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English
Gramsci in Translation
Righi, Maria Luisa. “Introduction to Three Lycée Essays by
Gramsci.” International Gramsci Journal 5.3 (2024). doi:10.14276/igj.v5i3.4681
Abstract: This article introduces the three newly discovered
essays written by Gramsci while still at the Dettori high school in Cagliari
and goes into why they have only recently come to light, to then be published
in 2022 in the Italian newspaper “Il fatto quotidiano”. The essays turned up in
the family papers of a Communist Party parliamentarian from Milan, Francesco
Scotti, a Spanish Civil War veteran and after that a partisan leader (in the
French Maquis and then in Italy) among whose friends in Milan were prople
associated with Gramscian activities, among them Carlo Gramsci, the younger
brother of Antonio. It seems likely that Scotti was given these essays by
someone in this group to hand them over to the PCI in Rome, probably to
Togliatti, but neglected to do this and so they remained forgotten for years.
The essays themselves can with certainty be dated to Gramsci’s last year at the
high school since the signature of the professore is Vittorio Amedeo Arullani,
who had replaced Raffa Garzia as Gramsci’s Italian teacher. The essay subjects
assigned were quotations from the sixteenth century writer Giovanni Della
Casa’s treatise Il Galateo (in recent English versions The Rules of Polite
Behavior) and two of Italy’s most important poets, Giacomo Leopardi and Giosuè
Carducci. For all these essays by Gramsci, Arullani gave positive judgments and
very high grades. One sees a student very open to the contemporary currents of
thought, whose essays prefigure themes that later come explicitly to the fore
both in his journalistic work and in the Prison Notebooks (artistic currents
and aesthetics, Americanism, the “mummification” of culture, the figure of
Stenterello, Kant’s “beheading” of God, Jesuitism and so on).
Gramsci, Antonio. “Lycée Essay (1): Man Must not be Content
to do Good Things.” International Gramsci Journal 5.3 (2024). doi:10.14276/igj.v5i3.4682
Abstract: This is the English version of Gramsci’s essay
based on the phrase “Man Must not be Content to do Good Things” from the
sixteenth century author Giovanni Della Casa’s Galateo (The Rules of Polite
Behavior in modern English versions). This starting point leads into a
discussion of aesthetics, art and beauty and their accessibility to the
different classes and strata of society. Only in galleries and museums, the
preserve of the “initiated”, were art forms accessible. The lower strata of
society adopted forms of adornment and decoration which, although aesthetically
ugly, in a primitive way showed the yearning for beauty. The styles needed
channelling to realize beauty; the nascent garden cities in England indicated
what could be achieved while, in contrast to the luxurious mansions of the rich
in Italy, or even the aesthetic content typifying ancient Greece and Rome, the
working people were confined to fetid alleyways and squalid housing, showing up
in the stress of modern life: for the Aristotelian catharsis to come about the
artistic spirit must predominate.
Gramsci, Antonio. “Lycée Essay (2): The Truth, when Known /
Though Sad, Has yet its Charms.” International Gramsci Journal 5.3
(2024). doi:10.14276/igj.v5i3.4683
Abstract: The subject of the essay, here in its English
version, is taken from Giacomo Leopardi’s poem to Count Carlo Pepoli (Canti,
1841) and reads in English, “… the truth, when known, / Though sad, has yet its
charms”. One type of person accepts the world as it is, seeing only its
beautiful side, is transported by dreams and refuses to take into account cruel
truths. Others detach themselves from the human herd, not being content with
vain appearances; they are driven by the desire to know but risk becoming total
sceptics. A third type looks at the world as it is, knowing that the truth they
see may be hard to accept, but reason rather than an attack on spurious targets
must be used to find it. The real heroism of the “man of thought” is a
knowledge of the world as it really is, which entails not hiding unpleasant
sides from outsiders, which would amount to a hypocritical “Jesuitism”. Wrong
and harmful positions must be attacked, as for example in Emile Zola’s
“J’accuse” letter and, in Italy, Giosuè Carducci’s diatribes against the
“patriots” who were ruining the young Italian State.
Gramsci, Antonio. “Lycée Essay (3): When a Truth is that
Old, It is on its Way to Becoming a Lie.” International Gramsci Journal
5.3 (2024). doi:10.14276/igj.v5i3.4684
Abstract: The subject of Gramsci’s essay, here in its
English version, is taken from a paraphrase of words in Henrik Ibsen’s 1882
play An Enemy of the People: “Truths, in getting old, become errors”. Each
generation has had its syntheses, truths following one another, each believed
by its supporters but excluding the others. Intellectual ruins and
contradictory substrata of human consciousness are the outome, and even science
has not escaped this débacle. Contradictory truths have led even to massacres and
reprisals, with the destruction of society’s dynamic and progressive aspects.
Some truths are long-lasting, such as the Ptolemaic universe or the existence
of God, whose mummi-fied corpse can still however make its presence felt. Many
contemporary problems can be traced back to old truths which – through official
compromise and hypocrisy – still have to be respected. Humanity will construct
other, more rational truths, in order to reach some destiny, but we cannot know
if this will consist of annulment or deification.
