Andreas Bieler & Adam David Morton, “Introduction: International Relations as Political Theory,” pp. xv-xxv.
Brennan, Timothy. Wars of Position: The Cultural Politics of Left and Right. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006). [i.s.b.n.: 0231137303 (hbk). 0231510454 (pbk)].
Abstract: Wars of Position documents how alternative views were chased from the public stage by strategic acts of censorship, including within supposedly dissident wings of the humanities. Brennan explores how the humanities entered the cultural and political mainstream and settled into an awkward secular religion of the "middle way." In a series of interrelated chapters, Brennan considers narratives of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Clinton impeachment; reexamines Salman Rushdie's pre-fatwa writing to illuminate its radical social leanings; presents a startling new interpretation of Edward Said; looks at the fatal reception of Antonio Gramsci within postcolonial history and criticism; and offers a stinging critique of Hardt and Negri's Empire and the influence of Italian radicalism on contemporary cultural theory.
Butko, Thomas J. “Gramsci and the ‘Anti-Globalization’ Movement.” Socialism and Democracy, vol. 20, no. 2 (2006): 79-102.
Buttigieg, Joseph. “The Prison Notebooks: Antonio Gramsci’s Work in Progress.” Rethinking Marxism, vol. 18, no. 1 (2006): 37-42. [A Rethinking Marxism symposium on Joseph Buttigieg’s edition of the Prison Notebooks. Issue contents.]
Abstract: The sprawling text of Gramsci’s prison notebooks has been described variously as fragmentary, incomplete, cryptic (or, rather, encrypted to circumvent the attentions of the prison authorities)--descriptions that, more often than not, have served as a prelude to and a justification for reconstructing the text, filling its lacunae, or unlocking its hidden meaning. The most valuable and abiding aspects of Gramsci’s text are all too easily obscured or quite simply overlooked by the impulse to tame it, normalize it, paraphrase it so as to make it conform to habitual ways of thinking. Paying attention to small things, focusing on the particular: this is the most important aspect of Gramsci’s“method,” which he equated with philology.
Childers, Joseph W. “Of Prison Notebooks and the Restoration of an Archive.” Rethinking Marxism, vol. 18, no. 1 (2006): 9-14. [A Rethinking Marxism symposium on Joseph Buttigieg’s edition of the Prison Notebooks. Issue contents.]
Abstract: This essay examines the ways in which Antonio Gramsci's work has become more accessible through the translations of the Prison Notebooks undertaken by Joseph Buttigieg. While many scholars have had only limited and, often, intellectually mediated access to Gramsci’s work, Buttigieg’s translations offer the possibility of reading the Notebooks not only in their entirety, but also in context. The critical apparatus surrounding this translation is impeccable and provides insights into Gramsci's thought that have hitherto been unavailable to those unable to read the original Italian. Consequently, Buttigieg translations revivify Gramsci's work, opening it to a new generation of scholars, to be sure, but also underscoring its prescience and continued timeliness.
Dodge, Toby. “The Sardinian, the Texan and the Tikriti: Gramsci, the Comparative Autonomy of the Middle Eastern State and Regime Change in Iraq.” International Politics, vol. 43 (2006): 453-73. [Link to journal].
Abstract: To be persuasive, explanations of the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 need to discuss the evolution of United States foreign policy but also the economic and political development of the Middle Eastern state. Antonio Gramsci's notions of the war of manoeuvre and the war of position are key to understanding both the resort to violence but also its failure. For the Bush administration, as it set about applying its new doctrine in the aftermath of 9/11, the Baathist regime in Baghdad was a glaring example of the previous limits of US hegemony. The autonomy built up by the regime over 35 years of rule allowed it to defy the institutions of the international community and resist the application of 13 years of coercive diplomacy. The invasion signalled the Bush administration's shift from a war of position back to one of manoeuvre. If the Iraqi regime could be removed, if the full force of US military might could be displayed in one of the most important states in the region, then the rest of the Arab regimes could be made to submit fully to US hegemony. The need to deploy coercion was indicative of the geographic limits of ideational hegemony. The Middle East became such a central concern for the administration, and ultimately Iraq was invaded because the region had retained a comparative autonomy from neo-liberal policy prescriptions and the United States' promotion of polyarchy.
