Gramsci Bibliography: 2009

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Last update: June 8, 2013

English

Asher, Kiran and Diana Ojeda. “Producing Nature and Making the State: Ordenamiento Territorial in the Pacific Lowlands of Colombia.” Geoforum, vol. 40, no. 3 (2009): 292-302.

Abstract: In this paper, we explore how ordenamiento territorial, a territorial zoning policy in the 1991 Colombian Constitution remakes nature and helps constitute the state in the “economically backward” but “biodiversity rich” Pacific lowlands region. We draw on Gramscian insights on hegemony and the importance of conjunctures to trace how changes in the new Constitution and global biogeopolitics reconfigure nature and state power through the mandates of sustainable development, economic growth, and the conservation of biological and cultural diversity. Finally, we contribute to the literature on political ecology by showing how the political power of the state, nature, and capital are interwoven materially and symbolically in complex and contradictory ways.

Bairner, Alan. “Sport, Intellectuals and Public Sociology.” International Review for the Sociology of Sport, vol. 44, no. 2/3 (2009): 115-30.

Abstract: This article seeks to explain why it has proved so difficult for sociologists of sport to assume the mantle of public intellectuals even in relation to sport itself. Using a case study relating to sport in Northern Ireland and rooted in personal experience, the article examines alternative ways in which intellectual activity, albeit unconventionally understood, can influence the world of sport. Specifically, the analysis draws upon Antonio Gramsci's distinction between traditional and organic intellectuals. It is argued that only through engagement with organic intellectuals who exercise authority within the subcultures of sport can critical sociologists hope to influence sporting practices.

Bollinger, Stefan, and Juha Koivisto. “Hegemonic Apparatus.” Historical Materialism, vol. 17, no. 2 (2009): 301-08.

Abstract: The article discusses the opinions of several Marxist philosophers' meaning of the term hegemonic apparatus. Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci considered hegemonic apparatus to mean any institution, place or agent that organises the domination of a class over other classes. Gramsci's philosophy of praxis is explored. The word hegemony was used by the Greek historian Thucydides in relation to political and military leadership. The opinions of sociologists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Bolshevik Party Leader Vladimir Lenin, and philosopher Louis Althusser of the term hegemonic apparatus are discussed.

Bruff, Ian. “The Totalisation of Human Social Practice: Open Marxists and Capitalist Social Relations, Foucauldians and Power Relations”. British Journal of Politics & International Relations, vol. 11, no. 2 (2009): 332-51. [Link].

This article critiques Open Marxism for an ontology which totalises human social practice—for Open Marxists, capitalist social relations are the singular constitutive source of human activity. Such a stance is superficially attractive yet ultimately inadequate, and I reinforce my case by demonstrating how other critical approaches—in this article, Foucauldian perspectives on power—suffer from similar deficiencies. Thus there is a need to resist the temptation of claiming to know how human social practice can be understood with recourse to a singular aspect (no matter how important) of such practice. I conclude that an excellent example of how to avoid such pitfalls is provided by Antonio Gramsci's writings, for they acknowledge the multifaceted yet nevertheless anchored existence lived by humans in capitalist societies.

Bruff, Ian. “Assertions, Conflations and Human Nature: A Reply to Werner Bonefeld”. British Journal of Politics & International Relations, vol. 11, no. 3 (2009): 554-6. [Link].

Buckel, Sonja, and Andreas Fischer-Lescano. “Gramsci Reconsidered: Hegemony in Global Law.” Leiden Journal of International Law, vol. 22, no. 3 (2009): 437-54.

Abstract: This article focuses on Antonio Gramsci's hegemony theory. Hegemony, for Gramsci, is a particular way of living and thinking, a Weltanschauung (world-view), on which the preferences, taste, morality, ethics, and philosophical principles of the majority are based. Social struggles are transformed into legal ones in the course of processes in which juridical intellectuals are organizing hegemony under the special conditions of the legal system. We try to use this concept to contrast it with the prevailing readings of hegemony in international relations and in international law. 'Hegemonic law', we argue, is not the law of any superpower, but an asymmetric consensus which relies on a climate of world-society-wide recognition. The concrete form of hegemonic law under particular social conditions depends on the 'historical bloc', in which it is coupled with other social praxes. In the post-Westphalian system the historical bloc is fragmented into transnational and colliding legal regimes and law-generating processes in civil society.

Carlucci, Alessandro. “The Political Implications of Antonio Gramsci’s Journey through Languages, Language Issues and Linguistic Disciplines.” Journal of Romance Studies, vol. 9, no. 2 (2009): 27-46.

Abstract: This article explores the interest in language that recurs in the life and writings of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), outlining the role played by cultural and linguistic matters in his intellectual formation. In particular, it focuses on how practical experiences involving languages, as well as contacts with specialized research on language, contributed to shaping his views on diversity and unification. What emerges from the article is that significant aspects of Gramsci’s political reflections and practices were influenced by his receptivity to issues connected with linguistic and cultural plurality. More specifically, Gramsci’s positive relationship with this plurality can be identified as one of the factors that made him aware of the perils of imposed progress and unification.