Articles & Books Related to Gramsci
Acland, Charles R. “The Longest Revolution, or Notes on
Stuart Hall, Antonio Gramsci, and Authoritarian Populism.” Notebooks: The
Journal for Studies on Power 4.1 (2024): 89–107. doi:10.1163/26667185-bja10055
Abstract: Abstract This article examines contemporary
right-wing populist movements and argues that a dominant concept describing
such movements – “authoritarian populism” – does not provide the analytical
advantage that it might. The current usage of that term privileges populism as
primarily authoritarian. In contrast, Stuart Hall’s development of the concept
in the 1970s proposed that “authoritarian populism” was a way of explaining
political conjunctures. As initially conceived, “authoritarian populism” did
not presume to convey, in advance of analysis, the politics of popular
movements. Hall’s critiques were efforts to reinvigorate the Gramscian analysis
of cultural politics, while the contemporary usage of “authoritarian populism”
evacuates the Gramscian dimension. The article concludes with a call for
explicit engagement in the cultural political arena during this time of
authoritarian apology in order to take responsibility for the construction of
an effective and progressive popular historic bloc.
Amini, Babak. “Gramsci’s dissidence beneath and beyond the
First World War.” Journal of Classical Sociology 24.4 (2024): 471–486.
doi:10.1177/1468795X241280953
Abstract: One of the leading Marxist theorists of the 20th
century and a founding member and leader of the Italian Communist Party,
Antonio Gramsci began his intellectual and political journey essentially at the
outbreak of WWI and left a massive body of journalistic work by the end of the
war. Despite their scope and significance, his wartime writings remain
understudied relative to the Prison Notebooks and other post-wartime writings,
particularly in the English language literature. This article outlines some of
the central themes that he explored in this period. It provides a synoptic
depiction of Gramsci’s conceptual development over the course of the war.
Gramsci’s dissident social theory represents a radically different intellectual
reaction to the war than we see from prominent conservative and liberal social
theorists. What emerges from the picture presented in this article is a
conceptual snapshot whose organizing principle centers on a critical
understanding of intransigence that Gramsci developed over the course of the
war. The notion of intransigence, which for Gramsci went far beyond
organizational and strategic struggles and expanded into cultural and
philosophical endeavors, helps make sense of the major contours of his wartime
activities. In carving out a space for critical engagement during the war,
Gramsci developed a critique of liberalism and a commitment to socialism which
were both marked by and linked through his critical understanding of
intransigence.
Boninelli, Giovanni Mimmo. “Dizionario gramsciano / Gramsci
Dictionary: Folclore / Folklore.” International Gramsci Journal 5.3
(2024). doi:10.14276/igj.v5i3.4690
Abstract: The term folclore appears infrequently in
Gramsci’s pre-prison writings, but is an important feature of the Prison
Notebooks, the word appearing first as “folklore” and later in its Italianized
form “folclore”, in all appearing there around a hundred times. It is often
linked to a “conception of the world” belonging to “given strata of society […]
not touched by the modern currents of thought”. A linkage exists between
folklore, common sense and philosophy with each successive philosophy leaving a
sediment of “common sense” which is then the “folklore” of philosophy, standing
midway between real folklore, as it is understood, and philosophy. Several
points of contact can be singled out between Gramsci’s treatment of folklore
and that of a contemporary of his, Giovanni Crocioni (cf. Q 1 § 89 and its “C”
text Q 27 § 1), a review of whose volume Problemi fondamentali del Folklore
seems to have been one of the stimuli for Gramsci’s reflections. Both recognize
the dynamic aspect of folklore – its adaption to circumstances, and also the
need to study it at school level in order to go beyond it (cf. Q 12 § 2). As
conception of the world and life folklore is not merely a curiosity, and
something merely “quaint” but, as Gramsci observes, is “very serious and to be
taken seriously” (Q 27 § 1) and moreover produces innovative effects in the
strata of the population able to express their own organic intellectuals;
hence, by production of a new “common sense”, culture and conception of the
world, they can transform their social context. Editorial Note: see also the
dictionary entry “Common Sense” in International Gramsci Journal, 4(2), 2021,
125-129.
Caminati, Luca. “Gramsci’s Body and Thought in Italian Film
Culture: Sardinia, Folklore, Resistance.” Notebooks: The Journal for Studies
on Power 4.1 (2024): 108–127. doi:10.1163/26667185-bja10053
Abstract: Abstract In this article a few key moments of
postwar Italian cinema are mapped and analyzed in order to define resonances,
influences, and other entanglements with the body, lived experience, and
thought of Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci. This Gramscian
cinematic geography is understood as a construct established through the
connection with Gramsci’s own disabled physical and intellectual space and
proposed as a possible method for an engaged reading of cinematic texts.
Building on recent works on Gramsci’s own disabled body, and forms of localized
knowledge, this article focuses on the suffering body as a form of resistance
to injustice and marginalization, as well as on his intellectual localization,
his geo-, and body-politics of knowing on the island of Sardinia.
Carroll, William K., ed. The Elgar Companion to Antonio Gramsci. Cheltenham, UK ; Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2024. doi:10.4337/9781802208603 (ISBN 978-1-80220-860-3).
