Gramsci Bibliography: 2014

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English

Gramsci in Translation

Gramsci, Antonio. A Great and Terrible World: The Pre-Prison Letters, 1908-1926. Ed. Derek Boothman. UK: Lawrence & Wishart, 9781608463930. USA: Haymarket Books, 9781907103964, 2014.

A collection of letters is also essentially a biography – here of a man recognized as one of the twentieth century's leading thinkers. By translating and presenting for the first time many letters previously overlooked by other volumes, this collection greatly expands what the English-speaking world knows of him, both politically and personally. These extracts from his pre-prison correspondence—with his wife and her sister, international communist leaders, and fellow Italian revolutionaries—show his most important ideas at their beginnings, and give a well rounded picture of Gramsci's political, intellectual, and emotional development.Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) was a founding member of the Italian Communist Party, and among the twentieth century's most influential theorists.

Articles & Books Related to Gramsci

Antonini, Francesca. “Science, History and Ideology in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks.” Journal of History of Science and Technology 9 (2014): Link

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) made his notes on science within his Quaderni del carcere (Prison Notebooks) written between 1929 and 1935, while imprisoned by the Italian fascist regime. This overview focuses mainly on three themes: 1) the Gramscian criticism of the idealist (Croce) and materialist (Bukharin) conceptions of science and, in particular, his criticism of the alleged “objectivity of reality”; 2) the historical and ideological nature of scientific knowledge and the relationship between history of science and history of technology; 3) the interrelation between science, politics and society in the framework of Gramsci’s “philosophy of praxis”.

Bieler, Andreas and Adam David Morton. "Neo-Gramscian Perspectives," in Siegfried Schieder and Manuela Spindler (eds) Theories of International Relations. London: Routledge, 2014, pp. 214-30. ISBN: 9780415741149.

Bjelić, Dušan I. “‘Maternal Space’ and Intellectual Labor: Gramsci versus Kristeva and Žižek.” College Literature 2014.2 (2014): 29–55.

Bosteels, Bruno. “Towards a Theory of the Integral State.” Historical Materialism 22.2 (2014): 44–62.

This review assesses the strengths and weaknesses of Peter Thomas’s long-awaited study of The Prison Notebooks, based on his extensive research and philological reconstruction of the critical edition. I distinguish three senses in which the ‘moment’ in the book’s title can be understood: as the historical moment around 1932 in which Gramsci proposed the outline of his distinct brand of the philosophy of praxis; as the moment or momentum that still lies in wait for a future research programme in Marxist philosophy; and as a methodological principle for understanding the dialectic as a theory in which entities such as state and civil society, but also coercion and consent, far from allowing the kind of Eurocommunist or post-Marxist instrumentalisations in which they are seen as part of a chain of binaries, are actually moments of a unified larger structure that in Gramsci’s work comes to be associated with the idea of the integral state. This impressive reconstruction of Gramsci’s notebooks, however, also reveals some major lacunae, above all, in terms of the lack of attention given to Gramscian developments in the non-European world, in places such as India or Latin America. This omission is all the more surprising given the longstanding tradition, particularly in Latin America, of viewing Gramsci as a theorist of the integral state more so than of hegemony.

Briziarelli, Marco, and Susana Martinez Guillem. “The Counter-Hegemonic Spectacle of Occupy Wall Street: Integral State and Integral Struggle.” IC Revista Científica de Información y Comunicación 11 (2014): 145 – 166. Link

In this article we explore the US social movement "Occupy Wall Street." Our objective is to interrogate this form of social mobilization about its capability to contribute to the construction of counter hegemony, as well as to provide a more general argument about the perils and possibilities social mobilization in times of crisis. We interpret OWS as embedded in a framework of multiple tensions that we explain through a Gramscian framework: between identified objectives and adequate means to achieve them, between civil society and state, between the strategies of 'war of maneuver" and "war of position," and finally between conventional and unconventional politics.

Cesarale, Giorgio. “Editorial Introduction: Hegemony, Philosophy of Praxis, Historicism: Peter Thomas’s Gramsci.” Historical Materialism 22.2 (2014): 33–43.

Introduction to the Historical Materialism symposium on Peter Thomas's book The Gramscian Moment.

Chodor, Tom. “Not Throwing the Baby out with the Bathwater: A Gramscian Response to Post-Hegemony.” Contemporary Politics 20.4 (2014): 489–502.

