"Impaginazione e analisi dei Quaderni" in Belfagor, XLVIII, iii (31 maggio 1993), pp. 345-352 "Sulla 'classicità' di Gramsci" in Bollettino Filosofico (Dipartimento di Filosofia dell'Università della Calabria), 10 (1993), pp. 181-194
Two essays on Gramsci in Rethinking MARXISM
In the last issue of the IGS Newsletter we published an article ("Gramsci in Rethinking Marxism") in which Jonathan Diskin surveyed and discussed the essays on Gramsci that have been published in that journal. Since that article was written, two more essays on Gramsci have appeared in Rethinking Marxism:
Daniel O'Connell: "Bloom and Babbit: A Gramscian View" in vol. 6, no. 1 (Spring 1993), pp. 96-103
Steven R. Mansfield: "Gramsci and the Dialectic: Resisting 'Encrocement'" in vol. 6, no. 2 (Summer 1993), pp. 81-103
A Note on Edward W. Said's Culture and Imperialism
Edward W. Said's latest work, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1993) is indebted to Gramsci in several respects, even if less obviously than The World, the Text and the Critic (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1983). Gramsci unfinished essay on the southern question is one of Said's points of reference as a work that sets the stage for the critical attention given in the Prison Notebooks to the "territorial, spatial and geographical foundations of life." Said's analyses of a wide range of literary texts, which he uses as sources for understanding the dynamics of politics and culture in their connections with the whole imperialist enterprise, can be read as fulfillments of the historical materialist premises outlined in fragmentary form in both the Prison Notebooks and the Letters From Prison.
Unlike Gramsci, Said does not adhere explicitly to Marxism, nor does he identify himself with any one political current of movement. Nevertheless, underlying his work is a set of theoretical principles and practical stances that are certainly in harmony with a Gramscian world view. Certain tensions in Said's relationship to Marxism have been noted by the Indian Marxist Aijaz Ahmad, who argues in his book In Theory (New York & London: Verso, 1992) that Said has not really assimilated the materialist and revolutionary principles undergirding Gramsci's work. Ahmad frames his critique of Said within the boundaries of a rather strict interpretation of Marxism in his commitment to socialism as the foundation on which to build a genuinely oppositional culture. He is skeptical of Said's foregrounding of anti-imperialism and the principle of "liberatory" politics that avoids explicitly socialist partisanship.
What is of interest to readers of this Newsletter is that Gramsci continues to occupy an important place in the cultural, political and ideological debates of the "post-communist" era. His ideas and methodological innovations continue to provide such thinkers as Said, Ahmad, and Cornel West with insights into the natuire of contemporary reality, despite the recent defeats suffered by the countries of existing socialism.