Casarino, Cesare. “Can the Subaltern Confess? Pasolini, Gramsci, Foucault, and the Deployment of Sexuality,” in The Rhetoric of Sincerity, eds. by Ernst van Alphen, Mieke Bal, and Carel Smith (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), pp. 121-143.

Clayton, Thomas. “Introducing Giovanni Gentile, the Philosopher of Fascism‚” Educational Philosophy & Theory, vol. 41, no. 6 (2009): 640-60.

Abstract: This essay aims to introduce Giovanni Gentile to scholars of Gramsci studies broadly and Gramsci-education studies more specifically. The largest part of the essay explores Gentile’s academic life, his philosophical agenda, and his political career. Having established a basis for understanding the educational reform Gentile enacted as Mussolini’s first Minister of Public Instruction, the essay then surveys the substantial contemporaneous and contemporary English-language material about it. The essay engages this literature only lightly and briefly in conclusion, for the primary purpose of illustrating the danger of eschewing it.

Dore, Rosemary. “Gramscian Thought and Brazilian Education.” Educational Philosophy & Theory, vol. 41, no. 6 (2009): 712-31.

Abstract: Brazilian intellectuals and pedagogues have confused the Gramscian ‘unitary school’ with what is known in Brazil as the “polytechnical school”, a vague idea of education which is attributed to Marx and taken up by Lenin in the course of the Soviet Revolution. The two conceptions of education differ because of the varying historical contexts in which Marx, Lenin and Gramsci lived and developed their thinking on the roles of State and school. These fundamental differences have been overlooked during the diffusion of Gramscian thought in Brazil, causing confusion in the understanding of the “unitary school” and the “polytechnical school”.

Ekers, Michael, Alex Loftus, and Geoff Mann. “Gramsci Lives!” Geoforum, vol. 40, no. 3 (2009): 287-91.

Abstract: Antonio Gramsci’s writings provide a valuable conceptual and political sensibility for critical approaches to nature. In this editorial introduction to a theme issue on Gramscian Political Ecologies we establish the broad contours to such an approach, stressing Gramsci’s integral marxism and commitment to a transformative politics relevant to the contemporary moment. Subsequently, we provide an introduction to existing political ecological research inspired by Gramsci’s wide-ranging writings. In order to stimulate future research, we question Gramsci’s reflections on ‘nature’ in order to examine the embyonic possibilities and limitations therein. Gramsci, we suggest, provides stimulating commentary on the differentiated unity of nature and society: in part, this anticipates recent arguments on this subject. Similarly, we reflect on how Gramsci’s conceptualization of hegemony relates to core issues within political ecology. Given the centrality of ‘environmental issues’ in the contemporary moment, it is necessary to consider how social groups enrol natures and environments (both material and symbolic) in their struggles for hegemony. We conclude the editorial by introducing the articles included in the theme issue.

Ekers, Michael. “The Political Ecology of Hegemony in Depression-Era British Columbia, Canada: Masculinities, Work and the Production of the Forestscape.” Geoforum, vol. 40, no. 3 (2009): 303-15.

Abstract: This article attempts to empirically demonstrate how the struggle for bourgeois hegemony in depression-era British Columbia, Canada, was fought for through the production of new natures. Bringing together Antonio Gramsci’s conceptualization of hegemony with marxist understandings of political ecology, I examine how the legitimacy of particular groups’ dominance over subordinate groups and the survival of specific social relations was built and contested through the (re)making of the material-symbolic landscape. However, I also take seriously Stuart Hall’s argument that we must take note of the multi-dimensional character of hegemony by paying attention to the entanglement of class, gender and ecological relations during the 1930s. In order to demonstrate these arguments I examine the economic, social, moral and ecological crisis that rippled across the socionatural fabric of B.C. during the depression years. I detail how the federal and provincial states responded to the interlaced crises of class, gender and ecological relations through launching a series of public works programs and training programs. These projects were intended to modernize the forestry industry and remake unemployed men in body and soul. In doing so, I demonstrate how ideologies regarding nature come to be both enrolled in the struggle for hegemony and materialized in the making of the forestscape. By weaving theoretical insights through the socionatural history of British Columbia, I demonstrate how a gramscian sensibility pushes us to take seriously the relationality of socionatural processes and the embededdness of concepts in material histories.

Filippini, Michele. “Gramsci Storico. Una Lettura Dei ‘Quaderni Del Carcere’.” Historical Materialism, vol. 17, no. 2 (2009): 261-71.