Fontana, Benedetto. “State and Society: The Concept of Hegemony in Gramsci.” In Hegemony and Power: Consensus and Coercion in Contemporary Politics, edited by Mark Haugaard. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006). [i.s.b.n.: 0739115022 (cloth), 0739115030 (pbk.)].
Fontana, Benedetto. “Liberty and Domination: Civil Society in Gramsci.” boundary 2, vol. 33, no. 2 (2006): 51-74.
Francese, Joseph. “Renegotiating the Role of the Intellectual in the Age of Globalization.” Annali d'italianistica, vol. 24 (2006): 295-309. [Link to journal: http://www.ibiblio.org/annali/].
Abstract: The author of this article argues that Gramscian "storicismo integrale" must as an methodological cornerstonstone of the emerging inter-disciplinary field of cultural studies, which is seen here as a means of coming to grips with the rethinking of our profession-made necessary by the evolving 'capitalist' rationalization of the academy-and as a means of re-invigorating the social relevance and incisiveness of critical inquiry. When seen in the light of the necessary reciprocity linking art and society stressed by Gramsci, cultural studies may be considered a means of encouraging the younger generations to wage a "battle of ideals" against the neo-conservative agenda that in many quarters is considered 'common sense.' Given the absence of Gramsci's "collective intellectual"in contemporary politics, the "return to Gramsci" heralded by cultural studies may serve as a locus for the elaboration of a counter-hegemonic cultural politics.
Ives, Peter. “‘Global English’: Linguistic Imperialism or Practical Lingua Franca?” Studies in Language and Capitalism, vol. 1 (2006): 121-41. [Link to article: http://www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/~ssjer/SLC1/SLC1-6_Ives.pdf ].
Ives, Peter. “The Mammoth Task of Translating Gramsci.” Rethinking Marxism, vol. 18, no. 1 (2006). [A Rethinking Marxism symposium on Joseph Buttigieg’s edition of the Prison Notebooks. Issue contents.]
Abstract: This essay considers Joseph Buttigieg’s English edition of Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks in light of Gramsci’s own emphasis on the importance of translation. Buttigieg achieves his laudable and important goal of making Gramsci’s prison writings available in their complete form to English-reading audiences, focusing on producing a text close to the Italian original. But as Gramsci himself emphasized, this literal understanding of “translation” is connected to larger processes of cultural translation involving cross-cultural analysis and altering both the source and target languages, which ultimately is a political project. This wider notion of translation involves a community of Gramsci scholars to translate Gramsci’s ideas into current political praxis. Hopefully this will include engagement with, for example, the Althusserian project of Rethinking Marxism as well as more effective interactions with liberalism.
Jaar, Alfredo. The Aesthetics of Resistance: Searching for Gramsci. (Barcelona: Actar, 2006). [i.s.b.n.: 978-8496540316].
Katz, Hagai. “Gramsci, Hegemony, and Global Civil Society Networks.” Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, vol. 17 (2006): 332-47. [Link to journal].
Abstract: This study offers a first empirical test at a truly global level of two contradictory models of global civil society in the global governance system that are put forth by neo-Gramscian thought. The first model posits that global civil society is coopted by hegemonic capitalist and political elites, and promotes hegemonic interests by distributing neoliberal values and providing a façade of opposition. The second model views global civil society as the infrastructure from which counter-hegemonic resistance, and ultimately a counter-hegemonic historic bloc will evolve and challenge neoliberal hegemony. The predictions that these two views make as to the structure of global civil society networks are tested through network analysis of a matrix of links between 10,001 international NGOs in a purposive sample of INGOs extracted from the database of the Union of International Associations. The findings provide partial support to the predictions of both models, and lead to the conclusion that at present global civil society is in a transitional phase, but that the current infrastructure provided by the global INGOs network is conducive to the development of a counter-hegemonic historic bloc in the future, providing the northern bias in network is decreased. Strategic steps needed to achieve this are presented.
Larkosh-Lenotti, Christopher. “On Gramsci, ‘Epistemic Interference,’ and the Possibilities of Sud-Alternity.” Annali d’italianistica, vol. 24 (2006): 311-26. [Link to journal: http://www.ibiblio.org/annali/].
