This second issue of the IGS Newsletter is being brought out exactly one year after the appearance of the first issue. This is much later than was originally hoped; in fact, the goal of the IGS has been--and remains--to bring out the Newsletter at least twice a year. The reasons for the delay are many: lack of logistical facilities and support, the time consuming processes of gathering information, and so on. (The change in format is itself part of an effort to minimize the complexities and costs of producing the Newsletter without modifying its contents or reducing its effectiveness as a source of information for anyone engaged in the study of the various aspects of Gramsci's life and work.) In any case, we apologise for the tardiness of this issue and we promise to redouble our efforts to produce future issues more promptly. In the meantime, however, we strongly urge members of the IGS to send us whatever information they have access to that may be of interest to the readers of the Newsletter. In fact, the production of each issue of the Newsletter is heavily dependent upon the quantity and quality of the materials made available to the editor.
The response we received from several readers to the first issue of the IGS Newsletter suggested that the sections devoted to Gramscian bibliography and to a description of university courses on Gramsci elicited the most interest. This issue contains a good deal of new material addressing these same interests. John Cammett has, once again, prepared a bibliographic survey--this time focusing on doctoral theses--that conveys a strong sense of the many ways in which Gramsci's thought and concepts continue to supply valuable frameworks or points of departure for scholarly inquiries of the most diverse kind, ranging across a very broad spectrum of disciplines.
The diversity of approaches to Gramsci is also poignantly evident in the many university courses where his work is examined and discussed in detail. Thanks to the survey conducted by Frank Rosengarten late last year (and to the initiative of other individuals who independently sent us information about their work and activities) we have been able to compile a substantial amount of material about Gramsci's presence in the classroom. Rosengarten's survey also generated an impressive body of information about recent and forthcoming publications, conferences, and other actvities of special interest to IGS members--all of which is published in a schematised and, we hope, easily readable form in this issue. This information, as well as that gathered by our European correspondent, Fabio Frosini, not only provides members with knowledge of current trends in Gramscian studies but should also induce them to communicate with one another whenever their interests or their current projects appear to intersect.
Evidence of Gramsci's continuing influence and relevance in our time is also to be found in various influential and widely circulated journals. With this in mind we have invited editors to supply us with short articles surveying the presence of Gramsci in the articles published by their journals. The first to respond to this request was the editorial board of Rethinking Marxism. We are grateful to them for their interest and cooperation and especially to Professor Jonathan Diskin who undertook the actual task of writing the article which we are publishing in this issue. An effort will be made to secure similar articles for future issues and we encourage everyone who is involved in (or has close connections with) the
publication of a journal to consider making a contribution of this kind to the IGS Newsletter.
* * * [END PAGE 1]
Gramsci's presence is by no means restricted to the academic world and its environs. In the course of the past year the Italian daily press and the weeklies have on numerous occasions splashed Gramsci's name across their headlines. In most cases, of course, these headlines were the product of sensationalist polemics, often generated by the press itself. Behind the sensational headlines, however, one could find much that is of interest. Thus, for example, L'Unità of 1 October 1992 announced on its front page: «Pinochet a Mosca: "È Gramsci il pericolo n. 1"», accompanied by a photograph of the former Chilean dictator. The article itself appeared on page 12 of the same issue under the headline: «Pinochet in cattedra a Mosca: "Attenti al gramscismo, il marxismo in abiti nuovi è il vero pericolo"». From the article irself one learns that the previous day the Russian paper Komsomolskaya Pravda published an interview with Augusto Pinochet under the title "How To Save Russia." The pearls of wisdom and advice imparted by Pinochet to the Russian readers included the warning that in spite of the collapse of Marxism-Leninism in Russia, communism was still alive, disguised in sheep's clothing and, therefore, very dangerous because harder to detect. Communism in sheep's clothing is defined by Pinochet as "Gramscism" about which he said the following: "The doctrine of the communist Antonio Gramsci is Marxism in a new dress. And it is dangerous because it penetrates the consciousness of the people and above all the consciousness of the intellectuals." Astonishing though these remarks may sound, especially when one considers their source and the bizarre context in which they were uttered, they should not come as a total surprise. Only a few years back the neo- conservative writer Michael Novak issued a similar warning to the readers of the business magazine Forbes in an article entitled "The Gramscists are Coming"; and he too traced the growing interest in "Gramscism" to Latin America.
