Gramsci Bibliography: 2023

English

Bernstein, Aaron. From Feuerbach’s Thesis to the Philosophy of Praxis: Marx, Gramsci, philosophy and politics. Lawchakra, 2023 (ISBN 978-1-80524-043-3).

Abstract: The Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, composed in a Fascist prison cell in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, have now come to enjoy an immense popularity and widespread diffusion on an international scale. As Joseph Buttigieg writes, “Few twentieth century works have elicited as much widespread interest or have had as great an impact on so many diverse field of study as the Quaderni del carcere”.1 In a similar vein, Fabio Frosini has spoken of a ‘worldwide Gramscian web’, in which the study of Gramsci’s thought is no longer simply an Italian or European phenomenon, but has become truly global.2 And yet, as others have noted,3 this widespread diffusion and popularity has not necessarily been accompanied by close, philologically precise analyses of the Notebooks. This is particularly the case in the English-speaking world due to the absence of a full English translation of Valentino Gerratana’s 1975 critical edition of Gramsci’s Notebooks, rightly described by Buttigieg as “the single most important event in the publication history of Gramsci’s works”,4 as it gave readers access, for the first time, to the Notebooks in the original form in which they were written.5 Consequently, despite the considerable portion of Gramsci’s writings translated into English, these have largely remained confined to thematic anthologies and selections re-organized by the editors and which therefore, do not reflect Gramsci’s original manuscripts, with the exception of Buttigieg’s far from complete project of producing a critical edition of the Notebooks in English.

Bures, Eliah. “The Intellectual as Culture Warrior: Metapolitics and the European New Right.” Fascism 12.1 (2023): 1–26. doi:10.1163/22116257-bja10055

Abstract: Abstract A major development on the European far right since 1945 is the turn to a ‘metapolitics’ supposedly influenced by the Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci. Metapolitics, in this sense, deemphasizes electoral politics in favor of intellectual activism and the pursuit of ‘cultural hegemony’ as a prelude to seizing political power. This article examines the metapolitics of the European New Right (ENR) from a new theoretical and historical perspective. It argues that the literature of the US ‘culture wars’ better explains the ENR’s practice than any reception of Gramsci. And it presents ENR metapolitics not as the strategic reformulation of interwar fascism but as part of a broad transatlantic backlash against the leftist successes of the 1960s. This approach better accounts for ENR intellectuals’ function as ‘culture warriors’ specializing in demonization and mastery of the tools of public discourse.

Camp, Jordan T., and Christina Heatherton. “Riots in the Master’s Hall: Racism, Nationalism, and the Crisis of U.S. Hegemony.” In Racism, Violence and Harm: Ideology, Media and Resistance. Ed. Monish Bhatia, Scott Poynting, and Waqas Tufail, 225–243. Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culture. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2023. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-37879-9_11 (ISBN 978-3-031-37879-9).

Abstract: This chapter analyses the present-day political struggle over the memory of Radical Reconstruction, a radical experiment in equality at the end of the U.S. Civil War. It argues that the overthrow of Reconstruction by white supremacist forces in the nineteenth century has been and continues to be the playbook of resurgent white nationalism in the twenty-first, as was made evident in the January 6, 2021 siege on the U.S. capitol. It contends that renewed neo-fascist and vigilante violence at present can be analyzed through ongoing struggles over Reconstruction’s memory. To sustain this argument, the essay draws on W.E.B. Du Bois’s writings on Reconstruction, Antonio Gramsci’s writings about fascism, and Cedric J. Robinson’s writing on racial regimes. It considers the racist and revanchist “common sense” currently underpinning the global resurgence of the far right amidst a crisis of U.S. hegemony. In turn, it proposes that this common sense can be confronted in the struggle over Reconstruction’s vision and memory.

Carley, Robert F. The Cultural Production of Social Movements. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023 (ISBN 978-3-031-33312-5).

Abstract: The Cultural Production of Social Movements offers a theory of cultural practices, protest tactics, strategic planning and deliberation, and movement organizational structures: “ideological contention.” It is a theory of ideology “from below.” The Cultural Production of Social Movements shows how conflicts―both with external political forces and disagreements, dissensus, and the decision-making process internal to social movements―produce knowledge and meanings that, in turn, impact upon and change the practices that contribute to how social movements are structured and organized. The Cultural Production of Social Movements theorizes the relationship between consciously held superordinate ideas, the changing composition of progressive and oppositional social struggles, and the social worlds they hope to inhabit. Analyzing the Black Panther Party, specifically Kathleen Cleaver’s break with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee and her contributions to the Party, Operaismo (or Workerism) in Italy and the relationship between shifting organizational strategies, inventive tactics, and novel and expansive ways to theorize class struggles, and the communal composition of “Worker-Recovered Enterprise Movements” in contemporary Argentina, this book shows how movement ideologies change and how meanings structure organizations, mobilizations, and futures. In The Cultural Production of Social Movements ideology is neither a static set of principles, nor is an unconscious orientation towards power and governance. Rather, it is the contentious, democratizing, and deliberative processes ― which become realized as tactics in protests, struggles, defeats, and victories ― that makes the relationship between movements, and what they “mean” conscious to its participants.