This article offers a Gramscian response to the theory of post-hegemony, suggesting that its rejection of Gramsci rests on misrepresentations of his work. Through a closer engagement with this work, the article outlines the ways in which Gramscian analysis can in fact complement the insights of post-hegemony in analysing the ways in which the social order is secured and the strategies of resistance to this order. This combination of Gramscian and post-hegemonic insights, the article argues, offers a more nuanced and comprehensive insight into power, radical politics and resistance in the twenty-first century, an insight which risks being lost in post-hegemony's rejection of Gramsci and his work. The utility of this combined approach is illustrated via four short vignettes from contemporary Latin America: the emergence of the student protest movement in Chile since 2011; the Caracazo in Venezuela; the Argentine crisis in 2001; and the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.

Cole, Josh, and Ian McKay. “Commanding Heights, Levers of Power: A Reconnaissance of Postwar Education Reform.” Encounters on Education 15.0 (2014): 23–41.  PDF

Throughout the second half of the twentieth century – from the years of the Fordist welfare state to those of the post-Fordist neo-liberal order – educational systems in the West have fostered ambitious schemes promoting wide-ranging ‘progressive change.’ Equally ambitious Marxist critiques have targeted education’s regulatory role within the capitalist system. In the early twenty-first century, as privatization and the radical subordination of educational aims and objectives to the demands of capital (‘neo-liberalism’) become unavoidable topics of educational debate, resistance to such neoliberal projects demands a rigorous reconnaissance of the achievements and limitations of radical educational thought. After canvassing major critics of mainstream schooling inside North America and beyond, we suggest that a radical retrieval of the insights of C. B. Macpherson and especially Antonio Gramsci can move us far beyond both reductionist Marxism and unreflective liberalism. We take a third position – embodying an individualist and collective pedagogy – in which the much-maligned ‘liberal arts’ stand against ‘possessive individualist’ education reform.

De Smet, Brecht. “Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Egypt.” Science & Society 78.1 (2014): 11–40. Link.

The 2011 Egyptian revolution and its concrete outcomes of military rule and Muslim Brotherhood governance demand a thorough analysis that transcends the archetypical binaries of revolution and counter-revolution, uprising and transition, dictatorship and democracy. A Gramscian interpretation, deploying the concepts of historical bloc, passive revolution, and Caesarism, embeds the contemporary events within a historical process of post-colonial state formation and reconfiguration and the local implementation of global neoliberal accumulation strategies. These lineages elucidate the capacity of the Armed Forces to play a specific Caesarist role during the revolutionary process. The January 25 insurrection and its counter-revolutionary appropriation by the military and the Brotherhood are rendered intelligible as alternating moments of one and the same process, in which the revolutionary mobilization of the masses is intersected, on the one hand, by hegemonic relations between ruling and subaltern groups, and, on the other, by political fights internal to these discrete factions.

Freeland, Anne. "The Gramscian Turn: Readings from Brazil, Argentina, and Bolivia." A Contracorriente 11.2 (2014): 278–301.

In the political culture of Latin America following the international crisis of the left, the failure of the Latin American revolutionary projects of the 1960s, and the consequent surge of U.S.-backed military dictatorships in the region, a strategic alliance between the socialist left and liberal-democratic center-left was arguably indispensable. It is within this field of shifting conceptual and practical alliances—which emerged in the 1970s and 1980s and still conditions a contemporary discourse that nonetheless contends with a different set of tasks—that I examine in this paper a series of inscriptions of Gramsci's thought in the theoretical production of Marxist intellectuals in Brazil (Carlos Nelson Coutinho), Argentina (Juan Carlos Portantiero and José Aricó), and Bolivia (René Zavaleta Mercado). I argue that Coutinho and Portantiero each deploy conceptual tools drawn from Gramsci's texts to posit in different ways an already existing collective popular democratic subject with emancipatory potential, rather than articulating the necessity of constructing new forms of subjecthood. Zavaleta's use of Gramsci's concepts, I claim, is diagnostic rather than validating, posing the problem of popular subjectivity as one that cannot be solved once and for all.

Frosini, Fabio. “Gramsci’s ‘Non-Contemporaneity: Reflections on Peter Thomas’s The Gramscian Moment.’” Historical Materialism 22.2 (2014): 117–134. Link.

