|
English
Antentas, Josep Maria. “The 15M, Podemos and the Long Crisis in Spain: Gramscian Perspectives.” Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research 28.3 (2022): 365–380. doi:10.1080/13260219.2022.2170733
Abstract: This article aims to analyze the 15M movement and its outcomes through Gramscian lenses. The 15M expressed a crisis of ruling class hegemony based on a crisis of political representation. It was a moment of collective splintering and political subjectivation. Viewed from Gramsci’s distinction between small and big politics, the 15M marked the beginning of a phase in which big politics ceased to be the exclusive prerogative of the dominant classes and shifted towards subaltern groups. The sequence from 15M to Podemos can be analyzed as a cathartic moment in the Gramscian sense of the term and can also be read with the help of his concept of translation. Discussing Machiavelli’s work, Gramsci defined the party as a modern Prince. However, the conception of the party that prevailed in Podemos is narrower than that of Gramsci. His concept of transformism is useful to analyze Podemos’ strategic evolution.
Antonini, Francesca. “Gramsci on Bureaucracy.” Italian Culture 40.1 (2022): 16–26.
doi:10.1080/01614622.2022.2060490
Abstract: This
essay reconstructs Antonio Gramsci’s account of bureaucracy as it unfolds in
his magnum opus, the Prison Notebooks. By adopting the “philological” way of
reading this work developed in recent decades by Gramsci scholars and
significantly anticipated by Joseph Buttigieg’s “Gramsci’s Method” (1990), I
show how the concept of bureaucracy is closely connected to some key elements
in Gramsci’s political reflections, such as the categories of “hegemony” and
“organic crisis.” While drawing out the “constellation” of Gramsci’s references
to bureaucratic apparatuses throughout his carceral writings, I stress in
particular their relationship with his investigation of the nature and the role
of political parties, as well as with his overall assessment of parliamentarism
(and of its degeneration). In this framework, a further pivotal element is
represented by Gramsci’s conception of “modernity,” that is, of the features
that characterize the contemporary political panorama and to which the issue of
bureaucracy is closely related. To conclude, I compare Gramsci’s and Max
Weber’s theories of bureaucracy, showing both similarities and differences.
Belliotti,
Raymond Angelo. Italian Rebels: Mazzini, Gramsci, and Giuliano.
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2022 (ISBN 978-1-68393-369-4).
Abstract: This
interdisciplinary work philosophically analyzes the role of positive duties in
moral theory, the efficacy of theocratic republicanism, viable strategies for
political revolutions, the implications of an enduring Sicilian ethos, and the
profits and perils of the individual-community continuum, in service of
distinctive interpretations of the lives and ideologies of Giuseppe Mazzini,
Antonio Gramsci, and Salvatore Giuliano. Il Risorgimento Italiano, the national
unification movement, refers to the period from 1821, the initial unsuccessful
Milanese and Piedmontese insurrections against Austria, to 1870, the annexing
of Rome into the Kingdom of Italy, which itself was established in 1861. The
movement and its aftermath hovered over the lives of the Genoese republican
prophet of Italian liberation and unification, the Sardinian communist
political theorist imprisoned by The Black Shirts, and the Sicilian separatist
murdering and fighting for his life and the honor of his island.By dissecting
the lives and philosophies of Mazzini, Gramsci, and Giuliano, by extracting
moral, political, and existential lessons from their aspirations and
enterprises, by reflecting on their ideals from our divergent social context,
by evaluating their virtues and vices from a wider perspective, we may confront
the people that we are and reimagine the people we might become.
Benvegnù,
Damiano, Mimmo Cangiano, and Charles L. Leavitt IV. “‘A Thickening of the
Network’: Joseph A. Buttigieg and ‘Gramsci’s Method.’” Italian Culture
40.1 (2022): 1–5. doi:10.1080/01614622.2022.2057019.
Boggs, Carl. Fugitive
Politics: The Struggle for Ecological Sanity. New York, NY: Routledge, 2022
(ISBN 978-1-03-205414-8).
Abstract:
Fugitive Politics explores the intersection between politics and ecology,
between the requirements for radical change and the unprecedented challenges
posed by the global crisis, a dialectic has rarely been addressed in academia.
Across eight chapters, Carl Boggs explores how systemic change may be achieved
within the current system, while detailing attempts at achieving change within
nation-states. Boggs states that any notion of revolution seems fanciful in the
current climate, contending that controlling elites have concentrated their
hold on corporate power along three self-serving fronts: technology (Big Tech)
and the surveillance order, militarism and the warfare state, and
intensification of globalized power. Combined with this Boggs cites the
fundamental absence of revolutionary counter-forces, arguing that after decades
of subservice relevant, allied to the rise of identity politics and social
movements, the Marxist theoretical legacy is now exhausted and will not provide
an exit from the crisis. Boggs concludes that the only possibility for
fundamental change will come from an open style of politics, in the Jacobin
tradition, operating within the overall structures of the current democratic
state.
Boothman,
Derek. “An Overview of the Gramsci Situation in Britain.” International
Gramsci Journal 4.4 (2022). doi:10.14276/igj.v4i4.4158
Abstract: This
is the Abstract of the English-language article by Derek Boothman on recent
Gramsci work in and on the British Isles.