Congiu, Francesca, and Francesco Pontarelli. “Notebooks. The Journal for Studies on Power.” International Gramsci Journal 5.1 (2023). doi:10.14276/igj.v5i1.4179

Abstract: This is the abstract of the contribution in English on the new online and printed Cagliari-based review “Notebooks: Journal for Studies on Power.”

Davies, Jonathan S. “Gramscian considerations on the contentious politics of austere neoliberalism: critical junctures after the global economic crisis.” Social Movement Studies 0.0 (2023): 1–18. doi:10.1080/14742837.2023.2268016

Abstract: In dialogue with Della Porta’s work on protests as critical junctures and drawing on the comparative analysis of four case studies in Europe (Barcelona and Dublin) and North America (Baltimore and Montréal), the paper develops a neo-Gramscian perspective on the impact and legacies of urban resistance to austere neoliberalism after the Global Economic Crisis (GEC) of 2008–9. Framed by the postulated ‘interregnum’ in the hegemony of neoliberalism, it argues that the conjunctural politics of the period are defined by a continuing conflict between passive revolutionary subsumption and generative anti-systemic politics, which plays out in acute form in the international urban arena. The paper accordingly contributes to the journal’s work on the relationship between protests and social structures, situating urban movements in multi-scalar socio-economic, political and cultural contexts and developing reflections on the conjunctural significance of anti-systemic struggles.

Denning, Michael. “Michael Denning on Antonio Gramsci and Hegemony,” 2023. https://jacobin.com/2023/01/michael-denning-antonio-gramsci-prison-notebooks-theory-hegemony-class-organizing (March 10, 2023)

Abstract: The great labor historian Michael Denning reflects on what Antonio Gramsci’s work has to tell us today.

Dennis, Subin. “Gramsci’s Thought, written by E.M.S. Namboodiripad and P. Govinda Pillai.” Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power 2.2 (2023): 208–214. doi:10.1163/26667185-bja10037

Abstract: Review of E.M.S. Namboodiripad and P. Govinda Pillai, Gramsci’s Thought. New Delhi: LeftWord Books, 2021. isbn 978-81-940778-6-2 (paperback). 119 pp.

Durante, Lea. “Gramsci Dictionary - Dizionario gramsciano: Tanja.” International Gramsci Journal 5.2 (2023): 131–134. doi:10.14276/igj.v5i2.4889

Abstract: This is an English translation of the entry in the Dizionario gramsciano (Roma, Carocci 2009) on “Tania” (here “Tanja” or in full “Tat’jana”) Schucht, Gramsci’s wife’s sister. Tanja played a well-known self-denying role for Gramsci; she was a complex ‘you’ for him, conveying moral, material and emotional aid, and providing an essential link with the outside world. This latter included his wife Julija (Giulia), living in Moscow, with many letters to Tanja also meant to be read by Julija. Further to this, there is a more latent side to the relationship between the two of them. Gramsci was often critical of her, and to her letters of solicitude to his demands and her self-denial, he often replied in a pressing fashion, adopting a patronizing and sometimes authoritarian tone and not undertaking personal initiative. When she undertook some well-meaning action, somewhat typical, in a letter of his dating to 1932, is his charge of ‘irresponsible dilettantism’ on her part. At the same time his bonds of affection with her were very close, though subject to the aspect of being functional to his requirements. Judged from the outside it was a relationship not of equals but of ‘man-intellectual’ against ‘woman-child’.

Fresu, Gianni. Antonio Gramsci: An Intellectual Biography. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-15610-6 (ISBN 978-3-031-15609-0).

Abstract: This intellectual biography provides an organic framework for understanding Antonio Gramsci’s process of intellectual development, paying close attention to the historical and intellectual contexts out of which his views emerged. The Gramsci in Notebooks cannot fully account for the young director of L’Ordine Nuovo, or for the communist leader. Gramsci’s development did not occur under conditions of intellectual inflexibility, of absence of evolution. However, there is a strong thread connecting the “political Gramsci” with Gramsci as a “cultivated man.” The Sardinian intellectual’s life is marked by the drama of World War I, the first mass conflict in which the great scientific discoveries of the previous decades were applied on a large scale and in which millions of peasants and workers were slaughtered. In all of his theoretical formulations, this dual relation, which epitomizes the instrumental use of “simpletons” by ruling classes, goes beyond the military context of the trenches and becomes full-fledged in the fundamental relations of modern capitalist society. In contrast with this notion of social hierarchy, which is deemed natural and unchangeable, Gramsci constantly affirmed the need to overcome the historically determined rupture between intellectual and manual functions, due to which the existence of a priesthood or of a separate caste of specialists in politics and in knowledge is made necessary. It is not the specific professional activity (whether material or immaterial) that determines the essence of human nature: to Gramsci, “all men are philosophers.” In this passage from Notebooks, we find the condensed form of his idea of “human emancipation,” which is the historical need for an “intellectual and moral reform”: the subversion of traditional relations between rulers and ruled and the end of exploitation of man by man.