Peter D. Thomas's book The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism draws us to reflect on a point that Gramsci's interpreters have often neglected: the particular structure of the Prison Notebooks, i.e., the ways in which the text was constituted and, dependent on that, the fundamental methodological criteria for its interpretation. Thomas's book is a consummate synthesis between the deep and detailed study of the Notebooks text and the need to reconstruct some order within; between close historical-philosophical assessment and theoretical proposal within contemporary Marxist (and para-Marxist) debate. Consequently, this book confronts us – as Gramsci's present-day readers – with a task that no-one can face alone, but that is nonetheless extraordinarily urgent: the task of intervening in the debate within the post-modern and post-Marxist Left so that the link between Marxism and philosophy is resumed, starting out from Gramsci himself. In short: a revival of Marx through Gramsci, through – in turn – a return of the philosophy of praxis as Marxism for our own day.

Ginzburg, Andrea. “Two Translators: Gramsci and Sraffa.” Centro Sraffa Working Papers. 2014. Link

Through the Prison Notebooks and the papers left by Sraffa, it is possible to attempt a reconstruction of the intellectual paths taken by the two authors and discover unexpected convergences, as well as obvious differences. The key concept employed here is that of the 'translatability of scientific languages'. From this concept, Boothman has argued, stems the ‘open’ character of Gramsci’s Marxism. The theme of the translatability of languages is also present in Sraffa: in a Note written after the important theoretical turning point of the summer of 1927, he states his intention to write a book that will consist in the translation of Marx into English, that is in the translation of the ‘metaphysics’ of Hegel into that of Hume. It can be shown that issues that have a prominent importance in Gramsci’s thought help us to understand the meaning and importance of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities.

Hesketh, Chris. “Producing State Space in Chiapas: Passive Revolution and Everyday Life.” Critical Sociology (2014): preprint

This article examines processes of state formation in Chiapas, Mexico, from the time of the Revolution (1910–17) to the present. The purpose of the article is threefold. First it demonstrates how differing modes of production attempt to alter the production of space, yet at the same time, how pre-capitalist spaces and social relations, as well as movements of resistance, both alter the topography of capitalism as it unfolds. Second it explores 'everyday' processes of state formation linked to localized class cultures. In doing so, it makes claims to originality by providing a spatially sensitive account of Antonio Gramsci's notion of hegemony, and indeed breaks new ground by demonstrating a sub-national articulation of passive revolution as a means of constructing state space. Finally, it considers the importance of counter-spaces formed in opposition to the state and what the response has been in turn to these 'spaces of resistance'.

Hesketh, Chris, and Adam David Morton. “Spaces of Uneven Development and Class Struggle in Bolivia: Transformation or Trasformismo?” Antipode 46.1 (2014): 149–169. Link.

This article engages with the politics of class struggle and state formation in modern Bolivia. It examines how current forms of political contestation are shaped by the legacy of the Revolution of 1952 and the subsequent path of development. In so doing, we therefore explore spaces of uneven and combined development in relation to ongoing transformations in Bolivia linked to emergent class strategies of passive revolution, meaning processes of historical development marked by the overall exclusion of subaltern classes. With this in mind we argue that state formation in Bolivia can be read as part of the history of passive revolution in Latin America within the spatial conditions of uneven and combined development shaping the geopolitics of the region. However, the expansion of passive revolution as a mode of historical development has been and continues to be rigorously contested by subaltern forces creating further spaces of class struggle.

Kurtz, Donald V. “Culture, Poverty, Politics: Cultural Sociologists, Oscar Lewis, Antonio Gramsci.” Critique of Anthropology 34.3 (2014): 327–345. Link.

This paper explores the methodological relevance of the culture concept for the study of poverty by cultural sociologists, Oscar Lewis, and Antonio Gramsci. Cultural sociologists currently dominate poverty studies in America and focus on the relationship of culture and poverty. Oscar Lewis's idea of the culture of poverty influenced poverty studies by anthropologists in the 1960s. In the early twentieth century Antonio Gramsci argued that culture could serve as a revolutionary force to subvert the domination of the proletariat by the capitalist bourgeoisie. After exploring the political presumptions of each view point I evaluate their ideas against data from a field study of a community action council in America's 1960s war on poverty.

Loftus, Alex. “Against a Speculative Leftism.” Ed. Erik Swyngedouw and Japhy Wilson. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014. 229–243.

Alex Loftus asks what the literature on post-politics can contribute to our understanding of the wave of protests and uprisings that swept across the world in 2011. Building on Bruno Bosteels’ critique of the “speculative leftism” of post-foundational theory, Loftus challenges Laclau and Mouffe’s appropriation of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, arguing that Gramsci’s original Marxist project offers a more fruitful basis for radical critique.

