Carmel Borg, a Ph.D. candidate at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education-- University of Toronto, has just completed his doctoral thesis which is entitled Hegemony as Educational Practice: Catholicism, Traditionalism and the Fate of the Progressive Historical Bloc in Malta - A Gramscian Analysis. He has kindly provided us with the following abstract:
Borrowing from Antonio Gramsci's historical analysis of the "Religious Question" in Italy, this thesis sets out to illustrate how the Catholic Church in Malta, as a key player in the traditional historical bloc, defended its dominant status in colonial and post-colonial Malta. Chapter 1 deals with some of the major personalities and literary sources that may have influenced Gramsci in his critique of religion. The second chapter expounds on the concepts developed by the Sardinian in his analysis of Christianity and the exploits of the Catholic church in Italy. Chapter 3 shifts the analysis to Catholic Malta. It attempts to illustrate how the traditional historical bloc reproduced its hegemony by perpetuating a proto-capitalist economic structure, by ensuring a heavy presence in local politics, and by resisting the politics of 'cultural invasion', launched by the colonial power towards the end of the 19th century. This chapter also illustrates how the colonial power, in the opening decades of the present century, was ready to compromise with the traditional bloc in order to eliminate the rising radical voice. The fourth chapter shows how the traditional forces regrouped to silence the reform-oriented, Malta Labour Party (MLP), after the Second World War. This chapter focuses on the anxiety experienced by the Catholic church as the MLP struggled for integration with Britain (1955-58), as independence became inevitable (1958-64), and as the MLP persued its modernizing project (1971-1987). Chapter 5 deals with the issue of education and hegemony in Malta, in the context of the conservative restoration of 1987. By illustrating how the Catholic hegemonic discourse is produced and reproduced through the state school system, this chapter suggests that institutions of civil society such as schools, rather than being neutral social arenas, constitute sites of contestation where different discourses struggle for hegemony. The concluding chapter discusses the concept of education as counter-hegemonic discourse, following Gramsci's belief that [END PAGE 44] political conquest is preceded by the 'diffusion of a new culture' among the masses.
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Giovanni Boninelli who last year obtained his degree in philosophy from the University of Urbino wrote a thesis on Gramsci's treatment of folklore. The thesis is entitled Alcuni temi folclorici nell'opera di Antonio Gramsci and it comprises the following chapters: "Sardegna e mondo popolare"; "Religione popolare"; "Proverbi e modi di dire"; "Narrazioni e storie"; "Canti popolari e della protesta sociale"; "Giochi e giocattoli, divertimenti e sport"; and "Teatro popolare, Teatro dialettale." The thesis also has an appendix that consists in an anthology of Gramsci's writings that pertain to the main issues discussed in the various chapters. *
Hiromi Fujioka has published an article, in Japanese, on "Gramsci and Anarchism (1919- 1920) in The Hitotsubashi Review, III, 2 (February 1994).
Mr. Fujioka has also informed us that the Tokyo Gramsci Society (which was founded in March 1993) is preparing a translation into Japanese of The Antonio Gramsci Reader. Selected Writings: 1916-1935, edited by David Forgacs. The translation is expected to be published in 1995.
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André Tosel, who edited the volume Modernité de Gramsci? (Paris, 1992), presented a paper, "Religion et/ou héresie de la liberté. Le debat entre Croce et Gramsci sur 'l'histoire de l'Europe'" at a conference on "L'Europe Aujourd'hui" held in Poitiers in December 1993. He also gave a paper on "Vico et Gramsci sur la langue comme technique civile" at the Colloque Vico Aujourd'hui held at the Université de Montpellier III in March 1994.
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E. San Juan Jr., has published three new books in last couple of years. In Racial Formations / Critical Formations : Articulations of Power in Ethnic and Racial Studies in the United States (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1993), and in From the Masses to the Masses: Third World Literature and Revolution (Minneapolis: MEP Publications, 1994), he employs Gramsci's concepts of "hegemony" and the "national-popular." The concept of hegemony is as also at the center of E. San Juan Jr.'s other recent book, Hegemony and Transgression: Essays in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature (Albany: State University of New York Pres, 1994)--in the first section of this volume, E. San Juan Jr. discusses the relations between theory and practice in the work of a number of important critics and theoreticians, including Bakhtin, Lukacs, Brecht, Benjamin and Gramsci. [END PAGE 45]
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Héctor Melendez, whose recently published book Gramsci en la De Diego is described in another section of this Newsletter, has sent us the following information about aspects of his work that are of interest to members of the IGS: "I have discussed and applied Gramsci's ideas to present multi-cultural settings, to socio-political analyses, and to national-popular movements in the Caribbean and Latin America. My dissertation in politics (University of York, England, 1987) is entitled Antonio Gramsci's Concept of Hegemony. My Ph.D. thesis in Cultural Studies (University of Birmingham, 1993) is titled The Popular as Political Subject: The Impact of Latin America and the Caribbean on Socialism and the National Idea and has as a central thread of the discussion the Gramscian notion of the national-popular."
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The Italian Studies Advisory Council of the City University of New York, in cooperation with the CUNY Graduate Scool, the College of Staten Island, Brooklyn College, and the Italian American Writers Association organized a public presentation of Benedetto Fontana's book Hegemony and Power: On the Relation Between Gramsci and Machiavelli (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). The public session was held at the CUNY Graduate Center on 26 April 1994 and was moderated by Robert Viscusi (Chair, Italian Studies Advisory Council, CUNY). The discussants included Kate Crehan (Professor of Anthropolgy at the New School for Social Research), Robert Dombroski (Distinguished Professor of Italian, CUNY) and Peter Caravetta (Professor of Italian, Queens College, CUNY and editor of Differentia).
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Osvaldo Fernández Díaz who has written extensively on Gramsci has recently published a new book: Mariátegui, o la experiencia del otro (Lima: Empresa Amauta, 1944).