Frosini, Fabio. “Gramsci Dictionary - Dizionario gramsciano: Piero Sraffa.” International Gramsci Journal 5.2 (2023): 135–136. doi:10.14276/igj.v5i2.4890

Abstract: Piero Sraffa, a few years younger than Gramsci, first met him in Turin in 1919. He followed closely the activity of the Ordine Nuovo group and its journal, having a letter of his published anonymously in it, to Gramsci’s critical discussion in reply . The two then met again in Rome when , as parliamentary deputy having immunity, Gramsci had returned to Italy from Moscow and Vienna. Sraffa became a decisive figure for Gramsci after the latter’s arrest, opening an unlimited account for him at a Milanese bookshop and, through Tanja Schucht, became Gramsci’s channel for communication with the Italian Communist Party’s Foreign Centre in France. At a distance and indirectly, then, the two men acted as stimuli for each other, mainly for Gramsci but the reciprocity in the relationship should not be overlooked. In 1932, for example, there were requests for Gramsci to further his work on the intellectuals in Italian history, and on the recent publications of the philosopher-historian-literary figure, Benedetto Croce. Gramsci in his turn asked Sraffa for information, for example, on Machiavelli and economic science, and on David Ricardo and philosophy and the two exchanged opinions, once more through Tanja, on the position of Italian Jews under fascism. Sraffa also chanelled administrative efforts to have a revision of Gramsci’s trial and some attempts at gaining his freedom.

Gervasio, Gennaro, and Andrea Teti. “Gramsci’s ‘Southern Question’ and Egypt’s authoritarian retrenchment: subalternity and the disruption of activist agency.” Review of African Political Economy 50.175 (2023): 26–48. doi:10.1080/03056244.2023.2174691

Abstract: Explanations of the authoritarian retrenchment after Egypt’s 2011 Revolution invoke either the regime’s repressive advantage over ‘leaderless’ mobilisation and civic activists, or insufficient preparations and radicalism on the part of opposition groups. Both explanations are unsatisfactory. First, because despite being ‘reformist’, opposition groups’ demands were perceived as radical challenges to regimes before, during and after the uprisings. Second, because appeals to regimes’ coercive capacity contradict explanations of opponents’ rise to prominence before the uprisings: if activists eroded Egypt’s authoritarian regime before 2011, what made them unable to continue doing so afterwards? Conversely, if activists’ agency was effective before 2011 despite gross imbalances in coercive capacity, then those imbalances alone cannot explain activists’ post-revolutionary decline. In short, if activists’ agency cannot be denied before Egypt’s ‘eighteen days’, it must be accounted for in their aftermath. To do this, the authors draw on Gramsci’s original texts and Italian-language scholarship to develop his neglected notion of disgregazione.

Gómez, Sebastián. “Antonio Gramsci between (International / National) Social Struggles and Intellectual Contexts.” International Gramsci Journal 5.1 (2023). doi:10.14276/igj.v5i1.4190

Abstract: This is the Abstract of the English-language review by Sebastián Gómez of the book by Gianni Fresu, Antonio Gramsci. A Political Biography published by Palgrave Macmillan (Springer Group), 2022.

Gómez, Sebastián. “Caesarism and Bonapartism in Gramsci. Hegemony and the Crisis of Modernity, written by F. Antonini.” Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power 2.2 (2023): 201–207. doi:10.1163/26667185-bja10036

Abstract: Review of F. Antonini, Caesarism and Bonapartism in Gramsci. Hegemony and the Crisis of Modernity. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2020. isbn: 978-90-04-32167-0 (hardback). 232 pp.

Grimaldi, Giorgio. “The Origin of Power: A Study on Carl Schmitt.” Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power 3.1 (2023): 38–62. doi:10.1163/26667185-bja10044

Abstract: Abstract In a 1954 work titled Dialogue on Power and Access to the Powerful, Carl Schmitt reflects on power and its ‘essence’. On the one hand, a strategy is in place to demonstrate Schmitt’s own non-involvement with the concrete exertion of power in the Third Reich, a non-involvement about which it is legitimate to have more than one doubt. What interests us in this article, however, is another side of the Dialogue: Schmitt’s reflection on power as such. Extremely careful about the mechanisms of power that men exert among themselves, Schmitt’s analysis has a background – to be deciphered – that refers to a non-immanent original dimension of power. To trace this dimension, whose references are scattered throughout the text, (a) we shall proceed to follow the course of the Dialogue on Power, pinpointing the tragic character established here with regard to human power, and (b) we will try to establish what for Schmitt is the origin, in its truth, of power. Lastly, (c) we will attempt to indicate a possible line of research in view of a horizon unacknowledged by Schmitt, that of a power that can have the possibility and the potency to destitute itself as domination, that is, as a series of relations of subordination that repeat and follow those between master (dominus) and servant.