Brunello, Yuri.
“Gramsci in Latin America between Literature and Society.” Italian Culture
40.1 (2022): 61–71. doi:10.1080/01614622.2022.2058722
Abstract: This
article reconstructs the genesis and development of some Latin American
conceptions of literature influenced by the thought of Antonio Gramsci. In
Argentina, the work of Héctor Agosti is pioneering. It is followed by José
Carlos Portantiero’s analysis of realism, where Gramsci is explicitly quoted as
one of the main theoretical references. Gramsci’s influence is evident in
elements such as the rejection of determinism, the Argentine contextualization
of Marxist theoretical postulates, and the critic’s attention to literary form
in the context of the relationship between literature and society. The
Gramscian presence continues to be felt in Argentine journals such as Pasado y
presente and La rosa blindada. The innovative characteristics of Gramsci’s
reflections on art and literature have also been appreciated in other Latin
American countries. In Brazil, although from a Lukácsian perspective,
references to Gramsci’s aesthetic considerations are explicit in the work of
Leandro Konder and Carlos Nelson Coutinho. After discussing the cases of
Argentina and Brazil, the article takes Mexico into consideration. During the
1970s and 80s, the country was a laboratory for new Marxist literary ideas. The
most interesting phenomenon of this new phase of reflection on literature
inspired by Gramscian thought is the use of Gramsci not only inside Marxism,
but also within contexts that are not strictly Marxist.
Camp, Jordan T.
“Gramsci and Geography.” Oxford Bibliographies (2022). doi:10.1093/OBO/9780199874002-0241
Abstract:
Gramsci and geography literature review.
Chari, Sharad,
Mark Hunter, and Melanie Samson, eds. Ethnographies of Power: Working
Radical Concepts with Gillian Hart. Wits University Press, 2022. doi:10.18772/22022076666
(ISBN 978-1-77614-666-6).
Abstract: In
our time of rampant inequality, imperial-capitalist plunder, violence and
ecocide, when radical concepts from the past seem inadequate, how do
researchers and students of ethnographic work decide what concepts to work with
or renew? Gillian Hart is a key thinker in radical political economy,
geography, development studies, agrarian studies and Gramscian critique of
postcolonial capitalism. In Ethnographies of Power each
contributor engages her work and applies it to their own field of study. A
major contribution of this collection is the merging of theory with praxis,
resulting in invaluable research tools for postgraduate students. These include
applying “gendered labour” practices among workers in South Africa, reading
“racial capitalism” through agrarian debates, using “relational comparison” in
an ethnography of schooling across Durban, reworking “multiple socio-spatial
trajectories” in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve, critiquing the notion of
South Africa’s “second economy”, revisiting “development” processes and
“Development” discourses in US military contracting, reconsidering Gramsci’s
“conjunctures” geographically, finding divergent “articulations” in Cape Town
land occupations, and exploring “nationalism” as central to revaluing
recyclables at a Soweto landfill. Together, the chapters show how important the
ongoing reworking of radical concepts is to ethnographic critiques of
power. Ethnographies of Power offers an invaluable toolkit
for activists and scholars engaged in sharpening their critical concepts for
social and environmental change towards a collective future. What does it
mean to work with radical concepts in our time of rampant inequality,
imperial-capitalist plunder, racial/sexual/class violence and ecocide? When
concepts from the past seem inadequate, how do scholars and activists concerned
with social change decide what concepts to work with or renew? The contributors
to Ethnographies of Power address these questions head on.
Chino,
Takahiro. “The Modern State and Future Society: Gramsci’s Two Conceptions of
the ‘Ethical State.’” The European Legacy 27.2 (2022): 125–142. doi:10.1080/10848770.2021.2001888
Abstract:
Gramsci’s concept of the “ethical state” has been interpreted as a synonym for
the “regulated society”—a future society in which everybody participates in
governance following the rationalization of labor. However, this reading has
neglected the idea of the “integral state,” Gramsci’s other conception of the
ethical state, which highlights social mobility between the ruling class and
the ruled. Moreover, according to this reading, educational reform is necessary
to close the gap in cultural capital, thereby promoting the talented among the
ruled to participate in governance. A careful examination of Gramsci’s concept
of the ethical state reveals that it contains two distinct visions for mass
democracy: whereas the integral state signifies that anybody can govern, a
regulated society assumes that everybody governs. Even if the latter scenario
cannot be adopted in our times, it shows—even more than Gramsci realized—that
the former scenario that stresses social mobility and the role of education in
it is the crux of the modern state.
Cirese, Alberto
Mario. “Gramsci’s Observations on folklore: Conceptions of the world,
spontaneous philosophy and class instinct.” Anuac 11.1 (2022): 17–48.
doi:10.7340/anuac2239-625X-5277
Abstract: This
is a revised and updated edition of the essay previously published in the
volume Approaches to Gramsci, edited by Anne Showstack Sassoon, London, Writers
& Readers, 1982.
Crehan, Kate.
