Language and hegemony in Gramsci

219 Pages·12.805 MB·

by  Ives, Peter R., Gramsci, Antonio

Language and Hegemony in Gramsci
READING GRAMSCI
General Editor: Joseph A. Buttigieg
Also available
GRAMSCI, CULTURE AND ANTHROPOLOGY
AN INTRODUCTORY TEXT
Kate Crehan
Language and Hegemony
in Gramsci
Peter Ives
Pluto Press Fernwood Publishing
LONDON ANN ARBOR, MI WINNIPEG, MANITOBA
First published 2004 by Pluto Press
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Fernwood Publishing
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© Peter Ives 2004
The right of Peter Ives to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN (Pluto) 0 7453 1666 2 hardback
ISBN (Pluto) 0 7453 1665 4 paperback
ISBN (Fernwood) 1 55266 139 3
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Ives, Peter, 1968-
Language and hegemony in Gramsci / Peter Ives.
p. cm. — (Reading Gramsci)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-7453-1666-2 — ISBN 0-7453-1665-4 (pbk.)
1. Gramsci, Antonio, 1891-1937—Views on sociolinguistics.
2. sociolinguistics. I. Title. II. Series
P85. G72I93 2004
335.43'092—dc22 2004006313
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Ives, Peter R., 1968-
Language and hegemony in Gramsci / Peter Ives.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-55266-139-3
1. Gramsci, Antonio, 1891-1937—Knowledge—Linguistics.
2. Gramsci, Antonio, 1891-1937—Contributions in political science.
3. Communism and linguistics. 4. Language and languages—Political
aspects. 5. Political science. I. Title.
HX298.7.G73I85 2004
335.43'092 C2004-902139-7
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
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Contents
Reading Gramsci viii
Joseph A. Buttigieg
Acknowledgments xi
Abbreviations xiii
Introduction 1
Language and hegemony in Gramsci 1
The pervasiveness of Gramsci's hegemony 2
Approaching language and hegemony 5
Overview 8
1. Language and Social Theory: The Many
Linguistic Turns 12
Language, production and politics in the
twentieth century 12
The many 'linguistic turns' 15
Saussure's structural approach to language 16
The structuralist turn towards language 21
Philosophy's 'linguistic turn' 25
The many other 'linguistic turns' 29
Marxism and language 29
Conclusion 31
2. Linguistics and Politics in Gramsci's Italy 33
Gramsci's home, Sardinia 34
The Southern Question and the Risorgimento 35
The Language Question 36
Gramsci's youth 38
'Beyond the Wide Waters' 41
Gramsci's linguistics 43
Italian linguistics 44
Bartoli's polemic against the Neogrammarians 47
Idealist linguistics and Benedetto Croce 53
v
vi Language and Hegemony in Gramsci
Summary of various approaches to Language 54
Gramsci and Esperanto 55
Conclusion 61
3. Language and Hegemony in the Prison
Notebooks 63
Approaching the Prison Notebooks 64
Non-linguistic understandings of hegemony 67
Two broad themes in hegemony 70
Gramsci's expansion of 'polities' 72
Language, philosophy and intellectuals 72
Subalternity and fragmented 'common sense' 77
Language, nation, collective popular will 82
Language and metaphor 84
The structures of language 89
Two grammars of hegemony 90
Spontaneous grammar 90
Normative grammar 92
Normative history in spontaneous grammar 96
Normative grammar and progressive hegemony 98
Conclusion 101
4. Gramsci's Key Concepts, with Linguistic
Enrichment 102
Passive revolution and ineffective national language 102
War of manoeuvre and war of position 107
War of position as passive revolution 109
National-popular collective will 110
War of position and new social movement alliances 112
Language as a model for the national-popular
collective will 113
Hegemony, political alliances and the united front
against Fascism 114
State and civil society 116
The history of state and civil society 117
The state 119
Conclusion 125
Contents vii
5. Postmodernism, New Social Movements and
Globalization: Implications for Social and
Political Theory 126
Postmodernism, language and relativism: is all
the world a text? 128
Nietzsche, Saussure and Derrida on language 131
Language and relativism in Gramsci 135
Foucault, language and power 138
Power in Gramsci and Foucault 141
New social movements and discourse: Laclau and Mouffe 144
Laclau and Mouffe's linguistically informed 'Hegemony' 153
Globalization 160
Notes 166
Bibliography 187
Index 195
Reading Gramsci
General Editor: Joseph A. Buttigieg
Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), little known outside communist
circles at the time of his death, is now one of the most frequently