Abstract: Affirming Antonio Gramsci’s continuing influence, this adroitly cultivated Companion offers a comprehensive overview of Gramsci’s contributions to the interdisciplinary fields of critical social science, social and political thought, economics and emancipatory politics. Within the tradition of historical materialism, it explores the continuing impact of Gramscian perspectives in the present day
Conents
1: Introduction: recovering a Gramsci for our times
William K. Carroll
Part I: Gramsci in Context
2: Gramsci: life and times of a revolutionary
Nathan Sperber and George Hoare
3: Gramsci, Marx, Hegel
Robert P. Jackson
4: 'The Revolution against "Capital"': constancy, change and collective will in Gramscis concepts
Derek Boothman
5: Historico-political dynamics in the Prison Notebooks: passive revolution, relations of force, organic crisis
Francesca Antonini
6: Hegemony as a protean concept
Elizabeth Humphrys
Part II: The Philosophy of Praxis: A New Political Vocabulary
7: The historical bloc as a strategic node in Gramscis Prison Notebooks
Panagiotis Sotiris
8: State, capital and civil society
Marco Fonseca
9: Intellectuals, ideology, and the ethico-political
Jean-Pierre Reed and Carlos L. Garrido
10: Where Trotsky's horizons stop, Gramscis begin: the passive revolutionary road to capitalist modernity
Adam David Morton
11: War of maneuver and war of position: Gramsci and the dialectic of revolution
Daniel Egan
12: Welding the present to the future ... thinking with Gramsci about prefiguration
Dorothea Elena Schoppek
13: The Modern Prince and revolutionary strategy
Alexandros Chrysis
Part III: Gramsci for the Twenty-first Century
Section A: Philosophical and political-economic issues
14: Gramsci, post-Marxism and critical realism
Jonathan Joseph
15: Hegemonic projects and cultural political economy
Bob Jessop
16: Fordism, post-Fordism and the imperial mode of living
Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen
Section B: Social and cultural reproduction
17: Hegemony, gender and social reproduction
Anna Sturman
18: Cultural studies: the Gramscian current
Marco Briziarelli and Didarul Islam
19: Antonio Gramsci and education
Peter Mayo
20: Hegemony without hegemony: Gramsci, Guha and post-Western Marxism
Sourayan Mookerjea
Section C: Hegemonic Struggle
21: Social movements and hegemonic struggle
Laurence Cox
22: Hegemonic struggle and right-wing populism
Owen Worth
23: Gramsci and hegemonic struggle in a globalized world
Thomas Muhr
Section D: Global organic crisis
24: Transnational neoliberalism in organic crisis
Henk Overbeek
25: Beyond ecocidal capitalism: climate crisis and climate justice
Kevin Surprise
Colucci, Francesco. “Gramsci in Action: Cultural Hegemony
and Schooling in the Arab Israeli Conflict.” International Gramsci Journal 5.3 (2024). doi:10.14276/igj.v5i3.4686
Abstract: Cultural hegemony is placed in relation to Kurt
Lewin’s action research and the psychological theories of social conflict by
Lewin himself, Carolyn Wood Sherif and Muzafer Sherif, and Henri Tajfel.
Consonances between Gramsci’s ideas and these psychological theories are
brought to the fore. Assuming this theoretical perspective, the results of an
action research conducted in Arab Israeli schools to reduce dispersion
highlight the heuristic value of Gramsci’s ideas in the Israeli Arab conflict context.
Thus the contradictions of that conflict emerge and, together with them, the
possibility of a solution.
Doğan, Sevgi. “Luxemburg and Gramsci. The Role of Optimism
and Pessimism during the Struggle for an Alternative to Capitalism.” Las
Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy 13.2 (2024):
161–175. doi:10.5209/ltdl.93337
Abstract: What I try to do in this paper is to analyze and probe what Rosa Luxemburg and Antonio Gramsci understand by pessimism and optimism. Luxemburg and Gramsci demonstrate how liberal capitalist ideology uses “a false form of hope to keep people yoked to the system that oppresses them.” In this “terrible world” and under the current capitalist circumstances which lead to economic, social, political and ecological crises, it may be difficult to be optimistic about the future. Besides, not only the multiple crises but also the many defeats suffered by progressive movements in the different areas of struggles against ongoing economic and political regression bring along a depressive and desperate feeling that could also be called pessimism.The questions I am asking are very simple: What is pessimism and optimism for Luxemburg and Gramsci? For them, what sort of social conditions lead to pessimism or optimism? In this paper, I will try to demonstrate that both Rosa Luxemburg and Gramsci adopted a dialectical approach to pessimism and optimism, they were “pessoptimists” so to speak. Based upon what Hegel once said, “the negative is just as much positive”, I will explain this dialectical relationship by claiming that pessimism exists in optimism and vice versa. For this purpose, I will focus on some of Rosa Luxemburg’s texts in the recently published volumes on Revolution as well as in her letters. Furthermore, I will concentrate on some texts by Gramsci in which he makes particular reference to pessimism and optimism as symbolized by his famous “pessimism of the intelligence, optimism of the will.”
