Prison Notebooks Research Articles

Gramsci’s dissidence beneath and beyond the First World War

One of the leading Marxist theorists of the 20th century and a founding member and leader of the Italian Communist Party, Antonio Gramsci began his intellectual and political journey essentially at the outbreak of WWI and left a massive body of journalistic work by the end of the war. Despite their scope and significance, his wartime writings remain understudied relative to the Prison Notebooks and other post-wartime writings, particularly in the English language literature. This article outlines some of the central themes that he explored in this period. It provides a synoptic depiction of Gramsci’s conceptual development over the course of the war. Gramsci’s dissident social theory represents a radically different intellectual reaction to the war than we see from prominent conservative and liberal social theorists. What emerges from the picture presented in this article is a conceptual snapshot whose organizing principle centers on a critical understanding of intransigence that Gramsci developed over the course of the war. The notion of intransigence, which for Gramsci went far beyond organizational and strategic struggles and expanded into cultural and philosophical endeavors, helps make sense of the major contours of his wartime activities. In carving out a space for critical engagement during the war, Gramsci developed a critique of liberalism and a commitment to socialism which were both marked by and linked through his critical understanding of intransigence.

Hegemony and crisis: An analysis of habit and ideology as mechanisms for achieving ‘consent’

This article presents an analysis of the role played by ideology and habit in ensuring the stability of the socioeconomic order by looking at key passages from Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks dealing with the notion of hegemony and its various aspects. This discussion is informed by Beasley-Murray’s criticisms against the notion of hegemony and his insistence that, at times of crisis, ruling classes’ ideologies stop mattering, and we should, instead, focus on domination and habit imposition. This piece attempts to clarify key concepts such as domination, leadership and ideology, as well as presenting distinctions between different ‘forms of consent’. In response to Bealey-Murray’s critique, it will also highlight how economic and political crises effect workers’ habitual life, domination and habit imposition within production/surplus extraction, leadership style and the subsequent ‘form’ bourgeois ideologies must take to appeal to an electorate that has lost trust in political elites. It will then conclude with the opposite assertion: At time of crises, we should pay even closer attention to the ‘morbid symptoms’ displayed by bourgeois ideological trends.

Āl-e Ahmad's Faustian Bargain? Antonio Gramsci, the “Progressive Clergy,” and the Search for Hegemony in Late-Pahlavi Iran

This article explores the first translations of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci into Persian and a more speculative reconstruction of Gramsci's reception during the second half of the 1960s by two prominent Iranian intellectuals and dissidents close to the League of Iranian Socialists. After examining the initial translations by the influential translator and political activist, Manūchehr Hezārkhānī (d. 2022), the author moves to unpack, Jalāl Āl-e Ahmad's (d. 1969) interpretations, reconstruction, and deployment of these fragmentary translations from an already disjointed and curated edition of the Prison Notebooks. Gramsci's analyses of culture, religion and religious institutions, intellectual production, and political mobilization were drawn upon for a variety of purposes. Thus, while some intellectuals, most famously Āl-e Ahmad, hypothesized that the politically engaged clergy's moral and political leadership was essential to the successful mobilization of the masses against imperialism and the overthrow of the US-backed Pahlavi dictatorship, others, including Hezārkhānī, ultimately came to advocate in favor of a popular front and coalition of secular and religious forces in defense of “democratic freedoms” against the threat of clerical domination in the 1979 revolution's aftermath.

EXPLORING GRAMSCI’S REFLECTIONS

The arrest of Antonio Gramsci in 1926 was a landmark event in the political history of 20th century Italy. As Mussolini's fascist regime consolidated its power, Gramsci, a communist leader and prominent intellectual, was detained due to his influence on the political opposition. His arrest was part of a campaign to suppress dissent. Despite facing adverse conditions in prison, Gramsci continued his intellectual production, writing the “Prison Notebooks”, a testament to his erudition and resilience. His arrest and production of the “Notebooks” highlight the power of intellectual resistance and commitment to social justice.

Soft Power & Hegemony: Gramsci, Nye, and Cox’s Perspectives

This article highlights the significance of soft power and hegemony in the realms of international relations theory and political philosophy. Soft power serves as a political strategy utilized by nations to attract and shape ideas in other countries through influence and persuasion. Similarly, Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony emphasizes the influence of societal ideas by employing moral and intellectual leadership through consensus. In enriching this analysis, it incorporates perspectives from Robert Cox, who deepen the understanding of how hegemony intertwines with global power structures, social forces, and the construction of world order. This article provides a theoretical review of Joseph S. Nye's soft power concept and Antonio Gramsci's notion of hegemony, comparing both at the epistemological level of political science, encompassing concepts, praxis, and values. The study is based on Nye's Soft Power (2004) and Gramsci's Selections from the Prison Notebooks (2007) through a literature review. This article concludes that these concepts share similarities, such as utilizing intellectual leadership, promoting awareness within the intellectual class, and targeting civil society as a crucial influencer.

