematic articulation of a theory of ideology that combines the works of Marx and Gramsci, as well as adding elements of Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory and William James’s psychology, this volume will appeal to scholars of social and political theory with interests in political economy and Marxist thought.
Smet, Brecht De. “‘Authoritarian resilience’ as passive revolution: a Gramscian interpretation of counter-revolution in Egypt.” The Journal of North African Studies 0.0 (2020): 1–22.
Abstract: After a renewed scholarly interest in the politics of revolution and societal transformation following the uprisings of 2011, the defeat of the revolutionary tide in the MENA region has drawn attention to the dynamic of counter-revolution and authoritarian resilience. I criticise binary approaches to the process of regime restoration in the region. I argue that ‘authoritarian resilience’ should be interpreted in terms of Gramsci’s concept of ‘passive revolution’. I explain that this concept should be used not as a regime typology, but as an analytical ‘criterion of interpretation’, revealing the capacities and constraints of elites to deflect popular initiative and restructure historical blocs from above. Through the prism of passive revolution ‘the regime’ appears not as the constant factor, but as one of the forces that constitutes and is constituted by revolutionary struggle. I look concretely at the process of revolution and counter-revolution in Egypt between 2011 and 2013, disentangling the 18 Days of the uprising from the subsequent ‘counter-revolution in democratic form’ and the coda of the military-led ‘counter-revolution from below’.
Thomas, Peter D. “After (post) hegemony.” Contemporary Political Theory (2020). Source: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-020-00409-1
Abstract: Hegemony is one of the most widely diffused concepts in the contemporary social sciences and humanities internationally, interpreted in a variety of ways in different disciplinary and national contexts. However, its contemporary relevance and conceptual coherence has recently been challenged by various theories of ‘posthegemony’. This article offers a critical assessment of this theoretical initiative. In the first part of the article, I distinguish between three main versions of posthegemony – temporal, foundational and expansive – characterized by different understandings of the temporal and logical implications of hegemony. I then offer a critical assessment of the shared presuppositions of these theories, including their ‘pre-Gramscianism’, their indebtedness to Laclau and Mouffe’s formulation of hegemony, and their characterization of hegemony in terms compatible with modern theories of sovereignty. I conclude by arguing that the contradictions and oversights of the debate on posthegemony encourage us to undertake a reassessment of the real historical complexity of hegemonic politics and its different traditions of conceptualization.
Trupia, Francesco. Rethinking Subalternity in Central and Eastern Europe. London: Transnational Press London, 2020.
Abstract: At a time when the region of Central and Eastern Europe is considered a dominant example of democratic backsliding with authoritarian tendencies, this monograph aims to provide a critical approach to minority issues. By carving out the philosophical implications of the notion of subalternity, Trupia draws particularly on Antonio Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis and his scholarly legacy in order to debunk societal models of liberal multiculturalism and their hegemonic discourse. This monograph is not only an attempt to unravel power-centred fabrication of subordination resulting from hierarchic methods of doing politics and imposing cultural ascriptions upon certain segments of society. It also deals with subalternity as a “perspective of opportunity” through the lens of complex identity positions of minority groups and their changes through time.
Tuğal, Cihan. “The Counter-Revolution’s Long March: The American Right’s Shift from Primitive to Advanced Leninism.” Critical Sociology 46.3 (2020): 343–358. doi:10.1177/0896920519850258
Abstract: Why is the contemporary Right fascinated by Lenin? Commentators take this infatuation as evidence that the Right has forsaken freedom. By taking Lenin out of context, this argument not only reproduces a wrong reading of history, but misconstrues what the Right learns from its undeclared mentor. Leninism’s crux is neither authoritarianism nor zealotry, but the formulation of a long-term strategy in hostile terrain. Based on conflicting right-wing currents’ texts and actions, I analyze the making of such a strategy. The Right’s advanced Leninism comprises: 1) post-sectarian elimination, incorporation, and disciplining of collaborationists and hardliners; 2) (semi-secretive) cadre-raising; 3) (“hegemonic”) coalition-building; 4) infiltration of institutions; 5) a weakening of the enemy; 6) the creation of a parallel universe of material interests. Nevertheless, authoritarianism, which is a strong tendency of original Leninism, is an ingrained characteristic of right-wing Bolshevism. Only a Gramscian reconstruction of Leninism can restore its emancipatory potential.
Armenian
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French
IGS France > Parutions > Livres > Articles
German
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Greek
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Italian
Digital Library Antonio Gramsci > Bibliografia gramsciana
Japanese
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Portuguese
IGS Brasil > Bibliografia Gramsciana
Spanish
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Thai
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Turkish
Feyzullah Yilmaz has compiled a list of Turkish Gramsci publications at Neo-Gramsian Portal.
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