Abstract: The review article reconstructs the reception of Gramsci’s writings in Italy from the postwar-period to the present. Compared to the Italian debate that has given little attention to Gramsci’s writings, except for in some periods such as the 1970s, Gramsci’s fortune has continued to grow internationally. Recent Italian contributions, such as the book of Alberto Bugio, Grasmci storico, criticised in this review, remain indebted to an historicist approach that does not allow a use of Gramscian categories as an optic for interpreting and enacting the transformation of the present. The analysis concentrates on concepts such as ‘passive revolution’, ‘fascism’, ‘Taylorism’ and ‘bureaucracy’.

Francese, Joseph, ed. The Politics, Culture and Social Theory of Gramsci: A Multidisciplinary Perspective. (New York: Routledge, 2009). [i.s.b.n.: 0415485274].

Contents:

Joseph Francese, “Introduction: ‘Gramsci Now’”

1. Stanley Aronowitz, “Gramsci’s Conceptions of Political Organization.”
2. Joseph A. Buttigieg, “Reading Gramsci Now.”
3. Kate Crehan, “Sinking Roots: Using Gramsci in Contemporary Britain.”
4. Roberto M. Dainotto, “Gramsci Now: Philology and Philosophy of Praxis.”
5. Michael Denning. “‘Once Again on the Organic Capacities of the Working Class:’ Antonio Gramsci as a Theorist of Labor.”
6. Benedetto Fontana, “The Uses and Abuses of Gramsci: Hegemony and American Politics.”
7. Stephen Gill, “Pessimism of the Intelligence, Optimism of the Will: Political Agency and World Order in an Age of ‘Empire.’”
8. Marcia Landy, “Gramsci, In And On Media.”
9. Guido Liguori, “Common Sense In Gramsci.”
10. Frank Rosengarten, “The Contemporary Relevance of Gramsci’s Views on Italy’s ‘Southern Question.’”
11. David F. Ruccio, “Rethinking Gramsci: Class, Globalization, and Historical Bloc.”
12. Epifanio San Juan Jr., “Antonio Gramsci’s Theory of the ‘National-Popular’ as a Strategy for Socialist Revolution.”

Francese, Joseph. “Thoughts on Gramsci’s Need “To Do Something ‘Für Ewig’”.” Rethinking Marxism, vol. 21, no. 1 (2009): 54-66. [Link].

Abstract: Prior to being granted permission to keep writing materials in his prison cell, Antonio Gramsci described his Prison Notebooks as the foundation for “disinterested,” “für ewig” studies or book projects. Für ewig, a term Gramsci took from Goethe and which roughly translates as forever, in this context indicates not a retreat into an aesthetic sphere, but an immersion in a historical continuum. Similarly, “disinterested” connotes both a freedom from immediate contingency and the organic clustering of a homogeneous group of topics of study. Together the two terms indicate a shift in forma mentis from that of combatant in an insurrectional “war of maneuver” to strategist of a long-term “war of position” for cultural and ideological hegemony in civil society. In other words, Gramsci would no longer produce texts written “for the day,” as he had as a journalist. Instead, due to the absence of interlocutors, he would write with a hoped-for post-prison existence and with posterity in mind. Thus, Gramsci's use of the term für ewig, in announcing his project, indicates that the intention of the Prison Notebooks was dialectically to impact the present in perpetuity.

Friedman, P. Kerim. “Ethical Hegemony.” Rethinking Marxism, vol. 21, no. 3 (2009): 355-65.

Abstract: Drawing upon Peter Ives's book Gramsci's Politics of Language, this article examines the linguistic origins of Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony. This is then compared with Pierre Bourdieu's theory of the habitus, with a particular focus on how the two theories conceptualize social change. Ives shows that Gramsci understood language standardization as either democratic or repressive, depending on the nature of the standardization process. Ives uses this to argue that the opposite of repressive hegemony is not the absence of hegemony but a progressive hegemony grounded in democratic processes. While Bourdieu's emphasis on social reproduction over social change makes his work less useful for conceptualizing such a progressive hegemony, this paper argues that his theory of symbolic capital (including linguistic capital) offers us a unique insight into the obstacles faced by agents of progressive social change and, in so doing, sheds light on the limitations of Gramsci's approach.

Garrett, Paul Michael. “The ‘Whalebone’ in the (Social Work) ‘Corset’? Notes on Antonio Gramsci and Social Work Educators.” Social Work Education, vol. 28, no. 5 (2009): 461-75.

Abstract: The writings of the Italian philosopher and political activist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) are neglected in social work, but his complex body of work might aid the profession’s understanding in the early twenty-first century. Social work education, specifically, may have much to gain from Gramsci’s theorisation. The focus of this article‚Äîperhaps, something of an introduction of Gramsci‚Äîwill be on his approach to Marxism and his ideas related to ‘common sense’, intellectuals and intellectuality. It will be maintained that Gramsci’s contributions on these questions could contribute to social workers’ critical reflection during a period of neoliberal inspired transformations.

Green, Marcus E., and Peter Ives. “Subalternity and Language: Overcoming the Fragmentation of Common Sense.” Historical Materialism, vol. 17, no. 1 (2009): 3-30. [Link].