Haug, Frigga. “Luxemburg-Gramsci Line.” In Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism. Ed. Wolfgang F. Haug et al., 546–574. Brill, 2023. doi:10.1163/9789004679023_027 (ISBN 978-90-04-67902-3).

Haug, Wolfgang Fritz. “Hegemony.” In Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism. Ed. Wolfgang F. Haug et al., 340–363. Brill, 2023. doi:10.1163/9789004679023_016 (ISBN 978-90-04-67902-3).

Lin, Yue Zhou. “Gramsci, the Relativity of the Integral State-Society, and the COVID-19 Interregnum.” Critical Sociology 49.3 (2023): 415–435. doi:10.1177/08969205221086490

Abstract: Gramscian scholars have engaged with Gramsci’s leitmotif (‘rhythm of thought’) and the stato integrale (integral state), a concept he introduced in Autumn 1930. This represents remarkable progress in the Marxist community. But what requires further attention is the interconnection between an integral state and a totalitarian one, two of the three expressions of state-society formations that Perry Anderson identified as Gramsci’s antinomies. This article argues that the integral state is fragile but hegemonic if it can be sustained. Otherwise, it can degenerate into a totalitarian state. The article refigures the ‘integral state’ as the ‘integral state-society’. It exists relatively, depending on whether the ‘integral momentum’ or the ‘totalitarian tendency’ prevails in a dynamic interaction between radical Left, Far Right, and those currents in between. Identifying this relativity helps to formulate a deeper understanding of Gramsci’s thought and show how his legacy supports a class struggle perspective on the COVID-19 interregnum.

Maccaferri, Marzia. “Reclaiming Gramsci’s ‘historicity’: A critical analysis of the British appropriation in light of the ‘crisis of democracy.’” Constellations 30.4 (2023): 445–461. doi:10.1111/1467-8675.12614.

Mayo, Peter. “Hegemony, Education and Flight. Gramscian Overtures.” Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies 20.3 (2023). doi:http://www.jceps.com/archives/13939

Abstract: The paper is written from the perspective of someone ensconced in a country which once saw flights of thousands of people, providing labour power, to different corners of the world, notably North Africa in the distant past and Britain and British colonies of settlement in historically more recent times: Australia, Canada and the United States, less so New Zealand. The country subsequently shifted from being an exporter of labour power to becoming an importer of such power as flight took on a different trajectory with the country developing a relatively strong postcolonial economy and being located on the Central Mediterranean migration route. The economy, which experienced a boom, required foreign workers in jobs at all ends. Employers have been taking advantage of Malta’s position in the midst of a migration route. What are the implications of this flight scenario for education?  ISSN 1740-2743.

McGlazer, Ramsey. “Gramsci’s Grave.” In Reaction Formations: The Subject of Ethnonationalism. Ed. Joshua Branciforte and Ramsey McGlazer, 324–348. Fordham University Press, 2023. doi:10.1515/9781531503161-013 (ISBN 978-1-5315-0316-1).

Abstract: In Brazil, Antonio Gramsci’s detractors on the political right still see him as an undead red menace. This chapter seeks to account for the persistence of this image and asks how and why right-wing discourses in Brazil privilege Gramsci’s views on the school in particular. Whereas in Gramsci’s educational theory, the school is figured as a democratic training camp, in the discourse of the Brazilian far right it becomes a veritable battlefield.

McKay, Ian. “The Organic Crisis of a Colonised State: Bulgaria in the Eye of the Pandemic, 2020–2022.” Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power 3.1 (2023): 3–37. doi:10.1163/26667185-bja10043

Abstract: Abstract Bulgaria’s particularly tragic experience with covid-19, with one of the largest death tolls per 100,000 in Europe, can be analysed in terms of purely natural factors (more lethal variants), the foibles and missteps of leaders, and unpredictable vaccine supplies. From a Gramscian critical materialist perspective, the pattern is better understood in terms of four interlocking structures: Bulgaria’s subaltern status as a downtrodden colony of Europe, its mode of insertion into globalised capitalism, the Orthodox Church’s strenuous effort to maintain its hegemonic position within Bulgarian nationalism, and the crisis of hegemony that engulfed a government already reliant on corruption more than persuasion, with an inchoate and ideologically variegated ‘Great National Revolt’ against it coinciding with the pandemic. The upshot of these structures was a rate of vaccination that was unusually low by European standards, leaving many Bulgarians, especially the elderly, lethally exposed to the disease and harmed by a widely distrusted corrupt neoliberal state.

Naldi, Nerio. “In the Cell with Gramsci: A Reconsideration of Gustavo Trombetti’s Testimonies.” Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power 3.2 (2023): 176–197. doi:10.1163/26667185-bja10049

Abstract: Abstract This article considers some episodes in Gramsci’s biography on which new information has been collected in the last decade. In illustrating those episodes, we will also refer to hitherto unknown manuscripts by Gustavo Trombetti, who shared a cell with Gramsci for nine months, and reassess the whole of his testimonies. Trombetti’s testimonies remain extremely important even though we now understand that in some cases they contain minor factual errors.