Fifi, Gianmarco. “On Antonio Gramsci’s hidden concept:
Fetishism.” Capital & Class 48.3 (2024): 379–397. doi:10.1177/03098168221145857
Abstract: The article sheds light on Gramsci’s use of the
term fetishism. Despite not being as present and pervasive within the Prison
Notebooks as other concepts, more deeply rooted in Gramscian scholarship (such
as hegemony and historic bloc), fetishism is not as marginal in Gramsci’s
reflection as it is usually believed. Linking his understanding of the term to
the one developed by Marx and by the later unorthodox Marxist scholarship, I
shall argue that fetishism can be seen as a key component of Gramsci’s theory
of revolution or, better, of a theory of the failure of the revolutionary
process. For this reason, the article will also link Gramsci’s occasional
reference to fetishism to his use of more developed concepts such as common
sense, hegemony and passive revolution. Fetishistic views of reality, in
Gramsci, appear as facilitating the conservation of the status quo, while the
re-acquisition of individual and collective responsibility that comes along
with de-fetishising practices is the necessary component of any revolutionary
project.
Francese, Joseph. “Book review: Antonio Gramsci, Edizione nazionale degli scritti di Antonio Gramsci. Scritti (1910–1926). V. 3, 1918.” Forum Italicum 58.3 (2024): 560–562. doi:10.1177/00145858241258762.
Garrett, Paul Michael. Social Work and Common Sense: A
Critical Examination. Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2024
(ISBN 978-1-04-001354-0).
Abstract: Rooted in a lively, critical approach to social
work education and practice, Social Work and Common Sense challenges readers to
think critically and more deeply about core facets of social work knowledge and
‘received ideas’. Garrett draws on the work of Antonio Gramsci to develop new,
and often provocative, insights on attachment theory, creativity, anger, human
rights, the ‘unmarried mother’ in Ireland’s past, and contemporary approaches
to ‘decolonising’ social work education. The book is divided into ten chapters,
each of which includes a series of reflection and talk boxes to assist students
to critically reflect (individually and in class/seminar and
fieldwork/workplace discussions) on key facets of the preceding
chapter.Addressing often complex ideas in a freshly accessible way, Social Work
and Common Sense will be required reading in all postgraduate and advanced
undergraduate classes in theory and social work.
Gentili, Dario, Elettra Stimilli, and Gabriele Guerra, eds. A
Walter Benjamin and Antonio Gramsci: A Missed Encounter. New York, NY:
Routledge, 2024. (ISBN 978-1-03-259970-0). url
Abstract: This book marks a missed encounter between two of
the most influential Marxist thinkers of our age, Walter Benjamin and Antonio
Gramsci, studied here for the first time side by side.Benjamin and Gramsci were
contemporaries, whose births and deaths took place within a few years of each
other in Western Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. Two
Marxists sui generis, they radically changed Marxism’s themes and vocabulary,
profoundly influencing the most significant analyses and debates. At a time in
which Marxism was considered to be outdated and in crisis, both Gramsci’s and
Benjamin’s thoughts provided resources for its renewal: particularly in
postcolonial studies for Gramsci and in new media studies for Benjamin. Both
were victims of fascism, on the threshold of the catastrophe of the Second
World War. These two philosophers’ posthumous fortune depended on the
transmission of their thought, which was first entrusted to friends and
comrades, and then to entire generations of scholars from a wide range of
disciplines.Editors, Dario Gentili, Elettra Stimilli, and Gabriele Guerra
explore with leading voices on Benjamin and Gramsci the most relevant and
topical issues today. The book gives an indispensable new perspective in
Marxism for students and researchers alike.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part 1: Philosophy of History and Historical Materialism
1. Benjamin’s Break With Newtonian Time and the Introduction of Relativist Space-Time Into Critique
Frank Engster
2. Between Determinism, Freedom, and Messianism: Gramsci and Benjamin on History
Wolfgang Müller-Funk
3. Historical Materialism and Philosophy of Praxis: Walter Benjamin and Antonio Gramsci Critics of Socialism
Francesco Raparelli
Part 2: Revolution, Counter-revolution, and Passive Revolution
4. Present, Presence, Passive Revolution: Gramsci and Benjamin
Vittoria Borsò
5. On Gramscian Temporality
Michele Filippini
6. Charles Baudelaire in the Age of Passive Revolution: Benjamin and Gramsci
Dario Gentili
7. Gramsci, Benjamin, and Passive Revolutions
Marcello Mustè
Part 3: Capitalist Modes of Production, and Production of Subjectivity
8. The Little Prince: Sorel, Myth and Violence Between Benjamin and Gramsci
Massimo Palma
9. “To Live in a Glass House”: Gramsci and Benjamin, or What Becomes of Historical Materialism When the Personal Is Political
Elettra Stimilli
10. Technique and politics: From Gramsci to Benjamin
Massimiliano Tomba
11. Social Rebels and Rag Pickers: On the Theoretical Function of Marginalised People in Gramsci and Benjamin
Birgit Wagner
Part 4: Translation and Criticism, Avant-garde and Popular Culture
12. Critique, Mediation, and Strategy: From Gramsci to Benjamin
Marco Gatto
13. Language in the Age of Its Capitalist Translatability
Sami Khatib
14. A Non-Real Fire: Gramsci and Benjamin, Interpreters of Futurism
Daniele Balicco
15. The Contours of the Banal: Popular Art and Culture, Folklore and Kitsch
Marina Montanelli
Gheciu, Alexandra et al., eds. “The Gramscian Right, or
Turning Gramsci on His Head.” In World of the Right: Radical Conservatism
and Global Order. 34–66. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. doi:10.1017/9781009516075.002
(ISBN 978-1-00-951607-5).
