Gramsci Syllabus – Roberto Dainotto

A note on editions

Given that our discussions will be in English, this class will have to cope with a bit of an editorial problem: as of today, there is no complete English translation of the Prison Notebooks. While this could in itself be matter for reflection, our syllabus tries to put the notebooks in their (intended? original?) order by relying on the following English translations:

For Notebooks 1-8: Gramsci, Antonio. Prison Notebooks. Ed. Joseph Buttigieg, New York: Columbia University Press, 1992-.

For Notebook 25 on subaltern historiography: Gramsci, Antonio. Subaltern Social Groups: A Critical Edition of Prison Notebook 25. Eds. Joseph Buttigieg and , New York: Columbia University Press, 2021.

And, for the rest of the notebooks, on this concordance table of:

Gramsci, Antonio. Selections From the Prison Notebooks. Eds. Quintin Hoare, and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, 1st ed., New York: International Publishers, 1971.
Gramsci, Antonio. Further Selections From the Prison Notebooks. ed. Derek Boothman, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995.
Gramsci, Antonio. Selections From Cultural Writings. Eds. David Forgacs, and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985.

Needless to say, you should feel free to read the Notebooks in any other language than English.

Syllabus

Week 1 (August 28-30): Introduction

There are no required readings for today’s class. If, on the other hand, you want to familiarize with some of the current discussions on/around Gramsci, below is a very idiosyncratic list. Read what you please — or nothing at all.

Mark Engler and Paul Engler. “Lessons from Gramsci for social movements today.” Waging Nonviolence. August 1, 2023. Available here.

Marzia Maccaferri. “How Antonio Gramsci’s Ideas Went Global.” Jacobin. November 1, 2021. Available here.

Dal Maso, Juan. “The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci: A Rereading.” Historical Materialism 1 (2021): 1-39. Available here.
The essay reconstructs one of the major diatribes around Gramsci, launched in 1977 by Perry Anderson, and re-ignited more recently as the querelle of Gramscian philologists versus activists.

Mohamed, Eid. “Culture and Society During Revolutionary Transformation: Rereading Matthew Arnold and Antonio Gramsci in the Context of the Arab Spring’s Cultural Production.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 23.2 (2020): 150-68. Available here.
The essay is one example of the growing interest in Gramsci in the Arab world.

Some topics for discussion: What are the Prison Notebooks? Overview of publication and reception. Structure and composition of the notebooks. Problems of periodization. Distinction between “miscellany” and “special” notebooks. Distinction among A, B, and C notes.

Week 2 (September 6): Before the Prison Notebooks

Antonio Gramsci, “The Revolution against Capital” (1917); “Our Marx” (1918); “Letter to the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party” (1926); “Some Aspects of the Southern Question” (1926) (All readings for this week are in Sakai/Resources).

Some topics for discussion: The relation of the Notebooks to Gramsci’s political activity before imprisonment; vitalism; voluntarism; idealism; materialism; relation with Marx and Marxism; “intellectuals”; emergence of the term “hegemony.”

Week 3 (September 11-3): Notebook 1 (1929-1930)