Naldi, Nerio. “Moving, cataloguing and preserving Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks.” International Gramsci Journal 5.2 (2023): 65–130. doi:10.14276/igj.v5i2.4888

Abstract: This essay reconstructs some of the events which, even though not directly concerning either the content or the chronology of the composition of Antonio Gramsci’s Notebooks, crucially marked their existence. Thee relevant events may be listed in four groups: 1) the January 1934 shipment of some of the notebooks Gramsci had had in the prison in Turi to the clinic in Formia where he was hospitalized and of some others to Rome, to the home address of his sister-in-law Tat’jana (Tatiana) Schucht; 2) the numbering and cataloguing of the Notebooks that Tat’jana Schucht did a few weeks after Gramsci’s death. Special attention will be paid to the results of the skilful analyses carried out by the Istituto centrale per il restauro e la conservazione del patrimonio archivistico e librario on some of the labels that Tat’jana pasted on the notebooks she catalogued; 3) their shipment to Moscow, between 1937 and 1938, and their preservation until they were returned to Rome after the end of the Second World War; 4) the differences in the ways Gramsci’s Notebooks were counted and the different total number that they were said to consist of. The proposed reconstruction will stress the importance of often underestimated data: the presence of a sketchbook among those normally referred to as notebooks; the fact that Tat’jana herself, while numbering thirty-one of Gramsci’s notebooks, did not number two large-format notebooks, which can be assumed to have remained separate from the others for quite some time; and the existence of two other large-format notebooks on which Tat’jana began to prepare, without completing them, a catalogue of the topics and a complete transcription of the notebooks written by Gramsci. It will moreover become clear that the hypotheses put forward by those who have supported the thesis that one or more of the notebooks were subtracted lack solid foundations and are unnecessary.

Obamamoye, Babatunde F. “When Neo-Gramscians Engage the Postcolonial: Insights into Subaltern Consent and Dissent in the Re/Unmaking of Hegemonic Orders.” Alternatives 48.2 (2023): 115–132. doi:10.1177/03043754231151467

Abstract: The neo-Gramscian scholarship locates the agency of common sense in the reproduction of the hegemonic world order but under-theorises the underpinnings for dissimilar subaltern responses to common sense. This article draws on insights from Gramsci and anti-colonial thinkers to unpack three analytical categories for investigating subaltern consent and dissent in hegemonic orders. These analytical categories offer a tripartite framework which maintains the central theoretical argument that the key underlying rationale why some subaltern social groups consent to the hegemonic order while others dissent from the same order could be found in the subaltern past experience, (non)commitment to alternative ideologies and level of socio-political consciousness. Essentially, the article contributes to the theoretical discussion of the re/unmaking of hegemony and demonstrates how neo-Gramscian analysts could further reconnect with Gramsci and engage the postcolonial literature to enhance our understanding of the continuity and disruption of hegemonic orders in the world periphery.

Pastore, Gerardo. “Antonio Gramsci’s Contribution to a Critical and Historical Sociology.” In Beyond Dogmatism. Ed. Andrea Borghini, 28–46. Brill, 2023. doi:10.1163/9789004678064_004 (ISBN 978-90-04-67806-4).

Petrossiants, Andreas. “Subaltern Composition: On the Unrealized 1970 Gela Insurrection.” Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power 3.1 (2023): 63–84. doi:10.1163/26667185-bja10045

Abstract: Abstract In 1970, at a congress in Rome of the extra-parliamentary Marxist organization Potere Operaio (workers’ power), it was decided that several members would head south to Sicily to agitate with workers at a petrochemical plant. I argue that this is a generative example for considering the postwar reception of Antonio Gramsci’s writing by revolutionaries outside official party frameworks and for thinking through the Southern Question today. Furthermore, it invites us to reconsider how the notion of subalternity is deployed in some contemporary critical theory. I apply operaismo’s key notion of “class composition” to the Southern Question, proposing the term “subaltern composition.” If, as Mario Tronti famously demonstrated in Workers and Capital, the “bible” of operaismo, that there is no class without class struggle, then I ask here: is there a subaltern subject without subaltern struggle?