All of which confirms what some of our Latin American colleagues said during the 1989 Formia conference on "Gramsci nel Mondo," namely, that in the minds of certain Latin American dictators and their military cliques, Gramsci/Gramscism represented an imminent danger. More recently, however, another commentator from the United States, Paul Piccone, the editor of Telos who once co-translated and co-edited a selection of Gramsci's pre-prison writings, assured his readers that Marxism is dead once and for all, except in academic circles--hence, no need to fear the Gramscian menace. In his review of the first volume of the critical edition in English of the Prison Notebooks, Piccone describes the work as a belated effort to re-introduce Marxism under the guise of scholarship, but he hastens to add: "In the West it will take a lot more than a new edition of Gramsci's Prison Notebooks to relegitimate either the remnants of the Italian Communist Party or the politics of a few American literary critics still entertaining Marxist-Leninist fantasies." The cold war may be over for the military strategists at the Pentagon, but it is still very much alive as a world-view and as a rhetorical ploy.
* * *
One of the most urgent tasks of the IGS is to organise an international conference which, among other things, would bring the members of the Society together in order to collectively plan its future and provide it with a more permanent organizational structure. As was mentioned in the first Newsletter, the Provisional committee of the IGS had hoped to convene such a conference in 1993. Although several attempts have been made to finalize plans for such a conference, it now seems obvious that it will not be feasible to have it this year. The major stumbling block has been the unavailability of financial support. Nevertheless, several potential sources of funds have been identified and there is a reasonable chance that the IGS will be in a position to hold its first international conference during the next eighteen months or so.
In the meantime, however, the IGS continues to be present in a more modest way at conferences dealing with topics of interest to its membership. At the Socialist Scholars Conference held in New York on 24-26 April 1992, the IGS organised a session entitled "Gramsci and Us or Why Gramsci Now?" During the session, chaired by Frank Rosengarten, three papers were delivered by Kate Crehan (The New School), Evan Watkins (University of Washington) and Joseph Buttigieg; in addition, John Cammett discussed the goals of the IGS and provided a brief survey of current work on Gramsci. The IGS also organized two sessions at the conference on "Marxism and the New World Order" (sponsored by the journal Rethinking [END PAGE 2] Marxism) held at the University of Massachusetts on 12-14 November 1992. The first session on "Gramscian Approaches to Contemporary Political and Social Issues" was chaired by Frank Rosengarten. The following three presentations were made: Kate Crehan on "Gramsci in Zambia: Using a Gramscian Approach in Rural Africa"; Eloisa Gordon-Mora: "The Politics of Passivity: Colonialism and the Puerto Rican Political Party System"; and Renate Holub: "Gramsci and Black Feminist Theory." At the second session, chaired by Frank Annunziato, the general topic was "Reading Gramsci/Studying Gramsci"; Nelson Moe talked about teaching Gramsci to undergraduates, Frank Rosengarten discussed problems and issues related to editing and interpreting the Prison Letters, and Joseph Buttigieg examined the needs for developing new approaches to the reading of the Prison Notebooks. The IGS will continue to seek opportunities to participate at other conferences. This year it will, once again, organize a session at the Socialist Scholars Conference and will be represented at the Volksuni in Berlin (see "News from Europe" in this issue). We would also like to encourage members to inform us of conferences and symposia in which other members of the IGS may make useful contributions and perhpas even organize sessions addressing some aspect or other of Gramsci's life and thought.
Finally, we wish to encourage all members of the IGS to send us news and information for future issues of the Newsletter and to keep us informed of their activities.