Gramsci's Presence

Abstract

1967, ONE MIGHT SAY, HAS BEEN GRAMSCI'S YEAR IN ITALY. In April a conference on the communist thinker was held in Cagliari, the capital city of his native island, Sardinia. A noteworthy book and several important essays dealing with his work, and a new history of the PCI from 1921 to 1926, have considerably enriched the already vast literature on the subject. Impassioned debates over Gramsci's political and intellectual legacy have vivified the usually drowsy atmosphere of the ‘cultural dubs’ in a number of middlesize towns, especially in the South. The time seems therefore appropriate for a reappraisal of Gramsci's role in present-day Italian culture and politics. In other words: how does Gramsci affect the contemporary Italian intellectual? More significantly, what does Gramsci mean to the leaders of the crisis-tom party he contributed to found and controlled before the day of his imprisonment?