The “Italian reading of Gramsci” this chapter seeks to provincialize is deeply rooted in the political and intellectual history of the country after World War 2. The reading of Gramsci was never a neutral scholarly exercise in Italy. His thought was always part of the stakes in the elaboration and discussion of the peculiar politics of the Communist Party. Gramsci was “appropriated” by the Party (and particularly by its leadership gathered around secretary Palmiro Togliatti) soon after the end of the war, and his reading (as well as the editorial work around his unpublished works) became a cornerstone in the building of an “imagined continuity” of the history and politics of the party since its foundation in 1921. Dealing with Gramsci meant for a long time dealing with this political stake in Italy. And it should not be surprising that in the early 1960s, while Gramsci began to “travel” and to nurture creative and heterodox intellectual and political projects in different parts of the world, the break with Communist orthodoxy in Italy often expressed itself in the form of a break with Gramsci. This essay aims at reconstructing (and deconstructing) the history of the “Italian reading of Gramsci” since the end of the Second World War (section 1). In the second section, it discusses in some detail the ways in which one of the most significant Marxist heresies in Italy (“workerism” ) dealt with it. The third section deals with the ways in which, with the political defeat of the Italian Communist Party at the end of the 1970s and then with its dissolution in 1991, Gramsci “came back home” and a new season of Gramsci studies in Italy began, which was also characterized by the discovery of the word relevance of his thought. And the very relation of Gramsci to the Italian context began to be investigated in new ways. The fourth and last section discusses some of the issues at stake in recent developments of Italian Gramsci studies and outlines a research agenda for the near future.
Provincializing the Italian Reading of Gramsci / S. Mezzadra; P. Capuzzo. - STAMPA. - (2012), pp. 34-54.
Provincializing the Italian Reading of Gramsci
MEZZADRA, SANDRO;CAPUZZO, PAOLO
2012
Abstract
The “Italian reading of Gramsci” this chapter seeks to provincialize is deeply rooted in the political and intellectual history of the country after World War 2. The reading of Gramsci was never a neutral scholarly exercise in Italy. His thought was always part of the stakes in the elaboration and discussion of the peculiar politics of the Communist Party. Gramsci was “appropriated” by the Party (and particularly by its leadership gathered around secretary Palmiro Togliatti) soon after the end of the war, and his reading (as well as the editorial work around his unpublished works) became a cornerstone in the building of an “imagined continuity” of the history and politics of the party since its foundation in 1921. Dealing with Gramsci meant for a long time dealing with this political stake in Italy. And it should not be surprising that in the early 1960s, while Gramsci began to “travel” and to nurture creative and heterodox intellectual and political projects in different parts of the world, the break with Communist orthodoxy in Italy often expressed itself in the form of a break with Gramsci. This essay aims at reconstructing (and deconstructing) the history of the “Italian reading of Gramsci” since the end of the Second World War (section 1). In the second section, it discusses in some detail the ways in which one of the most significant Marxist heresies in Italy (“workerism” ) dealt with it. The third section deals with the ways in which, with the political defeat of the Italian Communist Party at the end of the 1970s and then with its dissolution in 1991, Gramsci “came back home” and a new season of Gramsci studies in Italy began, which was also characterized by the discovery of the word relevance of his thought. And the very relation of Gramsci to the Italian context began to be investigated in new ways. The fourth and last section discusses some of the issues at stake in recent developments of Italian Gramsci studies and outlines a research agenda for the near future.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