Movimento come prassi immanente. L’anti teoria nei "Quaderni del carcere"

A modern classic, Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks represents today a point of reference in diverse fields, from anthropolo-gy to history, from political theory to literary studies and so-ciology. In order to understand how Gramsci’s methodology functions, one needs to focus on movements between ‘high’ and ‘low’, aristocratic and popular, war of strategy and war of position, dominant and subaltern. Gramsci rediscovers young Marx’s revolutionary writings and adopts a radical stance in which Marxism coincides with an immanent – that is, mo-bile – critique of humanity in which institutions and common sense are stripped of any metaphysical residuals. Grams-ci called it philosophy of praxis and singled out philology as its instrument. This contribution aims at reconstructing the context in which this highly dynamic, anti-dogmatic concep-tion develops, eschewing determinism and the hidden teleol-ogy of positivism. Mobility as a theory of social change looms large in the Prison Notebooks, whereas passive revolution reflects the fixity of state centrism related to uneven social conditions. But above all the philosophy of praxis’ strength consists in its self-reflective faculty, what Said defines as “Traveling theory”, ideas and theories that move from one culture to another, involving processes of representation and institutionalization different from those of the point of origin, thus spreading critical consciousness through movement.

The Finance Money Crisis and Cryptocurrencies

The speculative financial services sector and the systemic failures of financial globalisation have prompted a growing call for delinking from the hegemony of the US dollar. These systemic failures have been illustrated by financial mismanagement and the financial crisis of 2007-8. This event paints a dire picture of the consequences associated with poor regulation of the financial sector. This study seeks to interpret these events in terms of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks and his concept of the ‘morbid symptoms of the interregnum’. According to Babic (2020), these occur when a hegemony and its institutions are ‘dying’, thereby hampering their power. This notion also highlights that the future remains murky, despite public calls for change. Gramsci calls this the ‘new that cannot be born’.This study seeks to extend this framework to the current state of the dollar hegemony. The ‘morbid symptoms’ we will examine include the call to delink from the speculative high-risk US economy, the emergence of cryptocurrencies, and the politics surrounding fiat money. Some have argued that the emergence of cryptocurrencies could be the ‘new’. However, this study argues that the negative characteristics associated with cryptocurrencies such as cybersecurity concerns and price volatility create ambiguity about whether cryptocurrency is the ideal trajectory. Therefore, it argues that ambiguity and calls for change qualify our current monetary situation to be classified as a Gramscian interregnum.It also examines the current fiat money discourse by highlighting how the dollar hegemony may be succeeded by another fiat currency. However, it argues that the inflationary shortfalls of fiat money make this a fallible option, thereby perpetuating the ambiguities within the Gramscian interregnum.

Hegemony and moralistic bullying in a contested UK public sector

ABSTRACT How is workplace bullying morally legitimised in a contested public sector? This article makes an original contribution to workplace bullying scholarship through its focus on ‘moralistic’ bullying. The United Kingdom (UK) public sector has undergone significant changes propelled by neoliberal marketisation over four decades, purportedly to enhance competitiveness, financial accountability, and efficiency. These reforms coincide with a reported increase in public sector workplace bullying. Inspired by Gramsci’s [Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Translated by Q. Hoare, and G. N. Smith. London: Lawrence and Wishart. (Orig. pub. 1947.)] concept of hegemony, we adopt a neo-Gramscian analysis of ‘moralistic’ bullying in this context. Drawing from a study of 25 self-identifying bullied targets in UK public sector organisations, we illustrate how moralistic bullying is legitimised through organisational processes propelled by market rationalities and financial imperatives. Our contribution highlights how moralistic bullying is legitimised inconspicuously amidst hegemonic conditions of neoliberal marketisation.

Antonio Gramsci: Hegemony, Heroism and Domination

Abstract The notion of the hero is often accompanied by myth; in Gramsci’s work we see the crushing of this theory because it is tied to a nationalist and, therefore, repressive horizon. In his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci tackles this problem with originality, critically defining the concept of heroism as anti-collective. The power of the struggling community acts incisively if it renounces charismatic leadership. This results in a leaderless collectivity made up of bodies and brains politically in action. The centrality of this aspect that is not dealt with in Gramsci’s work can shed new light on the work of the Sardinian thinker and philosopher, particularly from a contemporary point of view, partly due to the numerous nationalist regressions (the return of racist ideologies and formations in Europe and in the US). Gramsci’s work has an avant-garde meaning even in current events. The collectivity can become that specific universal-singular capable of instituting a real counter-power. The article investigates the rejection of heroism in a transversal reading of Prison Notebooks.