Mayo, Peter. “Antonio Gramsci’s Impact on Critical Pedagogy.” Critical Sociology (2014): preprint

This article provides an account of Antonio Gramsci's impact on the area of critical pedagogy. It indicates the Gramscian influence on the thinking of major exponents of the field. It foregrounds Gramsci's ideas and then indicates how they have been taken up by a selection of critical pedagogy exponents who were chosen on the strength of their identification and engagement with Gramsci's ideas, some of them even having written entire essays on Gramsci. The article concludes with a discussion concerning an aspect of Gramsci's concerns, the question of powerful knowledge, which, in the present author's view, provides a formidable challenge to critical pedagogues.

McKay, Ian. “Escaping the Throne Room.” Historical Materialism 22.2 (2014): 63–98.

In The Gramscian Moment Peter Thomas fundamentally revises the ‘textbook’ Gramsci – a theorist whose work centred on a primordial East/West distinction, focused on the superstructure, and upon the ways a ruling class secured subaltern consent to its rule. Placing special emphasis on the Notebooks from 1932, Thomas critiques readings of Gramsci by Perry Anderson and Louis Althusser, and finds that Gramsci articulated the ‘philosophy of praxis’ not so much as a synonym for, or declaration of independence from, Marxism, but rather as a tendency within Marx’s legacy that Gramsci hoped to make hegemonic within the working-class movement. Two friendly amendments emerge with respect to this persuasive account. First, the emphasis on Gramsci’s philosophy leads the author to an over-simplified account of the role of evolutionary theory within Gramsci’s own perspective and privileges ‘philosophy’ over other fields to which Gramsci’s vision was even more decisive. Is the ‘Gramscian moment’ really best analysed by looking at those intellectuals commonly deemed philosophers? And second, does not this moment also entail a more fundamental rethinking of the orthodox concepts and methods of revolutionary-left historiography than the author sometimes implies?

McKay, Ian. “‘Gramsci 4.0’ and the Reconnaissance of Neoliberal Order.” Capital & Class 38.2 (2014): 455–462.

Extended book review: Gramsci’s Political Thought, by Carlos Nelson Coutinho and Gramsci: Du libéralisme au ‘communisme critique’ by Domenico Losurdo

McSweeney, John. “The Absence of Class: Critical Development, NGOs and the Misuse of Gramsci’s Concept of Counter-Hegemony.” Progress in Development Studies 14.3 (2014): 275–285. Link.

This article argues that a number of concepts originally developed by Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) have been misapplied by critical development theorists in their engagement with NGOs. This applies particularly to 'hegemony' and 'counter-hegemony' because they have been detached from the ontological gravity provided by class. However, Gramsci's terms, to be analytically comprehendible, should be defined in relation to the agency of class. Yet the treatment of class as an emancipatory agent has been neglected by development studies. This hinders a proper recognition of the real worth of Gramsci's project of counter-hegemony, particularly in light of the crisis afflicting the present conjuncture.

Mkrtchyan, Narek. “Gramsci in Armenia: State-Church Relations in the Post-Soviet Armenia.” Transformation: An International Journal of Holistic Mission Studies (2014).

The article discusses the processes of representation of Armenian Apostolic Church in various spheres of society. The establishment of mutual relationships with the Apostolic Church became strategically important for the state. The article deals with the processes of the establishment of democratic institutions and influential role of Apostolic Church. From this point of view, the state’s official support to the Armenian Apostolic Church can question the principles of religious freedom. The historical role of the Armenian Apostolic Church in maintenance of Armenian identity enables Armenian Church to legitimize its privileges and dominant position in the society. The official cooperation between the Armenian state and the Apostolic Church are towards the maintenance or establishment of state hegemony in the society. The theory of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci will be used to illuminate abovementioned characteristics of church-state relationships in Armenia.

Modonesi, Massimo. Subalternity, Antagonism, Autonomy: Constructing the Political Subject. Forward by John Holloway. Reading Gramsci Series. London: Pluto Press, 2014. ISBN 9780745334059. Link.

In this bold and innovative book Massimo Modonesi weaves together theory and political practice by relating the concepts of subalternity, antagonism and autonomy to contemporary movements in Latin America against neo-liberalism. In a sophisticated account Modonesi reconstructs the debates between Marxist authors and schools of thought in order to sketch out informed strategies of resistance. He reviews the works of Gramsci, Negri, Castoriadis and Lefort, and engages with the arguments made by E. P. Thompson, Spivak, Laclau and Mouffe. Subalternity, Antagonism, Autonomy firmly roots key theoretical arguments from a range of critical thinkers within specific political movements in order to recover these concepts as analytical instruments which can help to guide contemporary struggles in Latin America and beyond.

