This paper reconstructs Gramsci’s account of social objects in light of recent developments in analytic social ontology. It combines elements of Gramsci’s account with that of John Searle, and argues that when taken together their theories constitute a robust account of social reality and a nuanced view of the relation between social reality and power. Searle provides a detailed analysis of the creation of social entities at the level of the agent, while Gramsci, by employing his concepts of hegemony and (...) domination, is able to provide an analysis of the differential ability of societal subgroups to construct the social world. (shrink)

This article evaluates the political effectiveness of the Gramscian-style counterhegemonic strategy employed by the leading Islamist movement in Egypt. The article analyzes, historically and comparatively, the unfolding of this strategy during the period from 1982 to 2007, emphasizing how its success triggered heightened state repression, which ultimately prevented Islamists from capitalizing politically on their growing cultural power. The coercive capacity of modern states, as this article demonstrates, can preserve a regime’s political domination long after it has lost its cultural hegemony. (...) The empirical evidence derived from the Islamist experience in Egypt supports theoretical claims that go beyond the Egyptian case: namely, it exposes the limits of the narrow cultural reading of Gramsci that has become commonplace over the years. (shrink)

Abstract This article examines major methodological issues in Gramsci?s writings that are relevant for re?thinking contemporary political relationships, by considering his use of the ?particular?. It draws on Gramsci?s notes on Chesterton?s Father Brown stories, including his contrast between ?old? Catholic Europe and ?new? Protestant, positivist America, and discusses Gramsci?s critique of positivism and populism with reference to his writings on the palaeontologist Cuvier and the criminologist Cesare Lombroso. It links Gramsci?s use of details and fragments from diverse sources, Father (...) Brown?s methods, and the practice of psychoanalysis. Gramsci?s criticism of Conan Doyle is contrasted with Freud?s admiration for him. It examines the tensions involved in interrogating seemingly unimportant, ?everyday? material and in engaging with the innate conservatism of popular ?common sense? beliefs, whose ?good sense? is nonetheless the necessary point of departure for mass politics. At the same time it argues that in addressing major social and political issues, the ?general?, universal or hegemonic cannot be derived from the ?particular?. It connects these themes to contemporary questions about the status and objectives of different kinds of knowledge and the split between politics and people. It suggests that Gramsci?s aim to go beyond the dichotomy between rationalism and irrationalism has profound implications both for understanding his writings and for their use in contemporary political analysis. (shrink)

Abstract Antonio Gramsci?s philosophy of praxis is characterised by the spatialisation as well as historicisation of its analytical categories. These theoretical practices are deeply intertwined in his ?absolute historicism?. Highlighting the spatiality of Gramsci?s analysis not only enables us to recover the many geographical themes in his work but also provides a useful counterweight to the emphasis on the historical dimensions of his historicism. In addition to obvious references to Gramsci?s use of spatial metaphors and his discussion of the Southern (...) Question, it is shown that many of his key concepts are best interpreted from a spatio?temporal as well as social and material perspective. After introducing the concepts of space, place and scale, the essay shows that all three are relevant to Gramsci?s analyses of issues such as language, the historical significance of the Catholic Church, the role of intellectuals, cosmopolitanism, class and class struggle, Americanism and Fordism, the nature of the Italian state, the social bases of state power, Jacobinism, passive revolution and hegemony. The essay concludes that Gramsci?s interest in place, space and scale was not merely academic but had to do with his analysis of revolutionary conjunctures. (shrink)

This article identifies two tendencies in left-wing approaches toward the social sciences. The first expresses skepticism towards science as a kind of product of the ruling ideology that solely reproduces the status quo. The second worries about the capacity of scientific inquiry to actually change people's ingrained beliefs and prejudices. Antonio Gramsci and W.E.B. Du Bois are representative of these two diverging approaches. Their views on science, however, offer more commonalities than at first meet the eye. They are both critical (...) of sociological traditions that seek to discover universal laws of society, arguing that such an approach fails to grasp the complexity of causality and the role of human action in shaping their lives and history. On the other hand, both see the potential for rigorous and nuanced scientific analysis to offer grounds for concrete action and warn off wishful thinking. By combining their views, this article presents a conception of the role and potential of social scientific inquiry for progressive movements toward social change that navigates between the double-sided concerns represented by Gramsci and Du Bois. (shrink)