Abstract: The radical Right has turned to the Left’s iconic
hero Antonio Gramsci for inspiration and guidance on how to launch a
counter-hegemonic struggle against liberal cultural and political domination.
Gramsci provides a powerful way to understand the globalisation of the Right,
and many of Gramsci’s ideas, particularly cultural hegemony, historic blocs,
and counter-hegemonic movements have been self-consciously and strategically
appropriated by the Right. What radical Right intellectuals call ‘metapolitics’
provides them with a global sociological, ideological, and political framing,
as well as a political economy with capitalism and class at its centre. It
provides a strategic direction that seeks to mobilise social forces produced
and marginalised by liberalism and globalisation by bringing them to
self-consciousness, turning them from classes in themselves to politically
aware and active classes for themselves. The global Right is not ideologically
unified, nor does it have centralised controlling institutions. Instead, their
counter-hegemonic ideologies enable diverse actors and agendas to find common
cause despite their differences.
Gheciu, Alexandra et al., eds. “The War of Position: Towards
a Right Common Sense.” In World of the Right: Radical Conservatism and
Global Order. 108–143. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. doi:10.1017/9781009516075.004
(ISBN 978-1-00-951607-5).
Abstract: The radical Right’s initiatives have not been
confined to the realm of ideas. Armed with a specific understanding of the deep
cultural and social foundations of the liberal hegemonic order, they have
diligently embarked on a Gramscian war of position: a patient counter-hegemonic
struggle to change the predominant ‘common sense’ and produce ‘organic
intellectuals’ who can critique the existing order and provide alternatives to
it. We focus on the Right’s often overlooked efforts to capture the traditional
institutions of cultural and political domination via academic publishing,
universities, and policy institutes. These initiatives seek to create a new
legitimacy and acceptability for radical Right ideas, explicitly re-writing
intellectual history from a radical conservative perspective and reclaiming it
from the academic mainstream. Through new universities and think tanks, their
aim is to replace the liberal, woke, managerial, globalist elite with a Right
elite, schooled in the critique of managerialism and critical of the over-reach
of international institutions and liberal powers and think tanks.
Hänninen, Sakari. Political Creativity: Antonio Gramsci
on Political Transformation. Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2024. (ISBN 978-1-03-531621-2). url
Abstract: For several decades, Antonio Gramsci has been one
of the most studied and discussed political theorists; however, his originality
as a political thinker has not yet been fully understood. In this incisive
book, Sakari Hänninen explores Gramsci’s political theory of transformation and
posits that he was altogether too creative a thinker to be simply categorized
as an adherent of a certain school of thought or tradition.Following Gramsci’s
own advice to trace the stable and permanent elements of a thinker’s
intellectual development in statu nascendi, Hänninen argues that Gramsci’s
thinking was distinct and superior to the material he studied. Chapters examine
the central question of his exilic writing in prison: political, historical and
societal transformation – generated by struggle and strife giving birth to
something qualitatively new and unforeseen – as a pluritemporal ‘becoming’
rather than unilinear development. The book further investigates Gramsci’s
modal analysis of political transformation moving from Marxian necessity to
Machiavellian opportunity.Political Creativity: Antonio Gramsci on Political
Transformation will be an enlightening read for students and scholars in the
fields of political, social and historical science, particularly political
theory, cultural studies and European politics. Its insights will also benefit
political and civic activists, civil society agencies and think tanks.
Jackson, Robert P. “Rethinking Trajectories of the
Intellectual: Edward Said and Antonio Gramsci.” Notebooks: The Journal for
Studies on Power 4.1 (2024): 39–67. doi:10.1163/26667185-bja10057
Abstract: Abstract A generation has passed since Edward
Said’s Reith Lectures, in which he examined the role of intellectuals in modern
society. Among the inspirations of Said’s ‘secular criticism’ is the work of
Gramsci. Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony and subalternity, his reflections on
intellectuals, and his discussions of the spatial relationship between culture
and power feature in Said’s ‘contrapuntal’ approach. This article hypothesises
that Said’s intellectual represents a type of ‘commando’ in the context of the
obstruction of forms of critical intellectuality. Exploring Gramsci’s use of
this politico-military figure to explain cultural processes provides the
opportunity to examine the trajectories of intellectual-arditismo, either as a
spark for social transformation or as a radicalism that enshrines popular
passivity. Reciprocally, Said’s exilic analysis recovers the criticality of the
Gramscian intellectual associated with subaltern groups. This enables a
comparative study of Gramsci’s and Said’s treatment of intellectuals, while
recognising the ‘worldliness’ of their respective approaches.