Abstract: The topics of language and subaltern social groups appear throughout Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks. Although Gramsci often associates the problem of political fragmentation among subaltern groups with issues concerning language and common sense, there are only a few notes where he explicitly connects his overlapping analyses of language and subalternity. We build on the few places in the literature on Gramsci that focus on how he relates common sense to the questions of language or subalternity. By explicitly tracing out these relations, we hope to bring into relief the direct connections between subalternity and language by showing how the concepts overlap with respect to Gramsci's analyses of common sense, intellectuals, philosophy, folklore, and hegemony. We argue that, for Gramsci, fragmentation of any social group's 'common sense', worldview and language is a political detriment, impeding effective political organisation to counter exploitation but that such fragmentation cannot be overcome by the imposition of a 'rational' or 'logical' worldview. Instead, what is required is a deep engagement with the fragments that make up subaltern historical, social, economic and political conditions. In our view, Gramsci provides an alternative both to the celebration of fragmentation fashionable in liberal multiculturalism and uncritical postmodernism, as well as other attempts of overcoming it through recourse to some external, transcendental or imposed worldview. This is fully in keeping with, and further elucidates Gramsci's understanding of the importance of effective 'democratic centralism' of the leadership of the party in relation to the rank and file and the popular masses.

Hill, Debbie J. “A Brief Commentary on the Hegelian-Marxist Origins of Gramsci’s “philosophy of Praxis”.” Educational Philosophy & Theory, vol. 41, no. 6 (2009): 605-21.

Abstract: This paper explores the specific nuances of what Gramsci names “the new dialectic”. The dialectic was Marx’s specific “mode of thought” or “method of logic” as it has been variously called, by which he analyzed the world and man’s relationship to that world. As well as constituting a theory of knowledge (epistemology), what arises out of the dialectic is also an ontology or portrait of humankind that is based on the complete historicization of humanity; its “absolute historicism” or “the absolute secularisation and earthliness of thought”, as Gramsci worded it (Gramsci, 1971 , p. 465). Embracing a fully secular and historical view of humanity, it provides a vantage point that allows the multiple and complex effects of our own conceptual heritage to be interrogated in relation to our developing “nature” or “being”. This paper argues that the legacy of both Hegel and Marx is manifest in the depth of Gramsci’s comprehension of what he termed the “educative-formative” problem of hegemony. It is precisely the legacy of this Hegelian-Marxist radical philosophical critique that is signified in his continuing commitment to the “philosophy of praxis” and the historical-dialectical principles that underpin this worldview.

Hirschfeld, Uwe. “Towards a Political Theory of Social Work and Education.” Educational Philosophy & Theory, vol. 41, no. 6 (2009): 698-711.

Abstract: The article focuses on Gramsci’s elaboration of the concept of hegemony to analyze the function of Social Work during the periods of Fordism and post-Fordism. It discusses the limits and opportunities for a democratic development in the theory and praxis of Social Work.

Holst, John D. “The Revolutionary Party in Gramsci’s Pre-Prison Educational and Political Theory and Practice.” Educational Philosophy & Theory, vol. 41, no. 6 (2009): 622-39.

Abstract: While most of Gramsci’s party work is well known to education scholars of Gramsci, and the educational aspects of his writings have been repeatedly analyzed, what remains a constant in education-based Gramsci studies is the nearly universal minimization of this work for what it was, namely party work. For Gramsci, it would have been unthinkable to consider this work outside the framework of a revolutionary party. Yet, for contemporary educational scholars it seems unthinkable to consider Gramsci’s work within the framework of a revolutionary party. The goals of this article are to outline Gramsci’s interrelated conceptualization of the roles of the revolutionary party; the nature of education within and by the revolutionary party; and the aims of party education. For considerations of space, I limit this analysis to Gramsci’s pre-prison praxis, the period of his active militancy in the PSI and the PCI. I conclude the article with what I consider to be lessons with continued relevance from Gramsci’s praxis for the socio-political economic context faced by today’s radical educators.

Ives, Peter. “Global English, Hegemony and Education: Lessons from Gramsci.” Educational Philosophy & Theory, vol. 41, no. 6 (2009): 661-83.

Abstract: Antonio Gramsci and his concept of hegemony are often invoked in current debates concerning cultural imperialism, globalisation and global English. However, these debates are rarely cognizant of Gramsci’s own university training in linguistics, the centrality of language to his writings on education and hegemony, or his specific engagement with language politics in his own day. By paying much greater attention to Gramsci’s writings on language and education, this article attempts to lay the groundwork for an adequate approach to the current politics of global English. While Gramsci may have left formal education and his studies in linguistics at Turin University as a young man to become a full time journalist and political activist, he certainly did not “jettison” his study of language as is commonly implied. It has been widely accepted that Gramsci had an expansive conception of education which would curtail any suggestion that “education” must be limited to formal schooling or university. Likewise, this article demonstrates the importance of Gramsci’s lifelong analysis of language, its role in education and the development of hegemony. It argues that Gramsci’s writings on language policy in Italy, specifically la questione della lingua [the language question] and his concern with linguistics, are an integral part of his approach to education and hegemony.