“Gramsci’s folklore bundle.” Anuac 11.1 (2022): 55–64. doi:10.7340/anuac2239-625X-5279
Abstract:
Contribution to Anniversary Forum Cirese 101: Rereading Antonio
Gramsci’s “Observations on Folklore”, Antonio Maria Pusceddu, Filippo M.
Zerilli, eds, Anuac, 11, 1, 2022.
Crehan, Kate.
“Of Horses and Water: On the Power of the Fragment.” Italian Culture
40.1 (2022): 38–48. doi:10.1080/01614622.2022.2060492
Abstract:
Joseph Buttigieg’s seminal 1990 article “Gramsci’s Method” argues that the
fragmentary nature of the Prison Notebooks cannot be explained simply by the
constraints under which they were written. Rather, the notebooks’
fragmentariness is at the heart of an innovative approach to the understanding
of history and the mapping of possibilities for change. Characteristic of
Gramsci’s innovative approach is what could be termed an ethnographic
sensibility, a determination to seek out, and treat seriously, the narratives
others use to make sense of the world. A similar ethnographic sensibility is
also central to anthropology’s classic methodology of participant observation,
developed and popularized by Bronisław Malinowski, one of the founding fathers
of Anglophone anthropology. A comparison between these two apparently
dissimilar thinkers underlines the value of Buttigieg’s reading of Gramsci’s
notebooks, and suggests how a classic anthropological approach might enrich
Marxism.
Dainotto,
Roberto. “Points of View: Gramsci and ‘the Question of the Novel.’” Italian
Culture 40.1 (2022): 27–37. doi:10.1080/01614622.2022.2060491
Abstract:
Perhaps the most essential device for the organization of the novel form is
narrative point of view. Mikhail Bakhtin, in “Discourse in the Novel”
(1934–1935), maintains in fact that “every language in the novel is a point of
view, a socio-ideological conceptual system of real social groups and their
embodied representatives. … Any point of view on the world fundamental to the
novel must be a concrete, socially embodied point of view, not an abstract,
purely semantic position.” György Lukács, too, having discovered the particular
Standpunkt of the proletariat in History and Class Consciousness of 1923, would
define the novel—for instance The Historical Novel in 1938—as the “conscious
and consistent application of … specifically historical viewpoints.” On closer
inspection, Antonio Gramsci, only a few years earlier, had touched on similar
theoretical issues in a (somewhat cryptic) observation on the Italian
novelistic tradition: “the ‘point of view’ of the key cannot be that of the
lock.” This observation in turn opened the way to a veritable taxonomy of
various ways of representing “the people” in the Italian novel - from Manzoni’s
“paternalism” to Dostoevsky’s “con-science.”
Del Roio,
Marcos. Gramsci and the Emancipation of the Subaltern Classes. Palgrave
Macmillan, 2022. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-90777-8 (ISBN 978-3-030-90776-1).
Abstract: This
book outlines essential issues of Antonio Gramsci’s thought, from his
relationship to other political thinkers, including Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin, and
Machiavelli; the development of his key conceptual categories; and the
applicability of those categories in contemporary contexts. The author
demonstrates how Gramsci’s revolutionary strategy begins with the knowledge of
the subaltern classes’ common sense, and their elements of rebellion, in order
to establish a dialectical relationship between intellectuals and the masses.
That relationship promotes collective intellectual progress, ultimately leading
to an effective philosophy of praxis, founded on labor and a new hegemony. The
book demonstrates that Gramsci’s thought offers possibilities for understanding
the serious crises of today.
Ekers, Michael,
Stefan Kipfer, and Alex Loftus. “Articulation, Translation, Populism: Gillian
Hart’s Engagements with Antonio Gramsci.” In Ethnographies of Power: Working
Radical Concepts with Gillian Hart. Ed. Sharad Chari, Mark Hunter, and
Melanie Samson, 163–186. Wits University Press, 2022. doi:10.18772/22022076666.12
(ISBN 978-1-77614-666-6).
Abstract:
Gillian Hart’s discussions of articulation, translation and populism
consistently challenge the schisms between political economy and cultural
studies, and Marxism and post-Marxism(s) that have shaped so many debates in
social theory since the dying days of the Cold War. In this
chapter, we argue that this challenge has been enacted in part through Hart’s
engagements with Antonio Gramsci’s writings. In the first instance, Hart’s work
has accepted the challenges brought forward against colour- and gender-blind
conceptions of Marxism on the terrain of Marxism itself (broadly and globally
conceived) and through historical materialist methods (in their most promising,
open-ended and dialectical.
Foot, John. Review of “Scritti (1910–1926), Volume 1, 1910–1916 by Antonio Gramsci, edited by Giuseppe Guida and Maria Luisa Righi, Rome, Edizione Nazionale degli Scritti di Antonio Gramsci, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Fondazione Gramsci, 2019, xxxiv + 1024 pp., ISBN 9788812008391 - Scritti (1910–1926), Volume 2, 1917 by Antonio Gramsci, edited by Leonardo Rapone with Maria Luisa Righi and Benedetta Garzarelli, Rome, Edizione Nazionale degli Scritti di Antonio Gramsci, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Fondazione Gramsci, 2015, xlii + 810 pp., ISBN 9788812005802.” Modern Italy 27.2 (2022): 187–189. doi:10.1017/mit.2021.60
Forgacs, David.