Antonio Gramsci: the roots of Italian communism

Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, based on the importance ofconsensus, is the antecedent of the recognition of the democracy bythe Italian Communist Party (terrain that would be fully acquired by itssuccessors, Togliatti and Berlinguer). Gramsci takes the word and theconcept from the debates at the top of international communism and–adapting it to his theory of the “revolution in the West” – changes andinnovates it profoundly in the Prison Notebooks, making it an idea thatis today widespread and used throughout the world. Palmiro Togliatti,who returned to Italy in 1944, became a protagonist in the writing ofthe post-war democratic Constitution and theorized on the “nationalways” to socialism and polycentrism; Enrico Berlinguer theorized onthe universal value of democracy and the acceptance of many liberalprinciples for the construction of an idea of “communism in freedom”.

Gramsci’s “Modern Prince” and the Contingencies of Political Struggle

Abstract The Gramscian proposition of the “modern Prince”, like most of the concepts elaborated by Gramsci in the Prison Notebooks, has always been open to interpretative controversy. These exegetical controversies stem from two main factors: the fragmentary nature of the prison writings and the method of work employed by Gramsci. The aim of this article is to apply the methodological perspective of “social contextualism” to the understanding of the Gramscian concept of the modern Prince. There is a threefold advantage in applying this methodology to the reading of Gramsci’s political theory: 1) it allows one to grasp the unitarity between theory and practice in Gramscian political elaboration, linking the militant Gramsci with the theoretical Gramsci (the pre-prison and prison writings); 2) it allows one to identify how the theory of the party present in the “Lyon Theses” was maintained and further developed in the Prison Notebooks; and, consequently, iii) it further allows one to identify the proposition of the modern Prince as the most advanced development of a theory of the party that had already been conceived by Gramsci in the period before his imprisonment.

On Antonio Gramsci’s hidden concept: Fetishism

The article sheds light on Gramsci’s use of the term fetishism. Despite not being as present and pervasive within the Prison Notebooks as other concepts, more deeply rooted in Gramscian scholarship (such as hegemony and historic bloc), fetishism is not as marginal in Gramsci’s reflection as it is usually believed. Linking his understanding of the term to the one developed by Marx and by the later unorthodox Marxist scholarship, I shall argue that fetishism can be seen as a key component of Gramsci’s theory of revolution or, better, of a theory of the failure of the revolutionary process. For this reason, the article will also link Gramsci’s occasional reference to fetishism to his use of more developed concepts such as common sense, hegemony and passive revolution. Fetishistic views of reality, in Gramsci, appear as facilitating the conservation of the status quo, while the re-acquisition of individual and collective responsibility that comes along with de-fetishising practices is the necessary component of any revolutionary project.

A Natureza Onto-Histórica do Princípio Educativo: Gramsci e Lukács

ABSTRACT This article addresses the distinctions and approximations between Gramsci and Lukács’ elaborations about the educational principle. The possibility of work being or not an educational principle was questioned, as the basis of an emancipatory political-pedagogical project. For that, an immanent reading of the works was carried out: The Ontology of the Social Being (TOSB), volume 14, by Georg Lukács; Prison Notebooks, volumes 11, 12 and 22, and some Selections from Political Writings, by Antonio Gramsci. As a result of the research, the educational principle, which aims to ground an educational system based on the integral development of social beings, was defended as a human formation.

Destitutionalised Reading of Gender and Caste in Baburao Bagul’s Short Stories

In this research paper, I analyze the effects of institutionalised ways of reading ‘gender’ and ‘caste’ in Marathi literature with reference to Baburao Bagul, one of the important Dalit writers, short stories with the help of some notions and arguments from Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, Jacques Derrida’s essay “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences”, Aniket Jaaware’s essay “Destitute Literature” and the book Practicing Caste: On Touching and Not Touching. Baburao Bagul’s short stories re-valuated the established institutionalized reading practices of gender and caste in literature set by the Marathi writers and critics, mostly upper-caste, before the 1960s. However, other Dalit writers did not venture to re-valuate the representation of gender and caste in literature. Before the concept of ‘Destitute Literature’ was propounded by Aniket Jaaware, most of the reading/analysis of Marathi Dalit literature followed institutionalized ways of consumption of literature. The dominant practices of reading literature in academia as well as out of it did not spare even the scholars who claimed to be different from the hegemony. The descriptions and analysis of gender and caste were mostly on the grounds of identity politics. For example, all the essays in the Marathi book Samagra Lekhak: Baburao Bagul (Complete Writer: Baburao Bagul) edited by Dr. Krushna Kirwale offer the institutionalized readings of Bagul’s stories, their form, content, and the characters. I attempt to critique such earlier writings and criticism written on Baburao Bagul’s stories and re-read the stories in destitutionalised way.

