Book•
Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci
01 Jan 2015-
TL;DR: The first selection published from Gramsci's Prison Notebooks to be made available in Britain, and was originally published in the early 1970s as discussed by the authors, was the first publication of the Notebooks in the UK.
Abstract: Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, written between 1929 and 1935, are the work of one of the most original thinkers in twentieth century Europe. Gramsci has had a profound influence on debates about the relationship between politics and culture. His complex and fruitful approach to questions of ideology, power and change remains crucial for critical theory. This volume was the first selection published from the Notebooks to be made available in Britain, and was originally published in the early 1970s. It contains the most important of Gramsci's notebooks, including the texts of The Modern Prince, and Americanism and Fordism, and extensive notes on the state and civil society, Italian history and the role of intellectuals. 'Far the best informative apparatus available to any foreign language readership of Gramsci.' Perry Anderson, New Left Review 'A model of scholarship' New Statesman
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01 Jan 2010
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the connections between the self and society in a theory of hegemony, where hegemony is considered a process based on leadership, rather than a state built on domination.
Abstract: In strictly political terms, the Gramscian concept of subalternity applies to those groups in society who are lacking autonomous political power. In Gramsci’s time these groups were easily identified, and much of the work around the concept of subalternity has centred on groups like peasants and the proletariat. But Gramsci also argued that subalternity existed on a broader scale than this, including people from different religions or cultures, or those existing at the margins of society. This aspect of Gramsci’s work is often overlooked, because many writers are interested in Gramsci’s political theory, which they use to analyse the way in which capitalism, as a structural system, has become hegemonic over time. The focus here is on the history of organised groups and their organised struggle. Hence, the emphasis is largely on white, male-oriented institutions of power. But Gramsci argued that hegemony did not exist merely at this level. Rather, he argued that hegemony comes from below, originating in the thoughts, beliefs and actions of everyday people who may or may not see themselves as part of organised groups. Hence, Gramsci was intensely aware of the way hegemony operated at a personal level. Capitalist hegemony was not, is not, possible, without a complete identification at the level of the self. This paper seeks to expand on some of Gramsci’s thinking in this area, in an attempt to understand the connections between the self and society in a theory of hegemony, where hegemony is considered a process based on leadership, rather than a state built on domination. It is through an analysis of what hegemonic processes exclude (or make subaltern), that we can expand our understanding of how hegemony works, and of how it may be resisted.
45 citations
TL;DR: In the case of Jacob Zuma's controversial appeals to his Zuluess in the run-up to the South African elections of 2009, the authors proposes a different analysis that grounds a more contemporary mode of ethnic attachment in the dynamics of post-Fordist sociality.
Abstract: The expression of ethnicity in postcolonial public life is typically regarded as a regression to the legacies of a colonial rule of difference. Taking the case of Jacob Zuma's controversial appeals to his Zuluness in the run-up to the South African elections of 2009, I propose a different analysis that grounds a more contemporary mode of ethnic attachment in the dynamics of post-Fordist sociality. Zuma's supporters utterly rejected the concate- nation of culture, local authority, and ethnic population. It was Zuma's own identification with Zuluness in his personal life that made him into an inti- mate, of the very most up-to-date kind. Through this identification his sup- porters hoped to inhabit an unmediated relationship with a powerful and loving state, in scenes of embrace with ethnically grounded normalcy and security. (Keywords: Post-Fordism, ethnicity, youth, south Africa, Zulu)
45 citations
TL;DR: The ostracism of Hyperbolos, a poneros and sykophant, realized a comic plot, bordered on Pharmakos ritual, and inaugurated a period of increasingly violent stasis between chrestoi and poneroi that included the affairs of the Hermai and the Mysteries and the oligarchic takeovers of 411 and 404 as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The ostracism of Hyperbolos, a poneros and sykophant, realized a comic plot, bordered on Pharmakos ritual, and inaugurated a period of increasingly violent stasis between chrestoi and poneroi that included the affairs of the Hermai and the Mysteries and the oligarchic takeovers of 411 and 404. The stasis ends with the labels poneros and chrestos negotiable. Over the next two generations, citizens of Hyperbolos' profile attained hegemony in Athenian society and the dikasterion evolved as the authoritative venue for the allocation of the labels. This marks the moment when ostracism is an institutional relic. This is the second and final part of a paper whose first part appeared in TAPA 134.1 (2004).
45 citations
DOI•
17 Jul 2014
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore an overview of assertions of power and policing on social media in order to consider the coexistence of citizen counter-power and state power on these platforms.
Abstract: This chapter explores an overview of several assertions of power and policing on social media in order to consider the coexistence of citizen counter-power and state power on these platforms. Digital vigilantism is a process where citizens are collectively offended by other citizen activity, and respond through coordinated retaliation on digital media platforms, including mobile devices and social media platforms. Moreover, swarm collective action can be subsumed as a state or corporate strategy, as 'rhizomatics and distribution signal a new management style, a new physics of organization that is as real as pyramidal hierarchy, corporate bureaucracy, representative democracy, sovereign at, or any other principle of social and political control'. The London Metropolitan Police purchased such software, which provides an aggregated account of future riots and other activity through the collection and processing of citizen communicative data. Yet there is a broader spectrum of user activity of relevance to notions of state activity, politics and power.
45 citations
Cites background or methods from "Selections from the prison notebook..."
...My use of the term ‘ideology’ is not in the Marxian sense of ‘false consciousness’ but in the sense used within the Gramscian current of analysis that sees ideology as an action-oriented system of values and beliefs that allows different groups to make sense of the world (Gramsci 1973)....
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...The ‘people’ is an “amorphous” mass (Gramsci 1973, 72) that has often been reduced to passivity throughout history, and whose activation and mobilisation constitute a fundamental challenge for emancipatory politics....
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...…crisis, social media, and the valuing of participation attached to them, have come to offer protest movements and emerging parties a powerful channel through which to construct new forms of engagement with that “amorphous” (Gramsci 1973) social base that goes under the name of the ‘people.’...
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue for a performative approach to the analysis of cultural identity in the Andes, drawing on empirical evidence in the form of verbal discourses recorded during field research in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia.
Abstract: This article argues for a performative approach to the analysis of cultural identity in the Andes, drawing on empirical evidence in the form of verbal discourses recorded during field research in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Inspired by deconstructionist theory and method, the author explores the means by which speakers constitute their subject positions in the act of speaking, by means of certain discursive strategies that do not necessarily include the lexicon of social classification. Where such signifiers (‘indigena’, ‘mestizo’, etc.) are resorted to, she shows how these are inexorably destabilized in verbal performances; closure of identity is ever ‘deferred’ – the ‘strategic essentialism’ (Spivak) evoked in indigenous political discourse, for example, may also be interpreted within this framework.
45 citations
Cites background from "Selections from the prison notebook..."
...(Femia, 1988, p. 43, citing Gramsci, 1971) While Gramsci sees people’s actions as evidence of the underlying conception of the world pertaining to their social group, the apparent contradiction expressed in their words emanates from influences coming from outside the group, as he proposes: ‘for…...
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...…expressed in their words emanates from influences coming from outside the group, as he proposes: ‘for reasons of submission and intellectual subordination, [the group] has adopted a conception which is not its own but is borrowed from another group’ (Femia, 1988, p. 43, citing Gramsci, 1971)....
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