“Buttigieg’s Method.” Italian Culture 40.1 (2022): 6–15. doi:10.1080/01614622.2022.2057020
Abstract:
Joseph Buttigieg’s introduction to his uncompleted edition of the Prison
Notebooks is one of the best things ever written about Gramsci’s prison
writings. The last section reproduces, with minimal changes, Buttigieg’s 1990
article “Gramsci’s Method,” and it has the same title. That title, however, is
misleading, since what Buttigieg reconstructs is not so much Gramsci’s method
of writing the notebooks as his own process, as editor, of reading them, which
is far from being a factual report of how Gramsci “actually wrote.” It
involves, instead, a set of interpretive hunches, which in turn presuppose a
prior knowledge of all of Gramsci’s texts, without which it would not be
possible to make the connections he makes between different topics or to rank
them, to identify some – such as the critique of positivist sociology and the
idea of the philosophy of praxis – as more important, more overarching than
others. Symptomatic here is Buttigieg’s use of an apparently insignificant
note, of just twenty words, “L’ossicino di Cuvier,” generally overlooked by
Gramsci scholars, as a point of entry into a set of interconnected notes and
from there to the whole intellectual edifice of the Prison Notebooks.
Frétigné,
Jean-Yves. To Live Is to Resist: The Life of Antonio Gramsci. Trans.
Laura Marris. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022
(ISBN 978-0-226-71909-2).
Abstract: One
of the most influential political thinkers of the twentieth century, Antonio
Gramsci (1891–1937) has left an indelible mark on philosophy and critical
theory. His innovative work on history, society, power, and the state has
influenced several generations of readers and political activists, and even
shaped important developments in postcolonial thought. But Gramsci’s thinking
is scattered across the thousands of notebook pages he wrote while he was
imprisoned by Italy’s fascist government from 1926 until shortly before his
death. To guide readers through Gramsci’s life and works, historian Jean-Yves
Frétigné offers To Live Is to Resist, an accessible, compelling, and deeply
researched portrait of an extraordinary figure. Throughout the book, Frétigné
emphasizes Gramsci’s quiet heroism and his unwavering commitment to political
practice and resistance. Most powerfully, he shows how Gramsci never
surrendered, even in conditions that stripped him of all power—except, of
course, the power to think.
Green, Marcus E. “An Overview of the Gramsci Situation in North America.” International
Gramsci Journal 4.4 (2022). doi:10.14276/igj.v4i4.4157
Abstract: This
is the Abstract of the English-language article by Marcus Green, giving an
overview of the current Gramsci situation in North America, with special regard
to the United States.
Islam, Rama.
“Political Prisoners: A Comparative Critical Reading of Gramsci’s Prison
Notebooks, Rahman’s Prison Diaries, and Mandela’s Conversations with Myself.” Imbizo
13.2 (2022): 19 pages. doi:10.25159/2663-6565/11301
Abstract:
Political leaders who fight against the abuse of power are frequently
imprisoned for their political activities. Their voices challenge the existing
autocratic rulers and their experiences inside and outside prison are
essentially emblematic. This article explores power, politics and the prison
life of three famous politicians of three continents: Antonio Gramsci from
Italy (Europe), Sheikh Mujibur Rahman from Bangladesh (Asia), and Nelson
Mandela from South Africa (Africa). Prison Notebooks by Gramsci, Prison Diaries
by Rahman, and Conversations with Myself by Mandela are extraordinary works,
which contribute immensely to the shaping of prison literature. These authors
wrote about loneliness, hegemony, state repression and their resistance against
power to establish human rights. Focusing on Michel Foucault’s concept of
power, domination and the systematic reformations to treat prisoners more
humanely, this article undertakes a comparative critical reading of these three
prison narratives about the imprisonment of the three politicians. The analysis
explores their protest against power abuse and struggle for humanity, justice,
equality and dignity, which make them icons of leadership in the world.
Kipfer, Stefan.
“Antonio Gramsci and the Prison Notebooks.” In Critical Planning and Design:
Roots, Pathways, and Frames. Ed. Camilla Perrone, 191–203. The Urban Book
Series. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2022. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-93107-0_17
(ISBN 978-3-030-93107-0).
Abstract:
Planning was not a central and explicit concern for Antonio Gramsci. In a few
of his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci did however suggest that planning broadly
understood (as well as architecture) be understood within a larger process of
social rationalization that he called Americanism and Fordism and investigated
in relationship to the longue durée of Italian history. In order to situate
these rare comments—and erect a few signposts for future Gramsci-inspired
research on planning practice—this paper discusses the complex historical
geographies permeating Antonio Gramsci’s work. It does so by concentrating on
Gramsci’s multi-temporal and multi-scalar understanding of city, country and
urbanization. This understanding helps us grasp spatial questions (from
processes of urbanization and unevenly developed social struggles to
intellectual claims to urbanity and rurality) as active elements within longer
term historical dynamics, the relations of force that shape particular
historical conjunctures, and, of course, hegemonic projects oriented towards
building a socialist future.