Morera, Esteve. Gramsci, Materialism, and Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2014. ISBN: 9781138013841.

Western critical theory, Marxism included, has largely been based on a view of historical materialism that Gramsci, among others, developed in his prison notebooks. For many, Gramsci's philosophical reflections in prison offered a new foundation for the philosophy of the future. His reflections on the philosophy of praxis and absolute historicism find echoes in much of what today is considered to be a materialist philosophy. That form of materialism was unable to provide a sound foundation for a progressive social project, the possibility of a meaningful and creative ethical life, and the forms of activity or praxis that would be conducive to creating good society. In this book, Esteve Morera connects Marxist philosophy to the broader philosophical discussion of materialism in metaphysics, the philosophy science, philosophy of mind, and naturalised ethics. Each chapter deals with a particular aspect related to materialism and its consequences, the sorts of things that, if materialism is true, need to be confronted. Morera critiques, and rejects Gramsci's conception of matter and materialism and concludes that that philosophical materialism is compatible with freedom, and as a consequence, offers a good foundation for ethical life. Gramsci, Materialism, and Philosophy is an original contribution to the philosophically vital debates around the meaning, limitations, implications, and possibilities of philosophical materialism as it is a contribution to the critical literature on Gramsci.

Nielsen, Kenneth Bo, and Alf Gunvald Nilsen. “Law Struggles and Hegemonic Processes in Neoliberal India: Gramscian Reflections on Land Acquisition Legislation.” Globalizations (2014): 1–14. preprint

This article explores how, in the context of an unfolding process of neoliberalisation in India, new terrains of resistance are crystallising for subaltern groups seeking to contest the marginalising consequences of this process. We focus particularly on the emergence of India's 'new rights agenda' through a study of the making of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2013. Conceiving of the emergence of the 'new rights agenda' as a hegemonic process, we decipher how law-making is a complex and contradictory practice seeking to negotiate a compromise equilibrium between, on the one hand, subaltern groups vulnerable to marginalisation and capable of mobilisation; and, on the other, dominant groups whose economic interests are linked to the exploitation of the spaces of accumulation recently pried open by market-oriented reforms. The negotiation of this equilibrium, we suggest, is ultimately intended to facilitate India's process of neoliberalisation.

Olsaretti, Alessandro. “Croce, Philosophy and Intellectuals: Three Aspects of Gramsci’s Theory of Hegemony.” Critical Sociology (2014).

There has been a recent revival of interest in Gramsci’s theory of hegemony. Within this revival, some scholars have focused upon the question of the sources of Gramsci’s theory, particularly with reference to linguistic sources; others have focused upon applications of Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, particularly in conjunction with the question of the subaltern. This article seeks to contribute to this revival by nuancing three aspects of Gramsci’s theory of hegemony. Firstly, Croce’s presumed influence over the latter is rejected in favor of a commonality of concerns with a whole generation of Italian intellectuals, not just Croce. Secondly, it is emphasized that philosophy played an important role in Gramsci’s theory of hegemony in that it provided the all-important critiques of common sense and false consciousness. Lastly, it is argued that the intellectuals’ need for a new hegemony was not just organic but included traditional intellectuals in complex new formations.

Rehmann, Jan. “Philosophy of Praxis, Ideology-Critique, and the Relevance of a ‘Luxemburg-Gramsci Line.’” Historical Materialism 22.2 (2014): 99–116.

After highlighting the philological and theoretical fortes of Peter Thomas’s The Gramscian Moment, the intervention questions his assumption of Gramsci’s allegedly ‘neutral’ concept of ideology. This interpretation is one-sided in that it leaves out the ideology-critique adopted via Labriola and practised throughout Gramsci’s work. Gramsci’s perspective of rendering people’s common sense more coherent opens up a more democratic perspective than Kautsky’s and Lenin’s notion that socialist class-consciousness is to be brought ‘from without’. The intervention argues that the reconstruction of a ‘Luxemburg-Gramsci line’ is of importance for today’s debates and struggles.

Rosengarten, Frank. The Revolutionary Marxism of Antonio Gramsci. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2014. ISBN: 9789004265745.