cited and widely translated political theorists and cultural critics of
the twentieth century. The first wave of interest in Gramsci was
triggered by the publication, in Italy, of his prison writings, start-
ing with the letters, which appeared in 1947, and continuing with
the six volumes of the thematic edition of the notebooks, the last
of which was brought out in 1951. Within the space of a few years,
hundreds of articles and books were written explicating, analysing
and debating Gramsci's concept of hegemony, his revisionist views
on the history of Italy's unification, his anti-economistic and anti-
dogmatic version of Marxist philosophy, his theory of the state
and civil society, his anti-Crocean literary criticism, his novel
approach to the study of popular culture, his extensive observa-
tions on the role of intellectuals in society, along with other
aspects of his thought. Although long dead, Gramsci became more
than an object of dispassionate study; the intensity of the
discussions surrounding his work and the often heated struggle
over his legacy had, and continue to have, a profound effect on
the political culture and cultural politics of postwar Italy.
During the late 1960s and the 1970s Gramsci's name and ideas
started circulating with increasing frequency throughout
Europe, Latin America and North America (and, to a lesser
extent, elsewhere too). The various currents associated with
Eurocommunism and the 'New Left' that accompanied the swell
of interest in what came to be known as 'Western Marxism' con-
tributed immensely to Gramsci's rise to prominence during this
period. In the anglophone world, the publication, in 1971, of
Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith's superbly edited
Selections from the Prison Notebooks made it possible for scholars
to move from vague and general allusions to Gramsci to serious
study and analysis of his work. Gramscian studies were further
bolstered by various editions in diverse languages of the pre-
prison writings - which, among other things, drew attention to
viii
Reading Gramsci ix
the valuable essay on the Southern Question - and by the
publication, in Italy, of Valentino Gerratana's complete critical
edition of the Quaderni del carcere (1975).
Gramsci's influence became even more pronounced in the
1980s with the spread of cultural studies, the growing fascina-
tion with the question of 'power', and the greater attention that
scholars from different disciplines were devoting to the relations
among culture, society and politics. The rapid decline of interest
in Marxist thought following the events of 1989 had no effect
on Gramsci's 'fortunes'. By that time, as Stuart Hall was among
the first to point out, Gramsci had already 'radically displaced
some of the inheritances of Marxism in cultural studies'. Indeed,
Gramsci's ideas have come to occupy a very special position in
the best known of post-Marxist theories and strategies by the
political left. Furthermore, the ubiquitous concern with the con-
cept of civil society during the past 15 years has rekindled inter-
est in Gramsci's reflections on the subject. Likewise, many of the
issues and topics that currently preoccupy a broad spectrum of
academic intellectuals - subaltern studies, postcolonialism and
North-South relations, modernity and postmodernity, the rela-
tion between theory and praxis, the genealogy of Fascism, the
sociopolitical dimensions of popular culture, hegemony and the
manufacturing of consent, etc. - have motivated many a read-
ing and rereading of Gramsci's texts.
In the 50 years since Gramsci first became an 'object' of study,
his theories and concepts have left their mark on virtually every
field in the humanities and the social sciences. His writings have
been interpreted, appropriated, and even instrumentalized in
many different and often conflicting ways. The amount of pub-
lished material that now surrounds his work - John Cammett's
updated Bibliografm gramsciana comprises over 10,000 items in
30 languages - threatens to overwhelm even the trained scholar
and to paralyse or utterly confuse the uninitiated reader. Yet the
sheer size of the Gramscian bibliography is also an important
indication of the richness of Gramsci's legacy, the continuing
relevance of his ideas, and the immensity of his contribution to
contemporary thought. In many respects, Gramsci has become
a 'classic' that demands to be read. Reading Gramsci, however, is
not quite an easy undertaking; his most important writings
are open-ended, fragmented, multidirectional explorations,