Kipfer, Stefan
A., and Ayyaz Mallick. “‘Stretch’ and ‘Translate’: Gramscian Lineages, Fanonist
Convergences in the (Post)Colony.” Historical Materialism 30.4 (2022):
137–173. doi:10.1163/1569206x-20222142
Abstract:
Abstract This paper establishes a theoretical linkage between Antonio Gramsci
and Frantz Fanon. Gramsci’s critical-historicist method and its relationship to
humanism, his integral understanding of Marxism, and emphasis on the moment of
political practice resonate with Fanon’s articulation of the subjective and
political-economic aspects of the colonial question, his activistic
materialism, and his dialectically humanist universalism forged through
anti-colonial struggle. Establishing this linkage presupposes engaging distinct
currents of postcolonial Gramscianism in relation to each other and to the
philological turn in Gramsci scholarship. In turn, a Gramsci–Fanon convergence
helps elucidate the specificities of (post-)colonial contexts without elevating
these into a civilisational-ontological difference. Emphasising their
geographical sensitivity as a meeting point, pushing Gramsci towards Fanon
helps us treat the global South and imperial heartlands relationally, in
historico-geographical and specifically political terms. A Fanonian Gramsci (or
Gramscian Fanon) thus allows us to tackle Eurocentrism without closing doors to
a counter- or postcolonial Marxism.
Le Donne,
Alessandro. “Economic theory and philosophical anthropology: Marx, Gramsci,
Sraffa and the study of human nature.” The European Journal of the History
of Economic Thought 29.6 (2022): 1111–1124. doi:10.1080/09672567.2022.2131867
Abstract: In
the present paper, we ask whether in the “new” Classical political economy as
reproposed by Sraffa there is a satisfying theory of human behaviour and social
change. To discuss this issue, we try to show a possible pathway to integrate
the analytical part of his work with the historical analysis based on the
materialist philosophical anthropology proposed by Marx. We will examine first
the joint vision of Garegnani and Andrea Ginzburg to trace a compatibility
between Sraffa’s thought and Marx’s thought, then we put forward some hints for
a non-deterministic theory through Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis.
Levenson,
Zachary. “Make ‘Articulation’ Gramscian Again.” In Ethnographies of Power.
Ed. Sharad Chari, Mark Hunter, and Melanie Samson, 187–216. Working Radical
Concepts with Gillian Hart. Wits University Press, 2022. doi:10.18772/22022076666.13
(ISBN 978-1-77614-666-6).
Abstract: This
chapter draws on Gillian Hart’s development of the concept of articulation over
the past two decades. It argues that she transforms an otherwise Althusserian
concept into a Gramscian one. Beyond understandings of articulation as simply
‘joining together’, Hart builds on the work of Stuart Hall to add a second
connotation to the concept: ‘giving expression to’. By restoring the key role
of meaning making to Marxist analysis, she breaks with deterministic models of
politicisation. As an alternative, Hart argues that radicalisation occurs on
the terrain of everyday life, meaning that politics are not imputed from some
external vantage point.
Lin, Yue Zhou.
“Gramsci, the Relativity of the Integral State-Society, and the COVID-19
Interregnum.” Critical Sociology (2022): 08969205221086490. doi:10.1177/08969205221086490
Abstract:
Gramscian scholars have engaged with Gramsci’s leitmotif (‘rhythm of thought’)
and the stato integrale (integral state), a concept he introduced in Autumn
1930. This represents remarkable progress in the Marxist community. But what
requires further attention is the interconnection between an integral state and
a totalitarian one, two of the three expressions of state-society formations
that Perry Anderson identified as Gramsci’s antinomies. This article argues
that the integral state is fragile but hegemonic if it can be sustained.
Otherwise, it can degenerate into a totalitarian state. The article refigures
the ‘integral state’ as the ‘integral state-society’. It exists relatively,
depending on whether the ‘integral momentum’ or the ‘totalitarian tendency’
prevails in a dynamic interaction between radical Left, Far Right, and those
currents in between. Identifying this relativity helps to formulate a deeper
understanding of Gramsci’s thought and show how his legacy supports a class
struggle perspective on the COVID-19 interregnum.
Lin, Yue Zhou.
“Two Decades of Gramscian Scholarship in China: A Critical Retrospection.” International
Gramsci Journal 4.4 (2022). doi:10.14276/igj.v4i4.4162
Abstract: This
is the Abstract of the English-language article by Yue Zhou Lin (Joe Lin) on
recent Gramsci studies in China. We give his own English-language presentation
of the article here below as an extended Abstract. Presentation Over the last
two decades, Gramscian research in China has shifted away from seeing Gramsci
as a Western Marxist, from studying the philosophy of praxis to grappling with
the concept of hegemony, and from only interpreting Gramsci’s thought to
examining social problems in China through Gramscian lenses. However, Gramscian
scholarship in China is found problematic too, namely, the misappropriation of
the concept of hegemony, the lack of consideration of Gramsci’s other concepts,
especially the integral State, and still relatively a dearth of studies on
Chinese intellectuals using Gramsci’s concept of (organic) intellectuals. It is
within this acknowledgment that the article suggests eight new frontiers that
would advance Gramscian scholarship in China.