Ramaioli, Massimo. “Salafism as Gramscian informed vanguardism.” Contemporary Islam 17.2 (2023): 297–318. doi:10.1007/s11562-023-00514-z

Abstract: In this study, I offer a categorization of Salafism based on the concept of vanguardism. Vanguardism suggests how Salafis inhabit the political domain, by posing as the vanguard of a privileged group endowed with a historical mission. Relatedly, I summon the Gramscian concept of “philosophy of praxis.” With this, I intend to reconfigure Wiktorowicz’s classificatory scheme predicated on too stark an opposition between ‘aqīdah (theory) and manhaj (method). The philosophy of praxis accounts for the inherent tension between these two domains. Such tension is manifest in Salafis’ ambiguities, compromises, internal rifts, ideological adjustments, and revisions. Two related Gramscian concepts, historical bloc and modern Prince, bring such considerations more immediately into the political. They highlight, respectively, the political-historical context in which Salafis operate and the political-historical role they play as instances of vanguardism. I then put forth my classificatory scheme in the form of a typology. One axis is represented by the attitude towards the “historical bloc” (pro or anti) and the kind of vanguard posturing that emerges out of it (support, creation, or activation). The other axis is represented by the specific framing of the “Enemy” category on the part of the Salafi vanguard (historical/institutional or essential/identitarian), and the stance they consequently assume towards it (compromise/accommodation or rejection/denunciation). The resulting classification offers six categories (accommodationists, partisans, delayers, agitators, mobilizers, and belligerents). Stressing the fundamental political nature of contemporary Salafism—its vanguardism—they account for its inscription in a specific, modern way of thinking and acting the political.

Ramos, Leonardo, Javier Vadell, and Caio Gontijo. “Ruses of Nature: How Defending Ukraine Might Hasten the Decline of us Hegemony.” Desafíos 35.Especial (2023): 1–27. doi:10.12804/revistas.urosario.edu.co/desafios/a.13201 

Abstract: This paper discusses the war in Ukraine and its consequences, particularly the effects of the financial sanctions imposed by the United States, and its allies, on Russia. The conflict is examined in the context of a deeper structural change in the international order, with China and Russia as key players. We deploy a dialectical perspective, using Gramsci as a starting point to posit that simple quantitative changes can cause long-term qualitative differences in power relations. While the United States’ economic hegemony is unlikely to cease soon, the war in Ukraine and it’s economic repercussions could lead to unexpected results and transformations in the United States’ geopolitical position. We discuss how sanctions can be a double-edged sword, affecting all actors involved, and how actions that seek to restore order may accelerate processes of structural change in international power dynamics. The paper provides examples of how the responses to the conflict are affecting various other dynamics of world order by rearranging national interests, national security, and the political economies in Europe, China, and the Global South. We conclude that the “ruses of nature” manifest as contradictions in human actions and that the relationships between significant human actions and social forces can show how social impulses may accomplish the opposite of their original intent.

Scherrer, Christoph. “Beyond the Dyad: Power Relations in Global Exploitation Chains from an Institutionalist and Gramscian Perspective.” Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power 3.2 (2023): 115–147. doi:10.1163/26667185-bja10046

Abstract: Abstract This article highlights the embeddedness of dyadic power relations in global supply chains within broader economic, political and social institutions. It sheds light on the institutional context of global supply chains that enables leading transnational corporations (TNCs) to capture most of the value along the chain. It begins with sociological institutionalism’s distinction between regulative, normative and cognitive institutions. It shows how their legal status as juridical persons, intellectual property rights enforced by international treaties, trade agreements and a liberal global financial regime underpin TNCs’ ability to source globally. Since the strength of institutionalism does not lie in an understanding of change, the article continues with a Gramscian look at the deep roots of TNCs in the neoliberal historical bloc, arguing that challenging the hegemony of TNCs requires a comprehensive questioning of a wide range of institutions. Examples from agriculture illustrate the argument.

Sclocco, Camilla. “Gramsci’s France and Gramsci in France.” International Gramsci Journal 5.1 (2023). doi:10.14276/igj.v5i1.4188

Abstract: This is the abstract of the English translation of a review in French by Camilla Sclocco of the two collectively-authored books Gramsci in Francia, edited by R. Descendre, F. Giasi and G. Vacca, with the assistance of A. Crézégut, as part of the Gramsci nel mondo series, Bologna, il Mulino, 2020; and La France d’Antonio Gramsci, edited by R. Descendre e J-C. Zancarini for Ens Éditions, Lyon, 2021.

Seedeen, Rashad. The United States’ Residual Hegemony. Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2023 (ISBN 978-1-03-226221-5).

Abstract: This book investigates the hegemony of the USA by examining the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations’ responses to major global crises. Combining a Gramscian framework with the main features of complexity theory it provides a comprehensive account of the systemic crisis of the hegemonic order of the United States in security, environmental, and economic issue-areas. By examining key case studies, the author reveals that the hegemonic responses of the US were confronted by overt challenges, including emerging state and non-state actors, globally complex transnational flows, and a combative domestic political climate which undermined the United States’ role in multilateral institutions no longer fit for purpose. This book will be of interest to general readers as well as scholars and students of US foreign policy, global politics, and Gramscian theory.