Jackson, Robert P. “Senso comune, buon senso, and Philosophy
in Gramsci.” International Gramsci Journal 5.4 (2024): 165–185. doi:10.14276/igj.v5i4.4732
Abstract: The vast and intricate theoretical development of
Gramsci’s concept of senso comune intersects with diverse themes in his
thought, from hegemony and political parties to civil society, the state, and
the role of intellectuals, to name but a few. This article contributes to the
analysis of the concepts of senso comune and buon senso in Gramsci’s pre-prison
writings, Prison Letters, and Prison Notebooks, through its relationship with
the development of his conception of philosophy. Engaging with the recent
season of historico-philological studies of Gramsci’s writings to pursue the
diachronic development of Gramsci’s conception of senso comune, this
investigation reconsiders prevailing anglophone «images» of his thought, in
relation to senso comune, in light of the resources of the critical editions of
Gramsci’s writings. While acknowledging the pitfalls of the unmediated and
de-contextualised application of Gramsci’s ideas to the present, this study
suggests that a philological reading of Gramsci’s conception of senso comune
has value as a pre requisite for a «dialogue with the present», and a strategic
analysis of the contemporary conjuncture.
Jeice, Spencer, and Sudarsan and Padmanabhan. “Culturally
constituted self in Taylor and Gramsci: A concern for philosophy of education.”
Educational Philosophy and Theory 56.14 (2024): 1403–1413. doi:10.1080/00131857.2024.2401827
Abstract: This article addresses the problem of two extreme
positions in the self-understanding of human beings namely ignoring culture or
its over-determination. Though Charles Taylor and Antonio Gramsci are widely
known to differ from each other in many respects, we endeavor a congruent
reading to evolve a comprehensive perspective. We make avail of their concepts,
such as background, horizon, and common sense, to comprehend the nature of the
culturally constituted self and its relevance for education. For both Taylor
and Gramsci, the human self is situated in a cultural framework. Though the
relation between self and culture is constitutive and inevitable, culture does
not entirely determine or overshadow the self. This stance gives space for
upholding freedom, dignity and liberation of the human self in both of them.
While preserving the essential role of culture in the formation of the human
self, education must not be reduced to identity politics. Education must
incorporate culture, be critical of it and pay attention to forming a critical
self.
Kanaaneh, Abed. “The Hegemony of Resistance: Hezbollah and
the Forging of a National-Popular Will in Lebanon.” Middle East Critique
33.1 (2024): 3–24. doi:10.1080/19436149.2023.2249344
Abstract: Drawing on the Gramscian concept of hegemony, this
article examines Hezbollah’s muqawama project within the Lebanese political
arena. It provides a novel interpretation of Hezbollah’s political development
from force operating through a ‘blitzkrieg’ strategy to hegemonic politics. It
examines the role that the muqawama concept has played in shaping the
organization’s changes in its latest phase, as well as its relationship with
other political forces at the national and regional level. It concludes by
developing a cultural analysis of Hezbollah’s video-clips and songs, showing
how these embody the new nature of the muqawama project, and its various
dimensions.
Kroonenberg, Saskia. “Gramsci’s Writing Body. On Embodiment
and Subaltern Knowledge.” Interventions 26.5 (2024): 626–641. doi:10.1080/1369801X.2023.2191861
Abstract: Antonio Gramsci is arguably one of the most
influential thinkers in postcolonial theory, particularly due to his notion of
the subaltern and his situated perspective, i.e., his emphasis on the
terrestrial aspects of culture and politics. This essay explores how Gramsci’s
own lived experience may have contributed to his subaltern philosophy. Its
focus is especially on his disabled body (embodiedness) and relational needs,
arguing that these aspects deserve a central role in his intellectual legacy.
From a young age, Gramsci suffered from a weak health; he had a malformation of
the spine that left him hunchbacked, and he did not grow taller than 1.5 metres
(5 feet). His high voice shrieked and his head seemed too big for his tiny
figure. Yet, despite this image, Gramsci was not a case of “mind over matter”
at all. Building on Deleuze’s notion of “little health”, this essay suggests
that Gramsci did not write despite but thanks to his body. Aiming to counter
the neglect of Gramsci’s body and his relationalities in the reception of his
contemporaries, the essay investigates his body on the social, the individual,
and the affective level. It thereby aims to do justice to Gramsci’s own needs
and affects and the gendered support system on which he relied in prison,
especially highlighting the role of his sister-in-law, Tatiana Schucht.
La Rocca, Giulia. “A Missed Encounter: Walter Benjamin and
Antonio Gramsci.” International Gramsci Journal 5.3 (2024). doi:10.14276/igj.v5i3.4692
Abstract: This is the abstract of the English-language
review of the volume Un confronto mancato: Walter Benjamin e Antonio Gramsci.
The book (Macerata, Quodilbet, 2023) publishes the proceedings of a conference
in Rome on the two Marxists held in Autumn 2022 which continues explicitly the
earlier Vienna conference, the contributions to which are collected together in
“International Gramsci Journal” 3(4), 2020. The proceedings fall into four
sections. The first one deals with the philosophy of history and historical
materialism, as elaborated by Gramsci in his “philosophy of praxis”; despite
different starting points and apparently different assessments of historicism,
there turns out in the end to be a convergence based on an anti-determinism.