Marchi,
Alessandra. “Readings of Gramsci in and on the Arab Countries in the 2000s.” International
Gramsci Journal 4.4 (2022). doi:10.14276/igj.v4i4.4159
Abstract: This
is the Abstract of the article in English by Alessandra Marchi on the recent
presence of Gramsci in the Arab countries (MENA).
Martin, James. Hegemony.
Medford: Polity, 2022 (ISBN 978-1-5095-2160-9).
Abstract: Power
rarely works by force alone: it also rules by winning hearts and minds. States,
classes, and social groups all seek political dominance by exerting political,
ideological, or cultural leadership over others. This idea - hegemony - is a subtle,
complex one, which is too often applied crudely. In this succinct introduction,
political theorist James Martin skilfully examines these nuances and shines a
new light on hegemony. He introduces its component ideas and critically surveys
the most influential thinking about hegemony, from Gramsci’s theory of hegemony
as a revolutionary strategy and Marxist theories of the state, politics, and
culture to the Post-Marxist project of radical democracy. He then considers the
concept’s critical role in analysing international politics and global
political economy, and evaluates the criticism that hegemony is too
state-centric to truly capture the dynamics of contemporary struggles for
emancipation. This lucid and accessible guide to hegemony will be essential reading
for all students of radical politics and social and political theory.
Mayo, Peter.
“Antonio Gramsci, Settler-Colonialism and Palestine.” Journal of Holy Land
and Palestine Studies 21.2 (2022): 151–175. doi:10.3366/hlps.2022.0293
Abstract: This
article explores Gramsci’s relevance to colonialism with particular reference
to the situation in Palestine and the Palestinians. It historically oscillates
between the Italy and larger world contexts of Gramsci’s time and the
Palestinian and larger Arab contexts in more recent times, especially, in the
latter case, from the onset of settler colonialism in the Middle East. While it
covers a broad range of writings by Gramsci, notably the notes contained in the
Prison Notebooks, it provides special attention to his discussion on the
Southern Question. It tackles recurring themes in colonial discourse such as
those of ‘divide and rule’ and ideology residing in language besides the ever
so pertinent theme of Hegemony. It posits the resonance of appropriated or
reclaimed knowledge with a different ‘whole way of life’ (Raymond Williams).
Palestinian society is represented warts and all, with specific strengths and
differences highlighted, especially that of country and the city.
Modonesi,
Massimo. “Gramsci, Theoretician of Political Subjectivation: The
Subalternity–Autonomy–Hegemony Triad.” In Marxism, Social Movements and
Collective Action. Ed. Adrián Piva and Agustín Santella, 189–205. Cham:
Palgrave, 2022. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-12474-7_9
(ISBN 978-3-031-12474-7).
Abstract: In
this chapter, I trace the emergence of concepts that can act as coordinates of
a Marxist theory of political subjectivation in Gramsci’s work—particularly in
the Prison Notebooks. Highlighting and intertwining these concepts allows us to
glimpse an original theoretical horizon from which to question, in the field of
Gramscian studies, the predominance of culturalist readings of subalternity or,
alternatively, those of a hegemonistic, institutionalist and state-centric
nature. At the same time, this conceptual ordering opens the door to a
translation of Gramsci’s intuitions into the field of political sociology,
collective action and social movements, revealing points of contact as well as
those of critical tension with the contemporary theoretical debates and
approaches in this field of study.
Mollona,
Edoardo, and Luca Pareschi. Politics and Rhetoric of Italian State Steel
Privatisation. 1st edition. New York, NY: Routledge, 2022
(ISBN 978-1-03-224399-3).
Abstract: The
globally spreading privatisation wave that occurred in the 1990s deeply changed
the structure of economic institutions worldwide. This turmoil overturned not
only economic institutions, but shared cultural and societal institutions as
well. This book is the result of an investigation into the history of the
privatisation of the steel industry in Italy, completed between 1994 and 1995.
It explores the history of the Italian steel industry by looking at the
interplay of local intertwined interests, political relations, and ideological
formations that characterised an idiosyncratic hegemonic historical bloc.
Rather than stigmatising this pattern as the legacy of a dysfunctional
provincialism, the authors mobilise Gramsci’s theory of hegemony to explain how
the Italian privatisation process unfolded to accommodate economic pressures,
political interests, and ideological constraints of a hegemonic social group,
or aggregation of social groups. Thus, in reconstructing the privatisation of
Italian steel, this book proposes a hegemony theory of privatisation and, more
generally, describes a model that explains how political and cultural dynamics
give rise to idiosyncratic local variations in globally spreading policies.It
will be of interest to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of
business history, economics, sociology, and political science.
Pala, Mauro.