Simonetti, Alberto. “Antonio Gramsci: Hegemony, Heroism and Domination.” Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power 2.2 (2023): 170–187. doi:10.1163/26667185-bja10034

Abstract: Abstract The notion of the hero is often accompanied by myth; in Gramsci’s work we see the crushing of this theory because it is tied to a nationalist and, therefore, repressive horizon. In his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci tackles this problem with originality, critically defining the concept of heroism as anti-collective. The power of the struggling community acts incisively if it renounces charismatic leadership. This results in a leaderless collectivity made up of bodies and brains politically in action. The centrality of this aspect that is not dealt with in Gramsci’s work can shed new light on the work of the Sardinian thinker and philosopher, particularly from a contemporary point of view, partly due to the numerous nationalist regressions (the return of racist ideologies and formations in Europe and in the US). Gramsci’s work has an avant-garde meaning even in current events. The collectivity can become that specific universal-singular capable of instituting a real counter-power. The article investigates the rejection of heroism in a transversal reading of Prison Notebooks.

Singh, Michael V., and Zeus and Leonardo. “Educators as decolonial intellectuals: revolutionary thought from Gramsci to Fanon.” Critical Studies in Education 64.4 (2023): 374–391. doi:10.1080/17508487.2022.2146150

Abstract: For several decades, the Gramscian notion of the intellectual has been a popular framework to view the potentiality of educators as counter-hegemonic cultural workers. While this was an invaluable contribution to the field of critical education, notions of the intellectual have largely focused on class conflict. For a deeper theorization of the intellectual and race, we turn to the work of decolonial thinker Frantz Fanon. In his work, Fanon theorizes the role of the intellectual amid the struggle against colonialism. In this article, we examine Fanon’s intellectual work as well as his writing on the ‘colonized intellectual’ to articulate what we describe as a Fanonian decolonial intellectual. We conclude by highlighting the importance of Fanon’s contributions on the intellectual for educators of color, who presently find themselves compromised by a hegemony characterized by neoliberal multiculturalism in education.

Thomas, Peter. “Historicism, Absolute.” In Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism. Ed. Wolfgang F. Haug et al., 364–375. Brill, 2023. doi:10.1163/9789004679023_017 (ISBN 978-90-04-67902-3).

Thomas, Peter D. Radical Politics: On the Causes of Contemporary Emancipation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2023 (ISBN 978-0-19-752807-5).

Abstract: The last twenty years have witnessed a proliferation of radical social and political movements around the world, in wave after wave of struggles against intersecting forms of exploitation, domination, and subalternization. From the International Women’s Strike and Occupy, to #BlackLivesMatter and direct action against the climate emergency, a series of common questions have continually re-emerged as immediate and practical challenges. How should radical political movements relate to the state? What makes emancipatory politics fundamentally different from both technocratic and populist models of “politics as usual”? Which forms of organization are most likely to deepen and extend the dynamics that led to the emergence of these movements in the first place? To investigate the goal, nature, method, and organizational forms of radical political engagement against the neoliberal consensus, Peter D. Thomas draws on the work of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Communist Party leader and political theorist best known for his ideas about hegemony. Hegemony is a concept that, most commonly understood, describes either the way in which a political system functions from the top down, through a culture of passive consent, or a process of neutralizing cultural and political differences to form unity in a nation state. Interestingly, both the left and right have seized on this idea, but, of course, to different political ends. In Radical Politics, Thomas argues that both of these interpretations are misapprehensions of the radical potential of Gramsci’s ideas. Offering a new reading of Gramsci, Thomas contends that hegemony is a process of differentiation in which political culture is always changing, and always with the goal of moving toward expanded freedom. Over the course of the book, Thomas looks at the way in which various theorists have approached the dilemma of how to engage productively in radical politics and explains why hegemony is a method of doing politics rather than an end goal. A distinctive and forceful contribution to ongoing debates about the nature and orientation of contemporary emancipatory movements, Radical Politics provides a counterintuitive interpretation of Gramsci’s famous and newly relevant work.

Thomas, Peter D. “Recovering Subalternity in the Humanities & Social Sciences.” In The Social Sciences in the Looking Glass: Studies in the Production of Knowledge. Ed. Didier Fassin and George Steinmetz, 310–327. Durham: Duke University Press, 2023. doi:10.1515/9781478024095-013 (ISBN 978-1-4780-1945-9).

Viviani, Roberto. “The Productivity of Power: An Interweaving of Gramscian Ideology and Foucauldian Truth.” Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power 3.2 (2023): 148–175. doi:10.1163/26667185-bja10050

Abstract: Abstract Financial capitalism alongside hyper-technologisation have severely reduced critical thought and creativity, thus producing a lack of political spaces and agency. There is now a critical need to create alternative relations and forms of labour. This article proposes to examine the crisis of political subjectivity through a cross-reading of Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault. For both authors, power is to be conceived not as a static entity but rather as a force in motion: a verb, as the French ‘pouvoir’. By analysing the concept of ideology in Gramsci and the one of truth in Foucault I will show how those terms open space for generative praxes, or creative actions. For these authors, societies develop from the constant stream of relations. Whether power or class relations, dynamism remains the key. Recognising the mobility of power allows praxis to continuously fulfil itself and thus to constantly produce new meanings. This may offer renewed possibilities for political agency.