Abstract: In this article the author examines ways of reconceptualizing the potential relationship that Gramsci proposes between subaltern groups and intellectuals, by way of the Global South, through the neologisms ‘sud’-alternity or ‘S-other-ness.’ A critique of Spivak’s selective appropriation of the term ‘subaltern’ leads to a exploration of various alternative means of returning to Gramsci, whether in transit or ‘für ewig’: be it through the act of committed translation of original texts and secondary sources, approaches connected to studies in gender and sexuality (i ‘generi’ di Gramsci), or through the more personal politics of subject positionality implicit in migrant acts of cultural return.
Morton, Adam David. "The Grimly Comic Riddle of Hegemony in IPE: Where Is Class Struggle?" Politics, vol. 26, no. 1 (2006): 62-72. [Link to Journal].
Abstract: This contribution reflects on the current state of 'critical' international political economy (IPE) by contesting the prevailing dominance of liberal pluralist analysis and its overriding commitment to defining the social as an arena of multiple, competing and individuated identities. While ubiquitously invoked, what exactly does the 'critical' prefix represent? My argument is that much 'critical' analysis in IPE is a liberal pluralist flag of convenience, which is anti-historical materialism. By contrast, an historical materialist critical theory of capitalist unfreedom and exploitation is presented through a focus on social class identity, forms of capitalist state and state power, the social function of ideology and the prehistory of the modern international states-system.
Ramos, Leonardo César Souza. “Civil Society in an Age of Globalization: A Neo-Gramscian Perspective.” Journal of Civil Society, vol. 2, no. 2 (2006): 143-63.
Abstract: Since the 1970s, the world has seen an intensification of the globalization processes of social relations, an intensification that has direct implications for the study of contemporary world politics. One important aspect of such implications concerns the emergence of new actors in world politics, not just in national terms, but also at the local, regional and global levels—in other words, approaching the global political economy as a whole. In some sense, it is possible to say that dominant and dominated social groups are being influenced and are influencing such globalization processes, so at present it would be possible to note the rising of a transnational fraction of the capitalist class and the rise of a globalized resistance within the ambit of a civil society influenced by globalization processes. Therefore, the objective of the current article is to analyze the transformation process of social forces in an age of the intensification of globalization of social relations. Put another way, the article assesses the transformations of civil society in an age of globalization that present new dilemmas and possibilities to the collective political agency in the twenty-first century.
Ramos, Leonardo César Souza. "Collective Political Agency in the XXist Century: Civil Society in an Age of Globalization." In Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation Working Paper Series, No. 187/06, pp. 1-36. University of Warwick, 2006. [Link to PDF].
Abstract: Abstract: The intensification of the globalization processes of social relations, since the 1970s, has direct implications in studies of contemporary world politics. One important aspect in which such implications express themselves regards the emergence of new actors in the world politics that no longer organize themselves in national terms only, but paying attention in the local, national, regional and global dynamics - in other words, seeing the global political economy as a whole. It is possible to note that dominant and dominated social groups are being influenced and are influencing such globalization processes - in other words, it would be possible to discern the rise of a transnational fraction of the capitalist class and the rising of a globalized resistance in the ambit of a civil society influenced by globalization processes. Therefore, the objective of the present proposal is to analyze this process of transformation of the social forces in an age of intensification of the globalization processes of the social relations; in other words, to analyze the transformation of the civil society in an age of globalization that are presenting new dilemmas and possibilities to the collective political agency in the XXI century.
Ruccio, David F. “Unfinished Business: Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks.” Rethinking Marxism, vol. 18, no. 1 (2006): 1-7. [A Rethinking Marxism symposium on Joseph Buttigieg’s edition of the Prison Notebooks. Issue contents.]
Abstract: Reading Joseph Buttigieg’s edition of Gramsci's Prison Notebooks represents for me and, I imagine, for others, the discovery of a new Gramsci--at each turn of the page, either stumbling upon themes and concerns of which we had been largely unaware or encountering familiar concepts in an entirely different context. Gramsci pushes Marxian theory forward, and the text of the Notebooks allows us to do the same with Gramsci’s work. But for all their richness concerning the issues of culture, politics, and intellectuals, one of the traditional areas of Marxism--political economy--appears to be largely overlooked in the Notebooks.
Saccarelli, Emanuele. The Political Theory and Practice of Opposition: Antonio Gramsci and Leon Trotsky in the Shadow of Stalinism. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 2006.
