Lectures on Gramsci

This module introduces the work of Antonio Gramsci and its relevance to the arts, humanities andsocial sciences. It deals with the life and work of Gramsci, outlines the principal influences on hisintellectual and political analyses, and some key concepts deployed in his work.

At the end of the course, participants will have gained a basic understanding of the nature andsignificance of the work of Antonio Gramsci and his place in twentieth-century thought and politics.They will be able to identify and interpret some key influences on Gramscis work and its historicalcontext; to define the key concepts in his intellectual and political analyses; and to assess thesignificance of his work for their chosen field of research.

Session 1: The Life and Work of Gramsci

This is a general introduction to Gramsci and his life and is intended to set the scene for later sessions.

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Session 2: Gramsci and Political Economy

The critique of political economy is at the core of the Marxist tradition. A conventional view is thatGramsci was first and foremost interested in (political) philosophy and neglected or even ignoredpolitical economy. This session explores Gramsci s many encounters with political economy and theway in which he dealt with basic economic categories, the history of economic thought, the learning

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and teaching of political economy, and actual changes and developments in the capitalist mode ofproduction and the world economy.

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Session 3: Gramsci and the State

Gramsci is well-known for his analysis of the modern Western state from the 1870s onwards aspolitical society + civil society and of state power as hegemony armoured by coercion. This sessionexplores these claims and puts them into the context of French and Italian history, the failure of Italianstate formation, the Russian revolution, the rise of fascism, and changes in post-WW1 Americansociety. Four key themes are: the state, hegemony, the power bloc, and subaltern classes.

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Session 4: Gramsci on Hegemony, Ideology, and Intellectuals

Gramsci once claimed that everyone is an intellectual but not everyone has the function of anintellectual. This session considers the significance of intellectuals, including the distinction betweentraditional and organic intellectuals, for Gramscis understanding and critique of nation-building, stateformation, and forms of class domination. Also relevant here are the major themes of the Church (andthe Vatican Question), common sense and conceptions of the world, and the importance of folklore.Gramscis so-called cultural writings are obviously important here.

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Bibliography

Gramsci, A. (1996-) Prison Notebooks, 3 volumes to date (new translation by Joseph Buttigieg)

Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks

Gramsci, A. (1995) Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks

Gramsci, A. (1985) Selections from Cultural Writings

Gramsci, A. (1977) Selections from Political Writings (1910-1920)

Gramsci, A. (1978) Selections from Political Writings (1921-1926)

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Gramsci, A. (1994) Letters from Prison, 2 volumes

Introductions

Anderson, P. (1980) The Antinomies of Gramsci, New Left Review, 100, 5-78

Ives, P. (2004) Language and Hegemony in Gramsci, London: Pluto.

Martin, J. (1998) Gramscis Political Analysis: a Critical Introduction, Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.

Ransome, P. (1992) Antonio Gramsci: a New Introduction, Brighton: Harvester-Wheatsheaf.

Sassoon, A.S. (1980) Gramscis Politics, London: Croom Helm.

Simon, R. (1982) Gramscis Political Thought: an Introduction, London: Lawrence & Wishart.

Other Reading

Bakker, I. and Gill, S. (eds) (2003) Power, Production and Social Reproduction, London: Palgrave,Chs 1 and 2.

Bellamy, R. (1990) Gramsci, Croce and the Italian political tradition, History of Political Thought, 11(2), 313-317

Boothman, D. (2008) The sources for Gramscis concept of hegemony, Rethinking Marxism, 20 (2),201-215.

Boothman, D. (2012) Islam in Gramscis journalism and Prison Notebooks: the shifting patterns ofhegemony, Historical Materialism, 20 (4), 115-40.

Borg, C., Buttigieg, J.A., and Mayo, P., eds (2002) Gramsci and Education, Oxford: Rowman &Littlefield.

Brennan, T. (2007) Wars of Position: The Cultural Politics of Left and Right, New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press.

Buci-Glucksmann, C. (1980) Gramsci and the State, London: Lawrence & Wishart.

Buttigieg, J. (1995) Philology and politics: returning to the text of Antonio Gramscis PrisonNotebooks, boundary 2, 21 (2), 98-138.

Cammett, J.M. (1969) Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of Italian Communism, Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press.