Ives, Peter. “Prestige, Faith, and Dialect: Expanding Gramsci's Engagement.” Rethinking Marxism, vol. 21, no. 3 (2009): 366-74.

Abstract: This essay attempts to respond to and advance the dialogue initiated by contributions to this symposium by Jacinda Swanson, Kerim Friedman, and Stefano Selenu concerning my book, Gramsci's Politics of Language: Engaging the Bakhtin Circle and the Frankfurt School. It emphasizes the importance of all three authors in creating further space for interaction between Gramscian scholarship and other areas of Marxism and social theory, specifically the work of the Association for Economic and Social Analysis (AESA), political theory generally, Pierre Bourdieu, sociolinguistics, and philosophy. I discuss the concepts of prestige, labor, faith, conflict, interference, and dialect, as presented by the other contributions. One of the links that ties together these discussions is my emphasis on Gramsci's insistence that language is not approached as a topic or type of activity that can be divorced or sharply distinguished from other human activity: it does not constitute a separate or separable realm.

Jossa, Bruno. “Gramsci and the Labor-Managed Firm.” Review of Radical Political Economics, vol. 41, no. 1 (2009): 5-22.

Abstract: According to Antonio Gramsci, workers’ councils were transitional institutions expected to carry on business in a market economy and thereby prepare the ground for the revolution. However, upon seizing power, workers were expected to establish a centrally planned system and, hence, to renounce autonomous firm management. Finding fault with this approach, the author upholds modern labor management theory, in which Vanek’s LMF-type firms are looked upon as socialist firms operating in a market economy.

Ledwith, Margaret. “Antonio Gramsci and Feminism: The Elusive Nature of Power.” Educational Philosophy & Theory, vol. 41, no. 6 (2009): 684-97.

Abstract: From a feminist perspective, I am interested in "women's ways of knowing‚" (Belenky et-al., 1997) and the relationship between knowledge, difference and power (Goldberger et-al., 1996 ). Here I trace the relevance of Gramsci to my own feminist consciousness, and the part he played in my journey to praxis. I also address feminism's intellectual debts, most particularly in relation to the concept of hegemony. The intellectual context has shifted in emphasis from macro- to micro-narratives which reject Marxism as masculinist and dichotomous. The dilemma has been an overemphasis on the personal-cultural at the expense of the collective-political, distracting us from action for social justice at the same time as globalisation is creating escalating world crises of justice and sustainability. In conclusion, I advocate a re-reading of Gramsci in the light of key feminist critiques of class and patriarchy in order to develop i) analyses based on multiple sites of oppression and ii) action which reaches from local to global through alliances to achieve a more integrated feminist praxis. Throughout, I use denote the socially constructed nature of these concepts.

Loftus, Alex. “Intervening in the Environment of the Everyday.” Geoforum, vol. 40, no. 3 (2009): 326-34.

Abstract: This paper seeks to explore the radical democratic potential in urban artistic interventions. It does so through bringing Gramsci’s concept of nature together with his ‘cultural writings’ and broader debates around avant-garde artistic practice. Empirically, I focus on the work of City Mine(d), a Brussels-based interventionist collective, and Siraj Izhar, a London-based artist–activist. Within Gramsci’s writings, I argue, socio-natural relationships emerge through sensuous activity or work. Making a somewhat more ambitious claim, I suggest that Gramsci’s concept of nature rests on what geographers have come to understand as the production of nature. Whilst attention has only recently turned to this implicit political ecology, much greater attention has been focussed on Gramsci’s cultural insights. For Gramsci, cultural struggles are an integral part of the effort to shape a new reality. Whilst he emphasises the ‘bottom up’ nature of such struggles, the intervention of enlightened outsiders is often a necessary and frustrating complement. However, by turning attention to the manner in which hegemony relates to the production of nature, and through bringing this into dialogue with radical artistic practice, such implicit elitism might be challenged. City Mine(d) and Izhar, I argue, develop a non-vanguardist politics that sees the contestation of hegemony as a struggle integral to the day-to-day nature of cities.

Mann, Geoff. “Should Political Ecology Be Marxist? A Case for Gramsci’s Historical Materialism.” Geoforum, vol. 40, no. 3 (2009): 335-44. [link to article]

Abstract: This paper investigates some aspects of political ecology’s relation to Marxism, specifically its ties to Marxism’s “historical materialism”. I argue Gramsci is an essential feature in the reinvigoration of that relation, and that political ecology should be Marxist, if by Marxist we mean Gramscian. I focus on the concept of hegemony, arguing that Gramsci’s historical materialism, in contrast to the Engelsian tradition within which most materialism is snared, allows us to take account of both moments in Gramsci’s hegemony, the “economic” and the “ethicopolitical”.

