The first international conference of the IGS was held at the Palazzo Serra di Cassano in the heart of Naples on 16-18 October 1997, thanks, in large measure, to the efforts of the IGS-Italia (in particular, Giorgio Baratta and Guido Liguori) and the generous support of the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici. The conference was opened by Antonio Bassolino, the mayor of Naples, and by Dr. Gerardo Marotta, the director and founder of the Istituto.
Prominent Gramsci scholars from all over the world spoke at the plenary sessions--among them, André Tosel, Wolfgang F. Haug, Renato Zangheri, Aldo Tortorella, Tullio De Mauro, Alastair Davidson, Carlos Nelson Coutinho, Hiroshi Matsuda, Dante Germino, and Joseph Buttigieg.
Many of the speakers addressed, in some fashion or another, the need to "rethink" Marxism in light of recent historical developments and they stressed the value of Gramsci's work as a major theoretical and critical resource for undertaking this urgent task.
Tosel began by alluding to the crisis of Soviet socialism, which had been marked, he said, by power gathered entirely in a centralized leadership structure acting in the name of Marxism-Leninism but actually displaying a form of statolatry. A reform of Marxism in our time, he said, will have to reincorporate elements of Italian and German idealism, especially the "activist aspect" of idealism. In this sense, Gramsci's rethinking of Marxism and his critique of fatalism and determinism in the Notebooks have great actualité. Coutinho also addressed the issues of statism and statolatry. He dwelt on Gramsci's reflections on consent and hegemony, and underlined the centrality of Gramsci's analysis of civil society. Likewise, both Matsuda and Tortorella explained how a careful reading of Gramsci's Quaderni provides the bases for an articulation of a new concept of socialism adequate to our times.
Haug raised the fateful question of the need for an international "new Marxism" capable of helping "the new come into the world." He maintained that in the "post-communist" world a new generation must assume the task of re-reading Marx and of re-reading the Prison Notebooks, as sources for an "epistemological breakthrough". He also warned about the irrelevance of certain terms and phrases associated with Gramsci's thought, such as Fordism, which no longer have the meanings they once had. The same is true, he noted, for a phrase such as "the dictatorship of the [END PAGE 2] proletariat." Haug stressed the point that Gramsci must not be separated from other Marxist thinkers, such as Althusser and Adorno. He ended by endorsing Jacques Derrida's call for a "new intellectual" able to confront the realities of the current era.
Other speakers focussed on more specific aspects and themes of Gramsci's work. Zangheri noted that "historical materialism" in the Gramscian sense involves a conception of life that is more than, and distinct from, undialectical materialism. He suggested the primacy in Marx's thought of agency and subjectivity as crucial to the "dialectical unity" of thought and action. He also discussed Gramsci's notion of "historical bloc", which corresponds, he said, on the practical political plane to the philosophy of dialectical materialism as a theoretical perspective. Alastair Davidson's paper wove together a discussion of Gramsci's treatment of folklore, common sense, and subaltern social groups. Among other things, Davidson's approach revealed Gramsci's profound relevance for current studies of postcolonial politics and cultures. Joseph Buttigieg's presentation also dwelt on Gramsci's reflections on subalternity in the Notebooks. Dante Germino, on the other hand, directed the attention of the audience to a topic that has been generally ignored (or treated only tangentially) by Gramsci scholars, namely, violence. Germino argued that Gramsci, for reasons rooted in his own formation and in the experience of revolutionary movements in the early twentieth century, tended to move violence "from the center to the margins" of political work.
A number of discussion sessions were also held during the conference. They were devoted to a wide variety of topics, such as socialism and democracy, the philosophy of praxis, the relationship between the national and international dimensions of Gramsci's thought, hegemony-education- mass media, ethics and politics, and Gramscian philology.
The Naples conference was also devoted to strengthening the Italian section of the IGS and to setting up a new administrative structure for the Society. A "Co-ordinating Group" was established: Valentino Gerratana was elected president, Joseph Buttigieg was elected secretary, and Giorgio Baratta, Carlos Nelson Coutinho, Alastair Davidson, Hiroshi Matsuda and Frank Rosengarten were elected to form an international co-ordinating committee. Guido Liguori is also to become co-editor, with Buttigieg, of the International Gramsci Society Newsletter.
A tentative preference was expressed for an international conference to take place every four years, with smaller regional or continental meetings to occur every two years. Decisions were also made to encourage the editors of left journals interested in Gramsci to be in touch with each other on a regular basis, and to employ as much as possible the special opportunities for rapid communication opened up by the Internet.
Two other proposals were that the IGS make every effort to contact Gramsci scholars and political activists in countries and regions not now represented, and to follow the example of the BrazilianGramsci Study Circle in Rio De Janeiro, which for the last several years has been in close touch with, and has politically supported, the struggle in Brazil being waged by the landless [END PAGE 3] peasant movement. Indeed, a contentious issue in Naples revolved around the thorny questions of representation and the relationship between thought and action. Rodolfo Rosales of the University of Texas in San Antonio expressed the concerns of quite a few others in Naples when he took note of the poor representation of women at the Conference, and expressed his alarm that the IGS could easily become detached from political action unless the Brazilian example is seen as the model to emulate.
More than anything else, the Naples conference provided an occasion for members of the IGS from every continent to gather together and get to know each other, exchange information about their work and future projects, and make plans for future collaboration.
Plans are currently underway to arrange for the publication of the papers presented at the IGS conference in Naples. Everyone who prepared a paper for any of the conference sessions is strongly encouraged to send her or his text to Giorgio Baratta--preferably via e-mail at the following address: immaeur@inroma.roma.it