Carlucci, A. (2014) Gramsci and Languages: Unification, Diversity, Hegemony, Chicago: Haymarket.

Cox, R. (1983) Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations: An Essay in Method, Millennium 12:162-75.

Cox, R. (1996) Social Forces, States, and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory in R.Cox and T. Sinclair (eds) Approaches to Social Order, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 85-123.

Crehan, K. (2002) Gramsci, Culture and Anthropology, London: Pluto.

Davidson, A.B. (1984) Gramsci, the peasantry and popular culture, Journal of Peasant Studies, 11 (4),139-154

Day, R.J.F. (2005) Gramsci is dead. Anarchist currents in the newest social movements, London:Pluto.

Dombrowski, R.S. (1989) Antonio Gramsci, Boston: Twayne.

Ekers, M., Hart, G., Kipfer, S. and Loftus, A.(eds) (2013) Gramsci, Space, Nature, Politics, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

Femia, J.F. (1981) Gramscis Political Thought: Hegemony, consciousness, and the revolutionaryprocess, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Femia, J.F. (2005) Gramsci, Machiavelli and international relations, Political Quarterly, 76 (4), 341-9.

Frosini, F. and G. Liguori, eds (2004) Le parole di Gramsci, Rome: Carocci.

Gibbon, P. (1983) Gramsci, Eurocommunism and the Comintern, Economy & Society, 12 (3), 328-366

Gill, S.R., ed. (1993) Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Gill, S.R. (1995) Globalization, Market Civilization and Disciplinary Neo-Liberalism, Millennium, 24(3): 399-423.

Green, M., ed. (2011a) Rethinking Gramsci, London: Routledge.

Green, M. (2011b) Rethinking the Subaltern and the Question of Censorship in Gramscis PrisonNotebooks, Postcolonial Studies, 14 (4), 387-404.

Ives, P. and Lacorte, R. (eds) (2010), Gramsci, Language, and Translation, London: Rowman &Littlefield.

Ives, P. and Short, N. (2013) On Gramsci and the International: a textual analysis, Review ofInternational Studies, 39 (3), 621-42.

Jessop, B. (1982) The Capitalist State: Marxist Theories and Methods, Oxford: Martin Robertson (alsodownloadable from http://www.bobjessop.org)

Jessop, B. (2005) Gramsci as a spatial theorist, Critical Review of International Social and PoliticalPhilosophy, 8 (4), 1-17

Krtke, M. (2011) Antonio Gramscis contribution to critical economics, Historical Materialism, 19(3), 63-105.

Landy, M. (1986) Culture and politics in the work of Antonio Gramsci, boundary 2, 14 (3), 43-70.

Martin, J. (ed.) (2001) Antonio Gramsci: Critical Assessments, 4 volumes, London: Routledge.

Mayo, P. (ed.) (2010) Gramsci and Educational Thought, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

Morera, E. (1980) Gramscis Historicism, London: Routledge.

Morera, E. (2014) Gramsci, Materialism, and Philosophy, London: Routledge.

Morton, A. (2007) Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Economy,London: Pluto.

Morton, A. (2013) The limits of sociological Marxism?,Historical Materialism 21 (1),130.

Mouffe, C., ed. (1979) Gramsci and Marxist Theory, London: Routledge.

Nelson-Coutinho, C. (2013) Gramscis Political Thought, Chicago: Haymarket Books.

Roberts, D.D. (2011) Reconsidering Gramscis interpretation of fascism, Journal of Modern ItalianStudies, 16 (2), 239255

Saccarelli, E. (2011) The intellectual in question: Antonio Gramsci and the crisis of academia, CulturalStudies, 25 (6), 757-782.

Sassoon, A.S., ed. (1982) Approaches to Gramsci, London: Writers & Readers.

Srivastava, N. and Bhattacharya, B. (eds) (2011) The Postcolonial Gramsci, London: Routledge.

Thomas, P. (2006) Modernity as passive revolution: Gramsci and the fundamental concepts ofhistorical materialism, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, 17 (2), 61-78.

Thomas, P. (2011) The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony, and Marxism, Leiden: Brill.

Wainwright, J. (2010) On Gramscis conceptions of the world, Transactions of the Institute of BritishGeographers, 35 (4), 507-21

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