Mayo, Peter. “Editorial: Antonio Gramsci and Educational Thought.” Educational Philosophy & Theory, vol. 41, no. 6 (2009): 601-04.

Abstract: The article discusses various topics published within the issue including one by Deb Hill on the Hegelian and Marxian influence on Gramsci's philosophy of praxis, one by Paula Allman about the connection between Gramsci's thought and Marx's theory of consciousness, and John Holst on the context of Gramsci education.

McKay, Ian. Review of “Gramsci Is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements.” Capital & Class, no. 98 (2009): 131-40.

McNally, Mark. “Fianna Fáil and the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939: The Rhetoric of Hegemony and Equilibrium.” Journal of Political Ideologies, vol. 14, no. 1 (2009): 69-91.

Abstract: The Fianna Fáil Government's management of the crisis that broke out in Irish politics in 1930s Ireland over the Spanish Civil War and its policy of Non-intervention has usually been viewed in one of two ways. On the one hand, it has been claimed that the Party adopted a robust neutral position and faced down the widespread discontent that existed among a significant pro-Franco Catholic lobby. On the other, it has been argued that its reaction was much more pro-Franco than the above interpretation suggests, doing all in its power to conduct and present its policy as conducive to the Spanish Nationalists. This article challenges both these interpretations by focusing on the Party's ideological and rhetorical strategy and deploying the Gramscian categories of hegemony and equilibrium in order to reveal the complex and integral strategy that Fianna Fáil embarked on to transcend this crisis and maintain its supremacy in Irish politics.

McNally, Mark, and John Schwarzmantel, eds. Gramsci and Global Politics: Hegemony and Resistance. (New York: Routledge, 2009). [ISBN: 9780415474696]

Abstract: The aim of this book is to explain and assess the relevance of the ideas of Gramsci to a world fundamentally transformed from that in which his thought was developed. It takes some of Gramsci’s best-known concepts – hegemony, civil society, passive revolution, the national-popular, trasformismo, the integral state - and uses them creatively to analyse features of present-day politics, assessing to what extent his ideas can aid our understanding of the contemporary political world.

Contents

1. Introduction: Gramsci in his time and in ours. John Schwarzmantel
2. Beyond World Order and Transnational Classes: The (re)application of Gramsci in Global Politics. Owen Worth
3. Gramsci, Epistemology, and International Relations Theory. Joseph Femia
4. Trasformismo at the World Trade Organisation. Bill Paterson
5. Gramsci’s Internationalism, the National-Popular and the Alternative Globalisation Movement. Mark McNally
6. Gramsci and the problem of political agency. John Schwarzmantel
7. Governing Gender: The Integral State and Gendered Subjection. Gundula Ludwig
8. Civil Society and State in Turkey: A Gramscian Perspective. Hasret Dikici-Bilgin
9. Populism as counter-hegemony: the Israeli case. Dani Filc
10. Prince of Modernisers: Gramsci, New Labour and the Meaning of Modernity. Will Leggett
11. Giddens' 'Third Way' and Gramsci’s ‘passive Revolution’. Jules Townshend
12. Feelbad Britain: A Gramscian View. Pat Devine and David Purdy
13. Conclusion: the continuing attraction of gramscian analysis. Mark McNally

Newell, Ted. “Worldviews in Collision: Jesus as Critical Educator.” Journal of Education & Christian Belief, vol. 13, no. 2 (2009): 141-54.

Abstract: Contemporary connotations of "teacher" don't do justice to Jesus' educating activity. "Worldview" understood as a comprehensive social environment helps us to perceive the scale of Jesus' struggle in his society and also Christian teachers' struggle in their settings. Jesus is Israel's teacher in a deeper way than we hear by the term "teacher." Perspectives opened up by New Testament scholarship's Third Quest for the historical Jesus show that Jesus aimed to clarify the true meaning of God's covenant with Israel while subverting the dominant worldview. The argument is illustrated by analogy with another worldview challenger, the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, who developed strategies to counter what he named "hegemony." I conclude with implications for Christian teachers: teachers should understand themselves to be enacters of Jesus' way with students in Christian school or state school settings.

Racine, Louise. “Applying Antonio Gramsci’s Philosophy to Postcolonial Feminist Social and Political Activism in Nursing.” Nursing Philosophy, vol. 10, no. 3 (2009): 180-90.

Abstract: Through its social and political activism goals, postcolonial feminist theoretical approaches not only focus on individual issues that affect health but encompass the examination of the complex interplay between neocolonialism, neoliberalism, and globalization, in mediating the health of non-Western immigrants and refugees. Postcolonial feminism holds the promise to influence nursing research and practice in the 21st century where health remains a goal to achieve and a commitment for humanity. This is especially relevant for nurses, who act as global citizens and as voices for the voiceless. The commitment of nursing to social justice must be further strengthened by relying on postcolonial theories to address issues of health inequities that arise from marginalization and racialization. In using postcolonial feminist theories, nurse researchers locate the inquiry process within a Gramscian philosophy of praxis that represents knowledge in action.