The second part focuses on revolution, counter-revolution and passive
revolution, taking in the questions of the political subject and contemporary
situations. Subjectivity is then the theme of the third section, as forms of
life appropriate to the capitalist mode of production and as regards subjects
attempting to emancipate themselves from this mode. The fourth section includes
the two thinker-revolutionaries’ approaches to the question of the various
types of intellectual, including their conceptions of the artistic vanguards,
folklore and kitsch, and the translation of experience from one country to
another.
Mayo, Peter. “Hegemony, Education and Flight: Gramscian
Overtures.” In Bildung im Kontext von Flucht und Migration: Subjektbezogene
und machtkritische Perspektiven. Ed. Bettina Fritzsche et al., 23–34.
transcript Verlag, 2024. doi:10.1515/9783839463116-003
(ISBN 978-3-8394-6311-6).
Miniaci, Gianluca. “Bakhtin, Gramsci, and the Materiality of
the Egyptian Hieroglyphs: When the ‘Official’ Culture Leaks into the ‘Folk’
Domain.” In The Ancient World Revisited: Material Dimensions of Written
Artefacts. Ed. Marilina Betrò, Michael Friedrich, and Cécile Michel,
307–344. De Gruyter, 2024. doi:10.1515/9783111360805-011
(ISBN 978-3-11-136080-5).
Onah, Gregory Ajima, Thomas Eneji Ogar, and Ibiang O. Okoi.
“Religion As Subaltern Agency.” Vox Dei: Jurnal Teologi dan Pastoral 5.1
(2024). http://jurnal.sttekumene.ac.id/index.php/VoxDei/article/view/472
(July 2, 2024)
Abstract: This study examines the role of religion in
facilitating the liberation of marginalized and oppressed groups, sometimes
referred to as the subaltern. The word “subaltern,” which connotes inferiority,
was used by Antonio Gramsci to describe social groupings that are subjugated by
the dominant ruling class. The subaltern classes primarily include individuals
such as peasants, laborers, and other marginalized groups who have been
systematically excluded from positions of hegemonic authority. This exclusion
may be attributed to the historical focus on governments and dominant social
groupings within the narrative of power dynamics. Gramsci posited that the
historical trajectory of the subaltern classes has a comparable level of
intricacy to that of the dominant classes. This work argues that, from
Gramsci’s perspective, the historical narrative of subaltern social groups is
inherently fragmented and characterized by episodic occurrences. This is mostly
due to the constant influence exerted by dominant groups, even in instances of
rebellion. This work submits that it is evident that individuals belonging to
this group possess limited opportunities to exercise agency over their own
portrayal and encounter restricted access to cultural and social establishments.
The cessation of subordination can only be achieved through a lasting triumph,
not instantaneously.
Ostrom, Timothy J. “Introduction to the ‘Rethinking Gramsci
2023’ Special Issue.” Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power 4.1
(2024): 5–16. doi:10.1163/26667185-bja10061.
Peterson, Michael. “Language and Visions of the Future: the
Praxis of Inheritance in Gramsci.” Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on
Power 4.1 (2024): 68–88. doi:10.1163/26667185-bja10054
Abstract: Abstract This article argues that by linking
Gramsci’s pre-carceral critiques of left-utopianism to his later work on
language found in The Prison Notebooks, a coherent and consistent articulation
of the demands of future-oriented praxis can be worked out. On this account,
Gramsci argues that actions must be aimed at inheritable, universal, and
transformable principles rather than the instantiation of particular factual
details that appear necessary or desirable from the perspective of the present.
This is both because such details are overly contingent in their achievability
across time and because the context in which future generations will inherit
our actions will have shifted such that these particular concrete details may
not motivate future generations to act at all. As such, future-oriented action
is better thought, for Gramsci, as universal in and through the possibility of
its principles being translatable and transformable.
Pons, Silvio. The Rise and Fall of the Italian Communist
Party: A Transnational History. Trans. Derek Boothman and Chris Dennis.
Stanford University Press, 2024 (ISBN 978-1-5036-3883-9).
Abstract: This book reassesses the history of Italian
communism in international perspective. Analyzing the rise and fall of the
Italian Communist Party as a case study in the global history of communism,
Silvio Pons considers a wide range of relational and temporal contexts, from
the practices of internationalism to the training of militants and leaders, and
to networks established not only in Europe but also in the colonial and
postcolonial world. Pons focuses on the attempts of the Italian Communist Party
to forge an intellectually defensible party program that combined the
international demands of Moscow with the Italians’ attempts to develop their
own foreign and domestic policies according to their own political
circumstances. Following three leaders of the Italian Communist Party (Antonio
Gramsci, Palmiro Togliatti, and Enrico Berlinguer) from the First World War to
the fall of the Soviet Union, Silvio Pons considers the broader relationship
between communism and Cold War history, the history of decolonization, and the
rise of “Europe” as a political category.
Pontarelli, Francesco. “Rooted in Resistance: Historical
Perspectives on South Africa–Palestine Solidarity – a Conversation with
Professor Salim Vally.” Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power 4.1
(2024): 129–141. doi:10.1163/26667185-bja10060.
