Ideologie und Macht: Eine Analyse von Antonio Gramscis "Quaderni" (review)

Abstract

488 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Robert Heeger. ldeoiogie und Macht: Fine Analyse yon Antonio Gramscis "'Quaderni." Uppsala Studies in Social Ethics 3. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Uppsalensis, 1975. Pp. 233. In the past several years there has been a widening interest in the writings of Antonio Gramsci. Long well known in Italy, his works are now appearing in translations in other countries , and critical writings dealing with them are rapidly materializing. The recent publication in English of a collection of Gramsci's early writings (History, Philosophy, and Culture in the Young Gramsci, ed. Paul Piccone and Pedro Cavalcante [St. Louis: Telos Press, 1975]), as well as two major reviews in the Times Literary Supplement and the New York Review of Books, suggests the deepening of the critical work. Robert Heeger's book is to be welcomed by this growing Gramsci scholarship, for it is an exhaustively detailed inquiry into the major writings contained in the Quaderni, or prison notebooks, composed by Gramsci during the period from 1929 until his untimely death in 1937. These notebooks are difficult of access for two major reasons; first, Gramsci was without research materials while in prison and was obliged to write in what amounted to a code in order to preserve his work from the prison censor. Secondly, Gramsci's thought is highly complex. Heeger's book is a major service to Gramsci scholarship and to Marxian scholarship in general, for it seeks to clarify by systematic analytic inquiry the major political and ideological implications of Gramsci's major works. Heeger's method of analysis is thus of central importance and involves a systematizing of Gramsci's thought around issues identified as central in contemporary political theory of Marxists and non-Marxists alike. Heeger's emphasis is to provide tools for analysis of Gramsci that will enable that writer's most difficult thought to enter into a dialogue with representatives of contemporary political and sociological theory (p. 15). This is precisely what is needed for a widening approach to Gramsci. The first of the book's four parts is entitled "The Concepts of Ideology." Its first section is devoted to providing, through a survey of contemporary writings on ideology, a definition of ideology. With this synthetic definition Heeger proceeds to inquire into Gramsci's use of the term "ideology." He suggest that Gramsci's meaning is that of a "partial" concept of ideology . Heeger asserts the existence of a metatheoretical conflict between Gramsci's position and the analytical position Heeger himself manifests. One possible criticism of Heeger's methods is to point out the perhaps overly argued formal constructs by which the thought of Gramsci is made to appear acceptable to the framework Heeger uses. I am not sure whether this formalist aspect of Heeger's methodology is, in fact, an actual flaw, for the tightness of the arguments is certainly appreciated by those who have wrestled with the apparent imprecision of some of Gramsci's writing. But that same formal tightness revealed so clearly at the outset is a reminder that what Heeger refers to in his introduction as the "Umbildung" (perhaps "reconstruction ") of Gramsci's thought may indeed be going on. In the second part, Heeger offers a similar methodological analysis of the concepts of power and hegemony. Chapter 3, Power Concepts in Political Theory, offers a survey of historical and contemporary definitions of power. The analysis leads Heeger to the investigation of Gramsci's use of the power concept "hegemony," the substance of the fourth chapter. This chapter and the next, Program and Theory of Hegemony, are the central focus of Heeger's inquiry. Gramsci is seen as perceiving two basic types of power concept: the one is dominio ( = herrschen, or rule), and the second is egemonia ( =fahren or lead). The two are described as follows: "(i) Direct rule [Herrschaft] is a relationship between A and B such that B experiences A's behavior as the exercise of compulsion, and (ii) hegemony is a relationship between A and B such that B responds consensually to A's behavior" (p. 89). The discussion of the differences between these two concepts is exhaustive as Heeger seeks continually to offer a precise and clear phrasing of...