A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience.in this short excerpt, John Dewey expresses the pragmatist conviction—first stated by Jane Addams in Democracy and Social Ethics—that a society must cultivate dispositions of curiosity and understanding between its diversely situated members in order to sustain a robust and genuine democracy. It is by our habitual exposure to the experiences of our fellow citizens that we can imagine and understand (...) each other’s diverse situations, struggles, and needs. In enabling such imagination and understanding, we create the possibility of fairly incorporating these diverse perspectives into... (shrink)

Stephen Shapiro and Neil Lazarus interrogate the importance of linguistic theory and translation to Antonio Gramsci’s Marxism and situate these concepts within ongoing debates about the world-literary system. Ultimately, they argue that the translatability of literary or political texts is, or should be, “a matter not of intellectual work, no matter how progressive, but of practical politics.”.

This essay aims to introduce Giovanni Gentile to scholars of Gramsci studies broadly and Gramsci‐education studies more specifically. The largest part of the essay explores Gentile's academic life, his philosophical agenda, and his political career. Having established a basis for understanding the educational reform Gentile enacted as Mussolini's first Minister of Public Instruction, the essay then surveys the substantial contemporaneous and contemporary English‐language material about it. The essay engages this literature only lightly and briefly in conclusion, for the primary purpose (...) of illustrating the danger of eschewing it. (shrink)

While most of Gramsci's party work is well known to education scholars of Gramsci, and the educational aspects of his writings have been repeatedly analyzed, what remains a constant in education‐based Gramsci studies is the nearly universal minimization of this work for what it was, namely party work. For Gramsci, it would have been unthinkable to consider this work outside the framework of a revolutionary party. Yet, for contemporary educational scholars it seems unthinkable to consider Gramsci's work within the framework (...) of a revolutionary party. The goals of this article are to outline Gramsci's interrelated conceptualization of the roles of the revolutionary party; the nature of education within and by the revolutionary party; and the aims of party education. For considerations of space, I limit this analysis to Gramsci's pre‐prison praxis, the period of his active militancy in the PSI and the PCI. I conclude the article with what I consider to be lessons with continued relevance from Gramsci's praxis for the socio‐political economic context faced by today's radical educators. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article explores how neoliberal and populist elements were initially fused in US political talk to legitimize the expansion of corporate power and socioeconomic inequality that has occurred over recent decades. Applying neo-Gramscian critical semiotic analysis to speeches, news texts and legislative statements about the 1981 Reagan economic plan, I illustrate how a distinctive neoliberal-populist discourse articulates signs of ‘the American people’ with signs of market individualism, and further connects these signs to the neoliberal political project’s policy moves to roll (...) back state protections and deliver large tax cuts. Neoliberal populism is a paradigmatic instance of what Stuart Hall has termed the ‘trans-coding’ of distinct semantic elements to form a new hegemonic discourse. Through neoliberal-populist signifying processes, people who are deemed unable or unwilling to inhabit market-centric subjectivities, or to promote policies defined as ‘free market,’ are ideologically drawn outside the perimeters of social esteem and political legitimacy. These processes have created obstacles to imagining a unified, politically effective opposition to the neoliberal project in the United States. Moreover, by ideologically constructing ‘the American people’ as anti-statists in the realm of economic and social welfare policy, neoliberal-populist discourse makes it difficult to articulate democratic values and practices with the state as a mechanism through which greater economic equality and substantive democracy could be realized. My analysis illuminates the immediate historical roots of a public discourse with deep anchors in popular common sense which continues to pervade official US policy talk. The cultural resonance and political influence of neoliberal-populist discourse help to explain the persistence of the neoliberal project in the USA. (shrink)