“Joseph Buttigieg: A Portrait of the Critic in Different Perspective.” Italian
Culture 40.1 (2022): 72–84. doi:10.1080/01614622.2022.2058721
Abstract:
Joseph Buttigieg’s A Portrait of the Artist in Different Perspective aims at
providing a critical reconsideration of Joyce’s work. Focusing on A Portrait of
the Artist as a Young Man, it contributes to a radical revision of the central
tenets of modernism as first established by T.S. Eliot’s conservative reading
in the 1920s and reiterated by the New Critics in the 1950s. Buttigieg’s
critical effort seeks to prevent Joyce’s work from being locked up in a
literary museum, drawing on a dialectical and highly perceptive ability to
unmask Western metaphysics and aesthetics as ideologies within which
conservative criticism had framed Joyce’s Bildungsroman. Furthermore, his
Maltese, English, Catholic roots made Buttigieg capable of identifying and demystifying
high modernism’s irony and disinterestedness as instruments of the “higher”
values on which the entire Irish social system was based. Together with Seamus
Deane and Declan Kiberd, Buttigieg was among the very first critics who
realized the relevance of Portrait as an Irish national indictment against
colonization because – as Deane maintains– it is the first novel to examine the
distorted relationship between the Irish community and oppression and to focus
on this oppression’s ultimate resource – cooperation with the oppressed. This
Joycean experience informed Buttigieg’s study of Gramsci’s method and its
application in various fields of the social sciences, a heritage that has
influenced scholarship throughout the world.
Pala, Mauro.
“Millennium Gramsci: Some Features of his Current US Reception.” International
Gramsci Journal 4.4 (2022). doi:10.14276/igj.v4i4.4156
Abstract: This
is the Abstract of the English-language article by Mauro Pala opening the
session on the current position of Gramsci in the Anglophone world, here with
special reference to the United States.
Pasieka,
Agnieszka. “Theft of Gramsci? On the radical right, radical left, and common
sense.” Dialectical Anthropology 46.4 (2022): 417–436. doi:10.1007/s10624-022-09681-6
Abstract:
Drawing on ethnographic research with radical right-wing activists in Italy and
Poland, my article reflects on the ways in which the Gramscian framework may
enhance our understanding of the present-day political landscape. Gramsci’s
role in the article is threefold. First, since he was a keen observer of
fascist developments, I relate his observations on fascism and inquire into
their relevance for understanding the rise of the far right today. Second, I
explore the agendas of the movements I studied through the Gramscian lens.
Inspired by the special issue’s editors, I examine the extent to which
Gramsci’s concept of “common sense” is helpful for analyzing contemporary
far-right activism. Third, I relate my own ethnographic observation to analyses
of a broader terrain of far-right politics to shed light on the phenomenon of
“far-right Gramscianism.” Bringing together all these observations on the
radical right, “common sense” and Gramsci’s legacy, I reflect on the complex
interrelationship between the radical right and the radical left.
Rubini,
Rocco. Posterity: Inventing Tradition from Petrarch to Gramsci.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022 (ISBN 978-0-226-80755-3).
Rocco Rubini studies the motives and literary forms in the making of a “tradition,” not understood narrowly, as the conservative, stubborn preservation of received conventions, values, and institutions, but instead as the deliberate effort on the part of writers to transmit a reformulated past across generations. Leveraging Italian thinkers from Petrarch to Gramsci, with stops at prominent humanists in between—including Giambattista Vico, Carlo Goldoni, Francesco De Sanctis, and Benedetto Croce—Rubini gives us an innovative lens through which to view an Italian intellectual tradition that is at once premodern and modern, a legacy that does not depend on a date or a single masterpiece, but instead requires the reader to parse an expanse of writings to uncover deeper transhistorical continuities that span six hundred years. Whether reading work from the fourteenth century, or from the 1930s, Rubini elucidates the interplay of creation and the reception underlying the enactment of tradition, the practice of retrieving and conserving, and the revivification of shared themes and intentions that connect thinkers across time.
Sotiris,
Panagiotis. “Uses of Gramsci in the Contemporary Greek Context.” International
Gramsci Journal 4.4 (2022). doi:10.14276/igj.v4i4.4153
Abstract: This
is the abstract of the article in English by Panagiotis Sotiris on the state of
Gramsci work in Greece and on the Greek left’s relation to Gramscian notions.
We give his own English-language presentation of the article here below as an
extended Abstract. Presentation This presentation offers an overview and
discussion of how the work of Antonio Gramsci, and notions and themes stemming
from it, have been used in the context of political, strategic, and theoretical
debates in Greece since the second half of the 2000s. What emerges is a
situation where despite the widespread use of notions and themes coming from
Gramsci, there is not extensive reference or dialogue with the more recent
Gramsci research and scholarship, and nor has a more ‘native’ tradition of
Gramsci Studies emerged. However, both political-strategic and theoretical
debates could benefit from engagement with Gramsci in that direction,
especially since the particular Greek conjuncture after 2010 points to the
continuing pertinence of Gramscian notions as means to analyse social and
political dynamics and exigencies, but also to deal with open theoretical
questions in the field of the Social Sciences.