Abstract: My dissertation addresses a particular period in the historical development of Marxism in order to make sense of its contemporary impasse, both as an important strand of political theory and as a living political tradition. I focus on the legacy of two important figures, Antonio Gramsci and Leon Trotsky, using their compelling and tragic stories to provide a concrete historical account of the rise of Stalinism in the inter-war period of the 1920s and 30s. The first part of my dissertation confronts the problems concerning the contemporary academic uses of Gramsci. The second part of my dissertation examines the significance of Leon Trotsky's legacy. Having found Antonio Gramsci wanting in important respects, I argue that Leon Trotsky provides the more specific historical and political coordinates necessary for a revitalization of Marxism. Chapters in this section focus on Trotsky's theoretical diagnosis and political opposition to Stalinism. The first stands as the most important advance of Marxist theory after the Russian Revolution, while the significance of the second far exceeds its hitherto modest numbers. Together, they represent an indispensable resource and obligatory passage toward the revitalization of Marxism for our times.
San Juan Jr, E. “Edward Said's Affiliations.” Atlantic Studies: Literary, Cultural and Historical perspectives on Europe, Africa and the Americas, vol. 3 (2006): 43-61. [Link to Ingenta].
Abstract: Postcolonial theory and criticism seizes on the fact of the uneven development of world capitalism as the central cultural theme for its reflections, divorcing it from the totality of social relations in history and the international process of class struggle. Edward Said inspired this “culturalist approach” with his deconstructive reading of Antonio Gramsci's critique of bourgeois hegemony. Said, however, tried to complicate the thesis of Orientalism with a critique of imperialist history, including US global interventions, in Culture and Imperialism and his later writings. Overall, Said, despite a resort to a militant species of liberal humanism, provides a critical perspective on the complicity of academic discourse with predatory neocolonial attacks on people of color everywhere, and on the value of popular-democratic ideals of democratic sovereignty and egalitarian community that can reconcile Europe and the Atlantic world with the revolutionary movements of “postcolonial” subalterns around the globalized planet. As a democratic, secular humanist, Said is an ally of the popular masses against the terror of corporate globalization.
Sinha, Ajit. “ A Comment on Sen’s ‘Sraffa, Wittgenstein, and Gramsci’.” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, vol. 61, no. 3 (2006): 504-12.
Spanos, William V. “Cuvier’s Little Bone: Joseph Buttigieg’s English Edition of Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks.” Rethinking Marxism, vol. 18, no. 1 (2006): 23-36. [A Rethinking Marxism symposium on Joseph Buttigieg’s edition of the Prison Notebooks. Issue contents.]
Abstract: It was Gramsci’s great historical insight that the anachronicity of the Marxist base/superstructure as model for the interpretation of lived social relations enabled him to collapse its hierarchized disciplinary structure and to retrieve the indissoluble relationality of the “fields” of knowledge production--being, the subject, culture, politics--that had hitherto been epiphenomenal to economics. The foregrounding of this relationality, as well as the exemplary philological work of editing and translating the Prison Notebooks, also constitutes Joseph Buttigieg’s major contribution to Gramsci studies.
Thomas, Peter. “Modernity as ‘Passive Revolution’: Gramsci and the Fundamental Concepts of Historical Materialism.” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, vol. 17, no. 2 (2006).
German 2006
Mayo, Peter. Politische Bildung Bei Antonio Gramsci Und Paulo Freire. Perspectiven Einer Verandernden Praxis. Translated by Uwe Hirschfeld. (Argument Verlag, 2006). [i.s.b.n.: 3886192806].
Abstract: This is the German translation of Professor Peter Mayo's 1999 book, Gramsci, Freire and Adult Education. Possibilities for Transformative Action (Zed Books). The translation was carried out by Professor Uwe Hirschfeld who also wrote an additional chapter dealing with Gramsci, Freire and Brecht. Professor Heinz Suenker, from the University of Wuppertal, wrote the Foreword to the German version of the book.
Thomas, Peter. “Konjunktur des integralen Staates? Poulantzas’ Gramsci Lektüre”, Poulantzas lesen, VSA Verlag, Hamburg, 2006.
Japanese 2006
La Città Futura, Tokyo Gramsci Society Bulletin No. 37 (May 2006)
La Città Futura, Tokyo Gramsci Society Bulletin No. 36 (March 2006)
Portuguese 2006
Dore, Rosemary (editor). Special issue on “Gramsci, Intelectuais e Educação.” Cadernos CEDES, vol. 27, no. 69 (2006). [Link to journal].