In The Revolutionary Marxism of Antonio Gramsci, Frank Rosengarten explores Gramsci's writings in areas as diverse as Marxist theory, the responsibilities of political leadership, and the theory and practice of literary criticism. He also discusses Gramsci's influence on the post-colonial world. Through close readings of texts ranging from Gramsci's socialist journalism in the Turin years to his prison letters and Notebooks, Rosengarten captures the full vitality of the Sardinian communist's thought and outlook on life.

Rosengarten, Frank. Through Partisan Eyes. My Friendships, Literary Education, and Political Encounters in Italy. Firenze: Firenze University Press, 2014. ISBN: 9788866555674.

Through Partisan Eyes explains how and why the eminent scholar Frank Rosengarten specialized in Italian literature and history. It tells why he saw Antonio Gramsci, Ada Gobetti, and Norberto Bobbio as representative figures of a democratic and socially progressive Italy; it discusses the reasons why he developed an early interest in the novels of Ignazio Silone and Vasco Pratolini; and speaks of his work as co-founder of the journal Socialism and Democracy.

All those interested in the history, and relevance to today's world, of the experiences and ideas of Italian Anti-Fascists from 1919 to 1950 will profit from this volume. It is of particular interest, and is directed to, people in the United States and in Italy who wish to deepen their understanding of the interrelations between socialism and democracy. The fields of interest of potential readers includes Italian history and culture, the Italian and French resistance movements, political theory, 20th-century history, the ideologies of Fascism and Communism, literary history, literary criticism, comparative cultures.

Through Partisan Eyes offers insights into the political issues and controversies that marked most of the 20th century and the first decade of the new millennium. It provides an analysis of the leading ideas and trends of thought of Italian anti-Fascist writers from Rosengarten’s vantage. But it also looks at these ideas critically and independently. It examines some of the methodological questions that arise in the course of any extensive piece of research but it does so with specific regard to the differences between the political cultures of Italy and the United States that must be taken into account by anyone dealing with the political cultures of both countries.

This book comes to grips with some of the great conflicts of our time, from the early 1950s, when Senator Joe McCarthy launched his anti-communist crusade, through the Viet Nam War and the peace movement, to the breakup of the Soviet Union and its impact on the international socialist movement, and finally to our own moment in time, marked by deep uncertainties and discouraging trends in Europe, Russia, and the United States. Italian developments are seen against the background of these events.

Through Partisan Eyes also includes a description of Rosengarten’s relationship with Gramsci specialist Louis Marks, and a chapter dedicated to Rosengarten’s work on Gramsci’s writings, particularly the Prison Letters, in the 1980s.

Sotiris, Panagiotis. “Neither an Instrument nor a Fortress.” Historical Materialism 22.2 (2014): 135–157.

Peter Thomas has written an important book that brings forward the full importance of Gramsci’s strategic concepts and the pertinence they have for current theoretical and political debates. Based upon this interpretation of Gramsci, this text attempts a critical reading of the contradictory stance of the Althusserian School towards his work. Using Althusser’s own ambivalence towards Gramsci as a starting-point, the main aim of this article is to reconstruct Poulantzas’s direct and indirect dialogue with Gramsci. Despite Poulantzas’s reservations and criticisms regarding aspects of Gramsci’s work, his theoretical endeavour not only is indebted to Gramsci, but also represents, despite its shortcomings and limits, one of the more original and profound theoretical attempts to come to terms with the theoretical challenges posed by Gramsci’s elaboration on hegemony, hegemonic apparatuses and the ‘integral state’.

Thomas, Martin. “Gramsci without the Prince.” Historical Materialism 22.2 (2014): 158–173.

Peter Thomas, in The Gramscian Moment, explains well how Gramsci strove to re-educate the communist movement in an expansive spirit, around the united front. He makes clear that the united-front approach advocated by Gramsci, based on working-class mobilisation and accompanied by clear communist criticism, was distinct from the policy of bourgeois alliances to be advocated by the Stalinist parties after 1935 under the name ‘popular front’. He demystifies the concept in Gramsci of working-class ‘hegemony’, from which so many speculations are spun, showing that it meant nothing other than working-class political leadership, achieved through sound use of united-front tactics. Yet Thomas makes the formula of ‘united front’ do too much, or bundles into it more than it can rationally contain. Meanwhile, the question of the revolutionary working-class political party is almost entirely absent in Thomas’s discussion.