Voza, Pasquale. “Dizionario gramsciano / Gramsci Dictionary: Positivism.” International Gramsci Journal 5.1 (2023). doi:10.14276/igj.v5i1.4186

Abstract: This is the abstract of the entry on “Positivismo” (translated into English) published in the Dizionario gramsciano (Gramsci Dictionary).

Xie, Shaobo. “Translation for the subaltern.” Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies 10.2 (2023): 95–107. doi:10.1080/23306343.2023.2263931

Abstract: This paper begins by posing the following questions: Who are the subaltern in the global present? What refigurations has the concept of subalternity undergone since its inaugural use in Antonio Gramsci’s writing? What does a genealogical account of such revisions and discontinuities suggest? Can the subaltern speak or be heard in a digital world? Why translate for the subaltern? If translation is an impossible necessity, what risks and pitfalls are encountered in translation for the subaltern? What potential does a politically empowering ethics of translation offer for surmounting such obstacles? Using these questions as a point of departure, this paper proceeds to explore how in the age of digital media communications the previously colonized or subalternized are further hegemonized, and what mechanisms are involved when digital imperialism is further marginalizing and silencing the subaltern. If the history of colonialism has witnessed translation being manipulated as a vehicle to achieve and maintain domination and control, the paper argues, then translation can also serve as a powerful site or tool for repairing social injustice and epistemic or representational violence against the subaltern, and therefore help enable the subaltern to speak for themselves and be heard sympathetically and respectfully.

Armenian

None to report.

French

IGS France > Parutions > Livres > Articles

German

Pohn-Lauggas, Ingo, Alexandra Assinger, and Antonio Gramsci. Südfrage und Subalterne: Gramsci-Reader. 1., Erstauflage. Hamburg: Argument Verlag mit Ariadne, 2023. https://argument.de/produkt/suedfrage-und-subalterne-gramsci-reader-studienausgabe/ (ISBN 978-3-86754-113-8).

Abstract: Nicht zuletzt im Kontext der Postkolonialen Studien ist Antonio Gramscis Begriff der Subalternen bis heute in aller Munde. Gramsci entwickelt ihn erst in den» Gefängnisheften«und stellt ihn dort auch –nicht ausschließlich – in den Zusammenhang der»Frage des Südens«, also der strukturellen ökonomischen, sozialen und politischen Ungleichheit in Italien, die die Hegemoniefrage auch zu einer territorialen macht. Dieser Reader enthält in Erst- bzw. Neuübersetzung mehrere ›Frühschriften‹ aus den Jahren 1919–1926, in denen Gramsci die politische Bedeutung der Südfrage für die hegemoniale Strategie der italienischen Arbeiterbewegung herausarbeitet. Der berühmte Aufsatz»Einige Gesichtspunkte der Südfrage« (1926) hat Scharnierfunktion zum großen politisch-philosophischen Hauptwerk. Er steht hier im Verbund mit Gramscis Beitrag zum III. Parteitag des PCI, bekannt geworden als »Thesen von Lyon«, sowie Artikeln aus dem Ordine Nuovo. Die kommentierte Neuübersetzung integriert den Stand der intensiven Reflexion zu Gramscis Sprache und Begrifflichkeiten in den Gefängnisschriften. Der zweite Teil des Readers versammelt die Auszüge aus den»Gefängnisheften«, in denen die Analyse der Südfrage aufgegriffen und weiterentwickelt wird, sowie die zentralen Stellen zur Theorie der Subalternen, die verdeutlichen, dass es sich dabei keineswegs um ein Tarnwort für das Proletariat handelt und die subalternen gesellschaftlichen Gruppen auch nicht unbedingt im Süden zu finden sind, sondern »an den Rändern der Geschichte«.

Greek

None to report.

Italian

Digital Library Antonio Gramsci > Bibliografia gramsciana

Japanese

None to report.

Portuguese

IGS Brasil > Bibliografia Gramsciana

Spanish

None to report.

Thai

None to report.

Turkish

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

Mayo, Peter. "Gramscı’nin Halk Okulu Üzerine Yazıları" abece. ISSN 1301-0557 Yıl 39/Sayı 378 (Kış 2023): 8–10. 

Abstract: This is a Turkish translation of the article "Gramsci's Writings on the Common School and their relevance for Universities". In this writing on Gramsci's conception of a Unitarian school as jotted down as a long systematic note ( virtually an essay) in Quaderno 4 and revised in Quaderno 12, the implications of the ideas contained therein for Universities and beyond in Higher Education are extrapolated. There are parallels between Gentile's reformof schooling and the current polarisation in higher education. As with Mario A Manacoda' contention re the classical.school in Italy, this piece and its affinity with the Humboldt ideal of the German University can be regarded as an epitaph to an institution that was (if, in its University incarnation, fit the reality) but cannot be any longer as the society I'm which it was originally conceived, well before Gentile's time, has changed almost beyond recognition.