Sousa, José
Wellington. “Liberating Community-based Research: Rescuing Gramsci’s Legacy of
Organic Intellectuals.” Engaged Scholar Journal: Community-Engaged Research,
Teaching, and Learning 8.3 (2022): 1–17. doi:10.15402/esj.v8i3.70755
Abstract: This
article aims to provoke a discussion around conceiving community members as
community-based research facilitators and leaders of their own process of
change. It argues this is possible by rescuing Gramsci’s legacy of organic
intellectuals that is present in community-based research literature,
particularly under the participatory research rubric. However, this perspective
has been overshadowed by a strong emphasis on community-based research (CBR) as
a collaborative research approach rather than a people’s approach for knowledge
production that leads to social transformation. Furthermore, such a view of
community-based research is fruitful within an adult education and social
movement learning framework. In a sense, social movements provide an
environment that facilitates critical consciousness and the formation of
organic intellectuals and in which communities and academics learn to better
engage in partnership for community-led social change. In this context, CBR is
still a collaborative approach, but one led primarily by organic intellectuals.
Srivastava,
Neelam. “Philological Method and Subaltern Pasts.” Italian Culture 40.1
(2022): 49–60. doi:10.1080/01614622.2022.2058187
Abstract: This
essay argues that Antonio Gramsci should be considered a postcolonial thinker.
This is not an exercise in presenting the “legacy” of a European Marxist’s
thought in the Third World. The aim here, rather, is to determine how Gramscian
thought can be read as anticolonial, and how he related empire to the
hegemonic-subaltern dialectic that structured his political theories. I engage
with Joseph Buttigieg’s well-known essay “Gramsci’s Method” in order to explore
how the philological method adopted in the Prison Notebooks offers several
important insights for postcolonial studies, and bears obvious connections to
the work of the Subaltern Studies historians, especially in terms of how it is
central to the retrieval of subaltern pasts. I further argue that Gramsci’s
interest in the national-popular and in forms of progressive nationalism that
were grounded in internationalist solidarity suggests strong connections with
Third Worldist theories of liberation struggles, such as tricontinentalism and
the work of Frantz Fanon. Applying Buttigieg’s way of reading of Gramsci’s
anti-dogmatic philological method to Third Worldism allows us to see how it
renovated Marxism’s revolutionary aims and emancipatory futures, and ultimately
helped to decolonize Marxism.
Traboulsi,
Fawwaz. “Reading and Translating Gramsci in the 70s.” International Gramsci
Journal 4.4 (2022). doi:10.14276/igj.v4i4.4160
Abstract: This
is the Abstract of the English-language article by Fawwaz Traboulsi on the
history, starting from the 1960s and 1970s of the translation into Arabic of
Gramsci and its subsequent diffusion and influence. The author looks at the way
in which currently neoliberalism has been changing political language in the
attempt to bend it to its own purposes.
Tussie, Diana, and Leonardo Ramos. “How Does Gramsci Travel in Latin America? Before and After Critical International Relations Theory.” Contexto Internacional 44 (2022). doi:10.1590/S0102-8529.20224401e20200124
Abstract: In the last 40 years, Critical International Relations Theory (CIRT) has influenced scholars in the Global North as well as the South. Latin America shows particular features. On the one hand, conceptualisation did not divorce the domestic from the international, as in dependency theory. On the other, Gramsci was widely read much before Robert W. Cox and even before International Relations was constituted as a discipline in its own right. In this context, this article aims to present possible contributions of (neo)Gramscian approaches to the understanding of Latin America as a region. It does so by establishing a dialectical relationship between a few topics that offer insights (and the theoretical reflection they provoke) and some (neo)Gramscian concepts. Hence, we want to re-read, in a dialectical vein, both CIRT and some aspects of how Gramscian thought has travelled in Latin America. We intend to analyse how such thinking is thriving, if at all, and discuss the possible relevance of rescuing Gramscian international thought to think about the region.KeywordsGramsci; neo-gramscianism; Critical International Relations Theory; international thought; Latin America.
Zembylas,
Michalinos. “Antonio Gramsci on Faith, Religion and the Entanglement of
Reason/Emotion: Insights for Religious Education in Western Multi-Religious
Societies.” Religion & Education 49.3 (2022): 273-291. doi:10.1080/15507394.2022.2102872
Abstract: This
article argues that Antonio Gramsci’s affective and materialist conception of
faith has crucial implications for theory and research in religious education,
especially with regard to the affective dimensions of religious controversies
and sensibilities in Western multi-religious societies. By emphasizing the role
of emotion in faith, Gramsci speaks to the affective turn’s recent attempts to
foster a critical, contextual and productive engagement with “religious
affects.” Gramsci’s conception of faith offers novel insights to scholars and
educators in religious education that help overcome problematic dichotomies
between emotion/reason and secularity/religiosity that are often embedded in
public discourses on religious controversies.
Armenian
None to report.
French
IGS France > Parutions > Livres > Articles
German
None to report.
Greek
None to report.
Italian
Digital Library Antonio Gramsci > Bibliografia gramsciana
Japanese
None to report.
Portuguese
IGS Brasil > Bibliografia Gramsciana
Spanish
None to report.
Thai
None to report.
Turkish
Feyzullah Yilmaz has compiled a list of Turkish Gramsci publications at Neo-Gramsian Portal.
|