Versieren, Jelle, and Brecht De Smet. “Urban Culture as Passive Revolution: A Gramscian Sketch of the Uneven and Combined Transitional Development of Rural and Urban Modern Culture in Europe and Egypt.” Marxism and Urban Culture. Ed. Benjamin Fraser. Lexington Books, 2014.

Ytterstad, Andreas. “Good Sense on Global Warming.” International Socialism 144 (2014). Link.

Ytterstad, Andreas. “Framing Global Warming: Is That Really the Question? A Realist, Gramscian Critique of the Framing Paradigm in Media and Communication Research.” Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture (2014 preprint)

Framing is a widely used concept in research on communication and climate change. From a Gramscian realist position, this article criticizes underlying assumptions in the framing paradigm itself. The article examines how frames are defined, understood, and theorized in key texts on Anglo-American framing and uses examples from the scholarly literature on climate change communication and the Norwegian media to argue that global warming should not be posed primarily as a question of framing. It argues that the framing paradigm suffers from three main problems: (1) anthropocentrism; (2) a strategic approach to truth; and (3) an underestimation of the importance of latent meaning. Instead of communicative attempts by framing scholars to resonate with a plurality of already manifest, already culturally resonant and already familiar frames in public discourse, the essay suggests that global warming is an ethical challenge which communication scholars can best help solve with a combination of natural realism and political advocacy.

French

Thomas, Peter D. “L'hypothèse communiste et la question de l'organisation,” Période, 2014. Link.

German

Antonio Gramsci: Briefe III. Briefwechsel mit Tatjana Schucht1931-1953, hgg.v. Ursula Apitzsch, Peter Kammerer und Aldo Natoli, Argument-Verlag und Cooperative-Verlag Hamburg-Frankfurt am Main 2014 pp. 504.

Italian

See Gramsci Project > Bibliografia. News of Italian publications should be sent to Michele Filippini.

Japanese

La Città Futura, Tokyo Gramsci Society Bulletin No. 62 (December 2014)

  1. Additional Notes Relating to the Risorgimento (Part 3), Translated by the Prison Notebooks Research Group.
  2. Significance of 'Mistakes' Caused by the Mutual Translations of Historical Cultures of Different Nationa, by Akira Itoh.
  3. The 'Active Concept' of the Intellectual in Gramsci, by Tomihisa Suzuki.
  4. Review of Peter Mayo, Gramsci, Freire and Adult Education: Possibilities for Transformative Action, by Hiroshi Matsuda.

La Città Futura, Tokyo Gramsci Society Bulletin No. 61 (August 2014)

  1. Additional Notes Relating to the Risorgimento (Part 2), Translated by the Prison Notebooks Research Group.
  2. Phase of the Issues of Translatability and War of Position in Gramsci, by Hiroshi Matsdua.
  3. My Responses to the Questions of Interrogations Put Forward by Mr. Matsuda, by Tomihisa Suzuki.
  4. Rereading the Principio Educativo in Gramsci - Americanismo e Conformismo of M. Manacorda, by Nobuaki Kurosawa.

La Città Futura, Tokyo Gramsci Society Bulletin No. 60 (April 2014)

  1. Additional Notes Relating to the Risorgimento (Part 1), Translated by the Prison Notebooks Research Group.
  2. Bourgeois History and Historical Materialism, by D.S. Mirsky (Labour Monthly July 1931).
  3. The Philosophical Discussion in the CPSU in 1930-31, by D.S. Mirsky (Labour Monthly October 1931).
  4. The Italian Historicism between Croce and Gramsci, by Eugenio Garin

La Città Futura, Tokyo Gramsci Society Bulletin No. 59 (January 2014)

  1. Arguments and development of Gramsci vis-a-vis Croce's philosophical thought, by Hiroshi Matsuda.
  2. Epoch-making significance and limits of Lenin's philosophical Notebook, by Kevin Anderson
  3. On my visits in Changchun, a beautiful northwest-west city in China, Nobuaki Kurosawa

Portuguese

Gomes, Jarbas Mauricio. Religião, educação e hegemonia nos Quaderni del Carcere de Antonio Grasmci. Maringá: Eduem, 2014. 237p.

