The Routledge Guidebook to Gramsci's Prison Notebooks

321 Pages·2015·1.632 MB·English

by  John Schwarzmantel

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Routledge Guides to the Great Books
The Routledge Guidebook to
’
Gramsci s Prison Notebooks
Gramsci’sPrisonNotebooksareoneofthemostimportantandoriginalsourcesof
modern political philosophy, but they present great difficulties to the reader. Not
originallyintendedforpublication,theirfragmentarycharacterandtheiroftencryptic
languagecanmystifyreaders,leadingtomisinterpretationofthetext.TheRoutledge
Guidebook to Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks provides readers with the historical
background, textual analysis and other relevant information needed for a greater
understandingandappreciationofthisclassictext.Thisguidebook:
(cid:1) ExplainstheargumentspresentedbyGramsciinaclearandstraightforwardway,
analysingthekeyconceptsofthenotebooks
(cid:1) Situates Gramsci’s ideas in the context of his own time, and in the history of
political thought, demonstrating the innovation and originality of the Prison
Notebooks
(cid:1) Provides critique and analysis of Gramsci’s conceptualization of politics and
history(andcultureingeneral),withreferencetocontemporary(i.e.present-day)
exampleswhererelevant
(cid:1) ExaminestherelevanceofGramsciinthe modernworldanddiscusseswhyhis
ideashavesuchresonanceinacademicdiscourse.
FeaturinghistoricalandpoliticalexamplestoillustrateGramsci’sarguments,along
with suggestions for further reading, this is an invaluable guide for anyone who
wantstoengagemorefullywiththePrisonNotebooks.
John Schwarzmantel is Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Politics and
InternationalStudies,UniversityofLeeds.
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THE ROUTLEDGE GUIDES
TO THE GREAT BOOKS
Series Editor: Anthony Gottlieb
The Routledge Guides to the Great Books provide ideal introductions to the work
of the most brilliant thinkers of all time, from Aristotle to Marx and Newton to
Wollstonecraft. At the core of each Guidebook is a detailed examination of the
centralideasandargumentsexpoundedinthegreatbook.Thisisbookendedbyan
openingdiscussionofthecontextwithinwhichtheworkwaswrittenandaclosing
lookatthelastingsignificanceofthetext.TheRoutledgeGuidestotheGreatBooks
therefore provide students everywhere with complete introductions to the most
important,influentialandinnovativebooksofalltime.
Available:
Hobbes’LeviathanGlenNewey
Galileo’sDialogueMauriceA.Finocchiaro
Aristotle’sNicomacheanEthicsGerardJ.Hughes
Hegel’sPhenomenologyofSpiritRobertStern
Locke’sEssayConcerningHumanUnderstandingE.J.Lowe
Wollstonecraft’sAVindicationoftheRightsofWomanSandrineBergès
Wittgenstein’sPhilosophicalInvestigationsMarieMcGinn
Heidegger’sBeingandTimeStephenMulhall
Plato’sRepublicNickolasPappas
Descartes’MeditationsGaryHatfield
Forthcoming:
Thoreau’sCivilDisobedienceBobPeppermanTaylor
DeBeauvoir’sTheSecondSexNancyBauer
Mill’sOnLibertyJonathanRiley
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Routledge Guides to the Great Books
The Routledge Guidebook
’
to Gramsci s Prison Notebooks
John Schwarzmantel
Routledge RRoouuttleleddggee
RoutledgReoutledge
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Firstpublished2015
byRoutledge
2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN
andbyRoutledge
711ThirdAvenue,NewYork,NY10017
RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninformabusiness
©2015JohnSchwarzmantel
TherightofJohnSchwarzmanteltobeidentifiedasauthorofthis
workhasbeenassertedbyhiminaccordancewithsections77and78ofthe
Copyright,DesignsandPatentsAct1988.
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproduced
orutilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orother
means,nowknownorhereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingand
recording,orinanyinformationstorageorretrievalsystem,without
permissioninwritingfromthepublishers.
Trademarknotice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybetrademarksorregistered
trademarks,andareusedonlyforidentificationandexplanationwithoutintent
toinfringe.
BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData
Schwarzmantel,J.J.(JohnJ.),1947-
TheRoutledgeguidebooktoGramsci’sPrisonnotebooks/John
Schwarzmantel.
pagescm.--(TheRoutledgeguidestothegreatbooks)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
1.Gramsci,Antonio,1891-1937.Quadernidelcarcere.2.Politicalscience--
Philosophy.I.Title.II.Title:GuidebooktoGramsci’sPrisonnotebooks.
HX288.G7S3572015
335.43092--dc23
2014027726
ISBN:978-0-415-71416-7(hbk)
ISBN:978-0-415-71417-4(pbk)
ISBN:978-1-315-73385-2(ebk)
TypesetinGaramond
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
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C
ONTENTS
Series editor’s preface viii
Preface x
References to Gramsci’s own works xiii
1 Gramsci before the Prison Notebooks 1
The early Gramsci 5
Suggestions for further reading 28
2 The Nature and genesis of Gramsci’s Prison
Notebooks 30
Key themes and originality of the Prison Notebooks 30
Nature and writing of the Prison Notebooks 39
Suggestions for further reading 66
3 Intellectuals and education 68
The problem of intellectuals 68
Defining the intellectual 72
Organic intellectuals and the political party 81
On education 89
Suggestions for further reading 94
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vi CONTENTS
4 History and modernity 96
The Risorgimento: hegemony and subalternity 98
Passive revolution 104
From Risorgimento to fascism, and beyond 110
History and modernity 115
Americanism and Fordism 123
Socialism and modernity 127
Fordism in communism and fascism 133
Gramsci as a theorist of modernity 143
Suggestions for further reading 149
5 Politics, state and civil society 150
Interpreting Machiavelli 154
The autonomy of the political: against economic
determinism 159
The political party as the modern Prince 167
Rulers and ruled: leadership and the masses 174
Caesarism and the crisis of the state 181
Concepts of the state 189
The sphere of civil society 199
War of position 205
Suggestions for further reading 212
6 Philosophy and Marxism 214
The philosophy of praxis 214
What is philosophy? 218
Marxism as popular philosophy 222
Historicism 226
Base, superstructure, historical bloc 233
The critique of Croce 242
Immanence and transcendence 255
Critical evaluation 261
Suggestions for further reading 265
7 The afterlife and influence of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks 266
Gramsci and post-war Italy 268
National and global: debates outside Italy 278
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CONTENTS vii
Gramsci and the analysis of Thatcherism 285
Conclusion: the Prison Notebooks today 289
Suggestions for further reading 293
Bibliography 294
Index 302
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S ’
ERIES EDITOR S PREFACE
‘The past is a foreign country,’ wrote a British novelist,
L. P. Hartley: ‘they do things differently there.’ The greatest
books in the canon of the humanities and sciences can be
foreign territory, too. This series is a set of excursions written by
expert guides who know how to make such places become more
familiar.
All the books covered in this series, however long ago they
were written, have much to say to us now, or help to explain the
ways in which we have come to think about the world. Each
volume is designed not only to describe a set of ideas, and
how they developed, but also to evaluate them. This requires
what one might call a bifocal approach. To engage fully with
an author, one has to pretend that he or she is speaking to us;
but to understand a text’s meaning, it is often necessary to
remember its original audience, too. It is all too easy to
mistake the intentions of an old argument by treating it as a
contemporary one.
The Routledge Guides to the Great Books are aimed at students
in the broadest sense, not only those engaged in formal
study. The intended audience of the series is all those who
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SERIESEDITOR’SPREFACE ix
want to understand the books that have had the largest
effects.
Anthony Gottlieb
Series editor Anthony Gottlieb is the author of
The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy
from the Greeks to the Renaissance.