The work of Slavoj Žižek has become an essential reference point for debates concerning the future of left radical thought and practice. His attacks on identity politics, multiculturalism and ‘radical democracy’ have established him as a leading figure amongst those looking to renew the link between socialist discourse and a transformative politics. However, we contend that despite the undeniable radicality of Žižek’s theoretical approach, his politics offers little in the way of inspiration for the progressive left. On the contrary, his (...) commitment to Lacanian categories reasserts the primordial character of alienation, hierarchy and domination, and his proposed schema for confronting the status quo, the model of the Act, serves to reaffirm rather than contest the given. We suggest that a genuinely transformative politics should (contra Žižek) stress the necessity for the prefiguration of alternatives, of linking and radicalizing ‘petty’ resistances, of encouraging critical and utopian forms of thought and activity. (shrink)

The studies of urban popular culture in modern China in recent years have attracted wide attention from scholars in China and abroad. The symposium, which is composed by Ma Min’s “Injecting vitality into the studies of urban cultural history,” Jiang Jin’s “Issues in the studies of urban popular culture in modern China,” Wang Di’s “The microcosm of Chinese cities: The perspective and methodology of studying urban popular culture from the case of teahouses in Chengdu,” Joseph W. Esherick’s “Remaking the Chinese (...) city: Urban space and urban culture” and Lu Hanchao’s “From elites to common people: The downward trend in the studies of Chinese urban history in the United States,” provide valuable insights on the perspective, trend, and methodology of the studies. (shrink)

This paper seeks to show that the proposition of 'double contingency' introduced by Parsons and defended by Luhmann and Habermas is insufficient under the conditions of contemporary communication societies. In the latter context, the increasing differentiation and organization of communication processes eventuated in the recognition of the epistemic authority of the public, which in turn compels us to conceptualize a new level of contingency. A first step is therefore taken to capture the role of the public in communication societies theoretically (...) by what may be called 'triple contingency'. Since the process of the definition of reality and its outcome, to which the response of the public is central, is best seen in constructivist terms, attention is also paid to relevant methodological and epistemological questions. Key Words: cognitive turn • communication • constructivism • double contingency • Habermas • Luhmann • observation • Parsons • situationalism • the third point of view. (shrink)

This article addresses the problem of two extreme positions in the self-understanding of human beings namely ignoring culture or its over-determination. Though Charles Taylor and Antonio Gramsci are widely known to differ from each other in many respects, we endeavor a congruent reading to evolve a comprehensive perspective. We make avail of their concepts, such as background, horizon, and common sense, to comprehend the nature of the culturally constituted self and its relevance for education. For both Taylor and Gramsci, the (...) human self is situated in a cultural framework. Though the relation between self and culture is constitutive and inevitable, culture does not entirely determine or overshadow the self. This stance gives space for upholding freedom, dignity and liberation of the human self in both of them. While preserving the essential role of culture in the formation of the human self, education must not be reduced to identity politics. Education must incorporate culture, be critical of it and pay attention to forming a critical self. (shrink)

The history of the Nicaraguan Revolution has received considerable analytical attention. Typically, the successful overthrow of the Somoza regime in the late 1970s is associated with the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, a Marxist/socialist inspired vanguard group. While the role Christians played in the revolution is often acknowledged as a significant one, in part because many Sandinista cadres were Christian revolutionaries, little attention has been paid to the degree to which Sandinismo, as a unique perspective on socialism, shares elective affinities (...) with liberation theology, a prophetic expression of Christianity. This manuscript sets out to explore the relationship between liberation theology and Sandinismo-as-socialism. It starts by considering the perspective of Christian revolutionaries on this relationship. It then identifies the electives affinities between the aforementioned cultural frameworks, and it evaluates the Nicaraguan Revolution in light of these elective affinities. The latter evaluation includes exploring the connection between Saint Paul and what it means to be a Sandinista revolutionary. (shrink)

Abstract This article examines Gramsci?s theory of common sense and the implications of this theory for understanding social transformation and theorising political activity. Gramsci analyses common sense as a pervasive, though confused and contradictory, variety of ideology. For Gramsci the point is to challenge and question this pervasive ideology and its incoherence, confusion, passivity, and political conservatism. The task is to involve the construction of a new conception of the world, in opposition to existing belief?systems, and what he terms an (...) ?intellectual and moral reformation?. By transforming modes of thinking and acting, such a transformation is conceived as revolutionising political possibilities, altering the potentialities inherent in a conjuncture. This approach of Gramsci?s dovetails with revolutionary and radical political movements, suggesting a more fundamental challenge to capitalism and a forgotten but very energetic potential project of revolutionary transformation. (shrink)

Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe have attempted to save the concept of ?hegemony? from its economistic and essentialist Marxist roots by incorporating the linguistic influences of post?structuralist theory. Their major Marxist detractors criticise their trajectory as a ?descent into discourse? ? a decay from well?grounded, material reality into the idealistic and problematic realm of language and discourse. Both sides of the debate seem to agree on one thing: the line from Marxism to post?Marxism is the line from the economy to (...) language, from ?reality? to discourse. This article focuses on Gramsci?s writings on language to argue against both sides of this debate. It illustrates how language is central to Gramsci?s historical materialism and that he does not oppose it to materiality. It argues that Gramsci adopted the very term hegemony substantially from his university studies in linguistics ? the debates from which Ferdinand de Saussure also developed structuralism. For Gramsci, such linguistic issues were directly related to the ?questione della lingua? and Italian unification. Moreover, language lies at the centre of Gramsci?s understanding of the relationship between coercion and consent. This not only troubles Laclau & Mouffe?s reading of Gramsci, but it illuminates a more productive conception of hegemony that can address recent debates around post?structuralism and the use of ?hegemony? to analyse globalisation and an increasingly technological and electronic world. (shrink)

Abstract In criticising the Italian idealist philosopher Benedetto Croce ? described by Eric Hobsbawm as the first ?post?Marxist? ? Antonio Gramsci elaborated a distinct theory of history. For Gramsci, philosophers such as Croce developed a subjective account of history based on the progression of philosophical thought rather than problems posed by historical development. This essay develops a ?double reading? of Gramsci. First, it presents an overview of a dominant post?Marxist reading of Gramsci?s approach to historical materialism, which constructs a closed (...) and particularistic understanding of his theory of history. Second, it offers a reading that exposes and unsettles problems within post?Marxism by demonstrating how Gramsci?s focus on changes in social relations threatens the assumptions about both traditional idealism and materialism. It is this theory of history that throws into relief certain features necessary to understanding history as more than just a completely contingent system of articulatory practices. The method of a double reading therefore affords insight into the internal tensions and questionable assumptions of history understood as an association of discourses (first reading). It also avoids developing an account that relies on an ?extrinsic history? of objective forces by combining an appreciation of ethico?political principles alongside economic factors within the struggle over hegemony relevant to contemporary global political economy (second reading). (shrink)

How we think national standard languages came to dominate the world depends on how we conceptualize the way languages are linked to the people that use them. Weberian theory posits the arbitrariness and constructedness of a community based on language. People who speak the same language do not necessarily think of themselves as a community, and so such a community is an intentional, political, and inclusive production. Bourdieusian theory treats language as a form of unequally distributed cultural capital, thus highlighting (...) language’s classed nature. The rise of standard languages thus reflects a change in the class structure of a nationalizing society. In contrast, I move beyond the familiar Western cases on which these theories are based to reveal the shortcomings of both these theoretical approaches. China, with an exceptionally artificial national standard language that was promulgated by the state in an extremely top-down process, highlights the importance of intentionality in both the design of the language and the social function it was supposed to play. Building on Weber and Bourdieu, I argue that even egalitarian language standardization projects, such as the Chinese case, can result in unintended new hierarchies of privilege and power, outrunning the best intentions of their designers. (shrink)

While databases of taboo language word norms exist, none focus specifically on slurs as a category of taboo language. Furthermore, no existing databases include measures of linguistic reclamation, a phenomenon which may specifically affect the processing of slurs. I produced a database in which 155 native or near-native speakers of British English rated 41 LGBTQ+ slurs for a number of word properties and measures of linguistic reclamation. I then ran correlation and demographic group comparison analyses on the resulting database. I (...) found a clear correlation pattern between properties and reclamation behaviours. I also found that there were age-related differences in age of acquisition and familiarity ratings; that gender identity and sexual identity differences were affected by being the target of slurs; and that sexual identity particularly affected differences in reclamation ratings. (shrink)