Gramsci and the Secret of Father Brown

Abstract

This article examines major methodological issues in Gramsci’s writings that are relevant for re‐thinking contemporary political relationships, by considering his use of the ‘particular’. It draws on Gramsci’s notes on Chesterton’s Father Brown stories, including his contrast between ‘old’ Catholic Europe and ‘new’ Protestant, positivist America, and discusses Gramsci’s critique of positivism and populism with reference to his writings on the palaeontologist Cuvier and the criminologist Cesare Lombroso. It links Gramsci’s use of details and fragments from diverse sources, Father Brown’s methods, and the practice of psychoanalysis. Gramsci’s criticism of Conan Doyle is contrasted with Freud’s admiration for him. It examines the tensions involved in interrogating seemingly unimportant, ‘everyday’ material and in engaging with the innate conservatism of popular ‘common sense’ beliefs, whose ‘good sense’ is nonetheless the necessary point of departure for mass politics. At the same time it argues that in addressing major social and political issues, the ‘general’, universal or hegemonic cannot be derived from the ‘particular’. It connects these themes to contemporary questions about the status and objectives of different kinds of knowledge and the split between politics and people. It suggests that Gramsci’s aim to go beyond the dichotomy between rationalism and irrationalism has profound implications both for understanding his writings and for their use in contemporary political analysis.