Raji, Wumi. “Common sense, uncommon sense: Tejumola Olaniyan
in the theorization of African postcolonial Drama.” Journal of the African
Literature Association 18.2 (2024): 228–243. doi:10.1080/21674736.2024.2336353
Abstract: This paper engages Tejumola Olaniyan’s “Femi
Osofisan: The Form of Uncommon Sense.” The essay in question undertakes a
reading of a representative selection from the corpus of Femi Osofisan’s plays,
employing the theory of uncommon sense which Olaniyan himself formulated.
Olaniyan projects uncommon sense as a reflection on Antonio Gramsci’s theory of
common sense put forward in his Selections from Prison Notes. He presents it as
a new dimension of contemplation which explores new possibilities and unsettles
old conclusions. To prove his position that Osofisan’s plays represent the form
of uncommon sense, Olaniyan rifles through the playwright’s oeuvre and produces
detailed readings of some of the works using the theory. I undertake three main
tasks in this paper. First, I evaluate the accuracy of the positions taken by
Olaniyan on some of the plays of Osofisan that he investigates using the theory
of uncommon sense. Second, while affirming that uncommon sense as formulated by
Olaniyan is seminal, I try to see whether it is not possible to re-constitute
this principle around the notion of cultural hegemony that Gramsci is best
known for. Finally, I attempt an application of the reconfigured theory in the
analysis of Ama Ata Aidoo’s Anowa.
Rueff, Julien. “Antonio Gramsci and the Role of Violence
during the Red Biennium.” Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power
4.1 (2024): 17–38. doi:10.1163/26667185-bja10058
Abstract: Abstract Gramsci is frequently identified as a
theorist of “cultural hegemony,” consent or the “battle of ideas.” His thought
seems of little help in analyzing the relationship between politics and
violence. Contrary to this view, this article focuses on his pre-carceral
writings commenting on two major events held in Turin during the Red Biennium
(biennio rosso): the strike “of the clock hands” and the factory occupations
movement. In these publications, Gramsci is constantly preoccupied with the
violence of the bourgeois state and proletarian counter-violence. The
repression of the regular army, carabinieri, Royal Guard, and private militias
directly compromised the realization of the strategy he promoted in L’Ordine
Nuovo, which aimed to transform the internal commissions into factory
councils in Italy. The disorganization of the “military defense” of factories
occupied by workers, and the unpreparedness of a possible armed insurrection,
also prompted valuable reflections from him about revolutionary
counter-violence.
Sclocco, Camilla. “Gramsci in Inglese. Joseph A. Buttigieg e
la Traduzione del Prigioniero, edited by S. Cingari and E. Terrinoni.” Notebooks:
The Journal for Studies on Power 4.1 (2024): 143–149. doi:10.1163/26667185-bja10056
Abstract: Review of S. Cingari and E. Terrinoni eds., Gramsci
in Inglese. Joseph A. Buttigieg e la Traduzione del Prigioniero. Milan:
Mimesis, 2022. isbn 978-88-5758-076-0, 314 pp., €26 (paperback).
Selenu, Stefano. “The Political Economy of the Vulgar in Dante’s Exilic Writings: Literati, Disorienting Transformations, and Perilous Growth of Wealth.” In Perspectives on «Dante Politico»: At the Crossroads of Arts and Sciences. Ed. Donatella Stocchi-Perucchio, 157–176. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2024. doi:10.1515/9783110790894-010 (ISBN 978-3-11-079089-4).
Stevenson, Howard. Educational Leadership and Antonio
Gramsci. London ; New York: Routledge, 2024 (ISBN 978-1-138-58572-0).
Abstract: This insightful book explores the life and ideas
of Italian Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci, and argues his work has
considerable contemporary relevance when re-considering educational leadership
in today’s age of crises. Gramsci’s theory of hegemony has provided an
invaluable intellectual resource for those seeking to bring about radical
change in the complex context of contemporary capitalist societies. In
particular, his focus on the role of organic intellectuals engaging in an
ongoing ideological struggle across economic, political and civil society helps
to locate his notion of hegemony as a theory of leadership that is deeply
rooted in pedagogical processes. This volume focuses on transformatory change
both in and through education, reframing traditional notions of educational
leadership as educative leadership, in which leadership for change, within and
beyond educational institutions, is understood in pedagogical terms.This volume
will be of pivotal interest to academics, researchers, and postgraduates in the
fields of educational leadership, the sociology of education, and education
policy and politics. Practitioners interested in educational leadership and
social theory, and those active in social movements, may also find the book of use.
Viviani, Roberto, Timothy J. Ostrom, and Dominic Roulx.
“Preface to the ‘Rethinking Gramsci 2023’ Special Issue.” Notebooks: The
Journal for Studies on Power 4.1 (2024): 3–4. doi:10.1163/26667185-04010001.
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
Asociación Gramsci México > Biblioteca > Interpretaciones Gramscianas
Thai
None to report.
Turkish
Feyzullah Yilmaz has compiled a list of Turkish Gramsci publications at Neo-Gramsian Portal.
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