San Juan Jr, E. Critique and Social Transformation: Lessons from Antonio Gramsci, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Raymond Williams. (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, forthcoming 2009).

San Juan Jr, E. “Antonio Gramsci’s Theory of National-popular and The National-democratic Transformation in The Philippines.” Augustinian 12 (2009): 3-29. PDF.

Selenu, Stefano. “Ives and Gramsci in Dialogue: Vernacular Subalternity, Cultural Interferences, and the Word-Thing Interdependence.” Rethinking Marxism, vol. 21, no. 3 (2009): 344-54.

Abstract: Peter Ives’s Gramsci’s Politics of Language (2004) constitutes one of the most relevant and stimulating recent contributions on Gramsci. In this paper I will review the book, showing the relevance of placing Gramsci in dialogue with a constellation of numerous thinkers and ideas. Then, I will focus on three of Ives’s ideas in order to problematize them. First, considering Ives’s use of Gramsci’s statements on Sardinian, I will deal with the political significance of Gramsci’s claim that Sardinian is a language. Second, I will discuss the connection made by Ives between the nonparthenogenetic origins of languages and the idea that languages develop through cultural and linguistic conflicts. Finally, I will deal with Ives’s notion of vernacular materialism in Gramsci, and I will discuss his interpretation of Gramsci’s ideas on meaning production and metaphor.

Spence, Crawford. “Social Accounting’s Emancipatory Potential: A Gramscian Critique.” Critical Perspectives on Accounting, vol. 20, no. 2 (2009): 205-27.

Stephen, Matthew D. “Alter-Globalism as Counter-Hegemony: Evaluating the 'Postmodern Prince'.” Globalizations, vol. 6, no. 4 (2009): 483-98.

Abstract: This article seeks to provide a critical analysis of the alter-globalisation movement as a potential 'postmodern Prince' as advanced by Stephen Gill. The article proposes that the social forces aligned under the rubric of alter-globalism have always had intractable difficulties articulating a postmodern Prince, and that in contrast to Gill's appropriation of Gramsci, these difficulties can be usefully understood through a reading of Gramsci which is attentive to the problems of collective political action. Recent debate among key participants at the World Social Forum (WSF) is used as a case study for analysing the possibility of formulating a common master-frame or strategy for social transformation. It is at the WSF that the problems of articulating a postmodern Prince have been most clearly confronted. It is shown that the weaknesses of alter-globalism can be understood, pace Gill, through Gramsci's own theory of social transformation as evinced in the modern Prince. This underlines the need for further investigation of the agents of progressive politics in an era of global social transformation.

Swanson, Jacinda. “Gramsci as Theorist of Politics.” Rethinking Marxism, vol. 21, no. 3 (2009): 336-43.

Abstract: This paper briefly discusses some of Antonio Gramsci’s contributions to the theorization of politics that Peter Ives elucidates in Gramsci’s Politics of Language. I also highlight a few of the many illuminating aspects of Ives’s in-depth but accessible exploration of Gramsci’s approach to language and politics, such as Gramsci’s distinction between regressive and progressive forms of hegemony and his antiessentialist and antipositivist theorization of social and linguistic practices. I end with a few questions about Gramsci’s positions on faith and political unity as well as the similarities of his approach to poststructuralism.

Thomas, Peter. The Gramscian Moment. Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism. (Leiden: Brill, 2009). [ISBN: 9789004167711]. pp. 477 + xxv

Abstract: Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks are today acknowledged as a classic of the human and social sciences in the twentieth century. The influence of his thought in numerous fields of scholarship is only exceeded by the diverse interpretations and readings to which it has been subjected, resulting in often contradictory 'images of Gramsci'. This book draws on the rich recent season of Gramscian philological studies in order to argue that the true significance of Gramsci's thought consists in its distinctive position in the development of the Marxist tradition. Providing a detailed reconsideration of Gramsci's theory of the state and concept of philosophy, The 'Gramscian Moment' argues for the urgent necessity of taking up the challenge of developing a 'philosophy of praxis' as a vital element in the contemporary revitalisation of Marxism.

Contents
Preface
Chapter 1. The Moment of Reading 'Capital'
Chapter 2. Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci?
Chapter 3. 'A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery inside an Enigma?' On the Literary Form of the Prison Notebooks
Chapter 4. Contra the Passive Revolution
Chapter 5. Civil and Political Hegemony
Chapter 6. 'The Realisation of Hegemony'
Chapter 7. 'The Philosophy of Praxis is the Absolute "Historicism"'
Chapter 8. 'The Absolute Secularisation and Earthliness of Thought'
Chapter 9. 'An Absolute Humanism of History'
Conclusion. Marxism and Philosophy: Today

Thomas, Peter. “The Moor’s Italian Journeys” New Left Review II, 58 (2009): 119-132.

