Review of: Using Gramsci: A New Approach

Gifawosen Markos Mitta

doi:10.5195/jwsr.2020.974

Abstract

Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks has become a very important inspiration for the twentieth-century Marxist political thinkers around the world. ‘Using Gramsci A New Approach’ is one of the most recent additions to various works done around the Prison Notebooks of this Great Italian political theorist and cultural critics. Michele Filippini, a researcher in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Bologna has come up with ‘a new approach’ on Prison Notebooks and has touched some major concepts that are previously given little attention by Gramscian scholars. By extending Gramsci’s concepts beyond Marxist perspective, Filippini’s book provides expert guides to key features and themes in Gramsci’s writing in combination with the pressing political, social and cultural struggles of our time. The author does not show a clear connection between those topics discussed in the book, but his work remains a valuable addition to Gramscian thoughts in the twenty-first century. Key Words: Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, ideology, the individual, Society

Highlights

Filippini includes chapters on Ideology, the Individual, Collective Organism, Society, Crisis, and Temporality
Michele Filippini, a researcher in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Bologna and coordinator of the digital library Gramsciproject.org, has come up with “a new approach” on the Prison Notebooks touching on some major concepts previously given little attention by Gramscian scholars
The author asserts that Gramsci equates ideology to “a complex form of social order” in his analysis of the complexity of ideology (9)

Summary

Introduction

Michele Filippini, a researcher in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Bologna and coordinator of the digital library Gramsciproject.org, has come up with “a new approach” on the Prison Notebooks touching on some major concepts previously given little attention by Gramscian scholars. Filippini includes chapters on Ideology, the Individual, Collective Organism, Society, Crisis, and Temporality. For Filippini, Gramsci conceives of ideology as an organic part of a social totality while maintaining the flexibility of the concept (5).

Results

Conclusion