Table of contents:
1. Elementos para a leitura dos Quaderni del Carcere
1.1 Aproximação dos educadores brasileiros com o pensamento de Antonio Grasmci
1.2 Caracterização dos Quaderni del Carcere
1.3 Os plano de estudo e o início da redação dos Quaderni del Carcere
1.4 As fases de redação e a classificação dos Quaderni del Carcere
1.5 A publicação dos Quaderni del Carcere na Itália e no Brasil
1.6 Pressupostos para leitura dos Quaderni del Carcere

2. Fundamentos do pensamento educacional de Antonio Gramsci
2.1 A hegemonia como capacidade diretiva
2.2 Educação e cultura: a formação do bloco histórico como momento educativo
2.3 O papel educativo dos intelectuais na consolidação do bloco histórico
2.4 A inserção dos intelectuais na sociedade: intelectuais orgânicos e intelectuais tradicionais

3. Religião, cultura e educação no pensamento de Gramsci
3.1 A crítica gramsciana à religião
3.2 A Ação Católica: a organização política da religião

Mussi, Daniela X. H. Política e Literatura: Antonio Gramsci e a crítica italiana. São Paulo: Alameda, 2014. ISBN 978-85-7939-238-2.

The book discusses the relationship between politics and literature in the prison writings of Antonio Gramsci, especially the Prison Notebooks 21 and 23. For this, departs from the restoration method proposed by the critical edition of the Prison Notebooks edited by Valentino Gerratana (1975). Then foucuses in two categories, literary criticism and national-popular literature. The general hypothesis, or the starting point, of the book is that the relationship between literature and politics was part of a broader effort by Gramsci to survive the conditions of life in prison and to seek the development of the philosophy of praxis. With regard to literary criticism, it tries to establish a possible translation of the prison notes on the construction of the organic and modern intellectual, represented at the "return to De Sanctis", as a model of literary critic opposed to the figure of Benedetto Croce. Here, the contradiction between the literary and the political activities is taken as a starting point for understanding the birth of the modern intellectual as "political + expert". The book discusses also the national-popular moment in Gramsci, as a central point for the study of modern lifestyle and representative update on politics and literature in the historical experience of the formation of national states. The study of national-popular Italian literature is considered, in turn, in its fragility, the fragility of the Italian unification.

Spanish

Almeida, Manuel S. 2014. Dirigentes y dirigidos: Para leer los Cuadernos de la cárcel de Antonio Gramsci. Segunda edición, revisada. San Juan: Ediciones Callejón y Universidad del Este.

El presente trabajo intenta proveer una clave interpretativa con la cual abordar el complejo cuerpo de la obra escrita en cárcel por el marxista italiano Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) conocido como los Cuadernos de la cárcel, un inmenso cuerpo teórico-político sumamente fragmentario en la superficie. La elaboración de esta clave interpretativa es a la misma vez necesariamente un recorrido por la rica teoría política de Gramsci. Es decir, los elementos constitutivos de importancia en su teoría política –los leitmotivs de su trabajo maduro– son proyectados de vuelta sobre la materialidad de la escritura carcelaria para proponer un tema común subyacente a lo que es en la superficie una colección cruda de notas y reflexiones. Nunca olvidamos que, como planteara numerosas veces Gramsci en sus Cuadernos, estos textos eran material provisional para ser desarrollado con los recursos apropiados. Por esto, un proyecto humilde como el que se pretende en el presente trabajo es a la vez un necesario diálogo con Gramsci, que intenta trascender lo incompleto, lo inacabado, pero dentro de un marco de sensatez interpretativa.

Pala, Giaime, Firenze, Antonino and Garcia, Jordi Mir (Eds.). Gramsci y la Sociedad Intercultural. Montesinos Ensayos, 2014.

The articles in the volume are the result of an international conference which took place in 2009 at the University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, organised by Francisco Fernandez Buey (1943-2012) and Giorgio Baratta.

Thai

Buddharaksa, Watcharabon. A Survey of Gramsci’s Political Thought. Bangkok: Sommadhi, 2014. ISBN: 9786167196374. [cover]

This book was written in Thai language and aims to systematically introduce Antonio Gramsci’s political thought to Thai readers. Gramscian theories had been delivered to Thai academia for the first time in the 1980s by some radical scholars. Contrary to the scatter pieces of work on Gramsci by many Thai Marxist scholars, this book establishes itself, for the first time, as a comprehensive point of departure for those who interested in Gramsci, Gramscian political theories (both pre-prison and prison eras), and Neo-Gramscianism in International Political Economy. The book also suggests Thai readers how to think in a Gramscian ways and advocates them how to learn Gramsci’s thought by their own scrutiny.   

Turkish

Feyzullah Yilmaz has compiled a list of Turkish Gramsci publications at Neo-Gramsian Portal.

 



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