Thomas, Peter. “Gramsci and the Political: From the State as ‘Metaphysical Event’ to Hegemony as ‘Philosophical Fact’.” Radical Philosophy, no. 153 (2009): 27-36.

Wainwright, Joel and Kristin Mercer. “The Dilemma of Decontamination: A Gramscian Analysis of the Mexican Transgenic Maize Dispute.” Geoforum, vol. 40, no. 3 (2009): 345-54.

Abstract: Many environmentalists, farmers, and consumers in Mexico are concerned that their maize landraces may have been ‘contaminated’ by imported transgenic maize, grown in the USA. The criticisms of this transgenic technology are complex and call into question the nature of the boundary between political and ecological (i.e. scientific) disputes. Our paper surveys these criticisms, and this political–scientific boundary, in a three-part analysis. First, we turn to Gramsci’s notes on science from his eleventh prison notebook to rethink the political ecology of transgenic maize, i.e., the way the ecological analysis of transgenic introgression is treated as politics. Second, we present the multiple criticisms of transgenic maize as scalar phenomena. Third, we review the recent scientific literature on transgene introgression to evaluate recent calls for the ‘decontamination’ of Mexican maize. Our reading illustrates dilemmas facing the group that occupies the hegemonic subject-position in this dispute, ecological scientists. The dispute is ecological, yet beyond the capacity of science to resolve. Yet, following Gramsci, these findings should not lead us to see science as mere ideology, or apolitical, or encourage a retreat into metaphysics. Rather it points to the need for a social transformation that sees science as “humanity forging its methods of research … in other words, culture, the conception of the world.” By exploring the dilemmas of decontamination, the dispute over transgene introgression in Mexican maize-fields provides an opportunity to elaborate upon Gramsci’s neglected insights into the politics of science.

Worth, Owen, and Karen Buckley. “The World Social Forum: Postmodern Prince or Court Jester?” Third World Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 4 (2009): 649-61.

Abstract: Since its inauguration in 2001 the World Social Forum (wsf) has been heralded as an 'open space' for civil society in which the disparate groups that make up the anti-globalisation movement can gather and 'articulate' possible alternative worlds. This article regards as unconvincing the strategic aspirations of the wsf to contest neoliberal hegemony and propel a multilayered counter-hegemonic project of the form (to quote Machiavelli and Gramsci) of a 'postmodern prince'. It is argued that the wsf is more exclusive than inclusive in its nature. Rather than being the expression of the anti-globalisation movement, the Forum has become a funfair for the expression of ideas from academics and ngo/government workers, which has led to a form of elitism that the wsf attempted to avoid at its inception. Thus, rather than creating any form of inclusive participatory 'open space', the article will conclude that the wsf serves to entertain rather than to counter any form of transformation within global civil society.

FRENCH

Ciavolella, Riccardo. “Entre démocratisations et coups d’état. Hégémonie et subalternité en Mauritanie” Politique Africaine, n. 114 (2009): 5-23.

Abstract: This article aims at analyzing Mauritanian political evolutions from a gramscian point of view. It also contributes to a critics of the way in which the italian intellectual’s concepts inspire contemporary africanist debate. [Cet article se propose de donner une lecture gramscienne des évolutions politiques en Mauritanie, en apportant également un éclairage sur l’introduction des concepts de l’intellectuel italien dans le débat africaniste.

GERMAN

None to report.

Italian

See IGS Italia > Bibliografia Italiana. News of Italian publications should be sent to Michele Filippini.

Japanese

La Città Futura, Tokyo Gramsci Society Bulletin No. 45 (May 2009)

1. Antonio Gramsci, Notebook 23: Literary Criticism (Part 2, §29-§59), translated by the Tokyo Gramsci Society Research Group.
2. Contemporary Fraternity, Toyohiko Kagawa and Subalterns: For a “Civil Society” never absorbed by the State. Hiroyuki Kashii.
3. Book Review: Domenico Losurdo, Gramsci, La filosofia della Praxis, Dal Liberalismo al 'Comunismo critico,' translated and edited by Shizuo Fukuda.

La Città Futura, Tokyo Gramsci Society Bulletin No 46. (October 2009)

1. New wave of Caribean Sea: My first visit to Venezuela and conversations with President Chavez, by Nobuyuki Kurosawa
2. Guido Dorso's La rivoluzione meridionale, Translated and commented by Hiromi Fujioka

Portuguese

Arnaut de Toledo, Cézar de Alencar; Gomes, Jarbas Mauricio. "Quaderni del Carcere de Antonio Gramsci". Diálogos, DHI/PPH/UEM. Maringá, v. 13, n. 2, p. 491-495, 2009. (Resenha). [Link]

Melo, Demian Bezerra de. A leitura genética dos Cadernos de Gramsci (resenha). Revista História & Luta de Classes, n. 7, p. 112-113, 2009.

Spanish

None to report.