Evolutional Analysis of the Concept of Hegemony within the Perspective of International Political Economy Theories

Over the past few decades, the international political economy has attained itself particular independence within the wider discipline of international relations step by step. The endeavors to figure out the determiners of the radical changes taking place in the world economy since the early 1970s have placed several special theoretical concepts in the focus of interest which directly associates with the international political economy. The concept of hegemony is one of them. Today, hegemony is one of the most discussed subject matters. Antonio Gramsci was an Italian Marxist intellectual, theoretician and politician who developed the concept of hegemony in the Prison Notebooks. Gramsci's writings made incontrovertible contributions to the understanding of hegemony within the context of Marxist thought and philosophy. However, in the historical process, lots of views and theories have been put forward regarding the concept of hegemony. Thus, the application of the concept in international political economy is widely contested and necessitates disambiguation. From this point of view, we have tried to analyze how the concept was handled by theorists belonging to different schools of thought in the international political economy literature. In all these respects, this article takes its point of departure in the multiplicity of characterizations of the concept of hegemony and fastens on elucidating a certain strand of conceptualising hegemony more closely.

Political Prisoners: A Comparative Critical Reading of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, Rahman’s Prison Diaries, and Mandela’s Conversations with Myself

Political leaders who fight against the abuse of power are frequently imprisoned for their political activities. Their voices challenge the existing autocratic rulers and their experiences inside and outside prison are essentially emblematic. This article explores power, politics and the prison life of three famous politicians of three continents: Antonio Gramsci from Italy (Europe), Sheikh Mujibur Rahman from Bangladesh (Asia), and Nelson Mandela from South Africa (Africa). Prison Notebooks by Gramsci, Prison Diaries by Rahman, and Conversations with Myself by Mandela are extraordinary works, which contribute immensely to the shaping of prison literature. These authors wrote about loneliness, hegemony, state repression and their resistance against power to establish human rights. Focusing on Michel Foucault’s concept of power, domination and the systematic reformations to treat prisoners more humanely, this article undertakes a comparative critical reading of these three prison narratives about the imprisonment of the three politicians. The analysis explores their protest against power abuse and struggle for humanity, justice, equality and dignity, which make them icons of leadership in the world.

Revisiting the Passive Revolution

Abstract Passive revolution is one of the most debated notions to come out of the Prison Notebooks. It belongs to the notions that have been used as ‘established’ descriptions of historical and political sequences. However, a reading of Gramsci’s texts suggests that passive revolution is not a ‘historical phase’ and is not limited to the historical interpretation of a particular historical period. Nor is it part of an historical ‘canon’ that would suggest that, in the absence of a ‘proper’ Jacobin revolution, the only alternative is passive revolution. Rather it points to the experimental character of the Prison Notebooks and Gramsci’s confrontation with the profound changes in state apparatuses (and hegemonic apparatuses) and practices of politics and hegemony after WWI, in particular the new ‘mass’ forms of politics and ideological interpellation, and his attempt to elaborate a strategic–theoretical thinking suited to revolutionary politics in such a context.

Antonio Gramsci, Settler-Colonialism and Palestine

This article explores Gramsci’s relevance to colonialism with particular reference to the situation in Palestine and the Palestinians. It historically oscillates between the Italy and larger world contexts of Gramsci's time and the Palestinian and larger Arab contexts in more recent times, especially, in the latter case, from the onset of settler colonialism in the Middle East. While it covers a broad range of writings by Gramsci, notably the notes contained in the Prison Notebooks, it provides special attention to his discussion on the Southern Question. It tackles recurring themes in colonial discourse such as those of ‘divide and rule’ and ideology residing in language besides the ever so pertinent theme of Hegemony. It posits the resonance of appropriated or reclaimed knowledge with a different ‘whole way of life’ (Raymond Williams). Palestinian society is represented warts and all, with specific strengths and differences highlighted, especially that of country and the city.

25 Years Later, Marxism Remains a Tool for Our Struggle

Brian Mathenge notes the actions of successive regimes in Kenya in overseeing the suppression of staunch Marxists and progressives who seemed a threat to the establishment - including political assassinations and arrests of those who happened to have different perspectives or ideological orientation - primarily because the ruling class was (and still is) frightened by efforts to educate and develop the consciousness of the masses. But as he reminds us, young cadres from the Social Justice Centre’s are today adopting Marxism as a tool for struggle, and 25 years after the publication of Kenya: A Prison Notebook, a defiant generation with a fighting spirit is ready to advance the struggle for socialism as a generational mission.

Editor's Introduction to the Kenya Edition, Nairobi: Vita Books 2021

Written 25 years ago, Kenya: A Prison Notebook has inspired generations and proved a great resource and a hand book in political education in Kenya and beyond. It chronicles Maina Wa Kinyatti’s arrest and detention by the Moi regime, and powerfully captures Kenya’s history.