Reading the Quaderni Del Carcere : the Political Project of Antonio Gramsci

University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-2006 Reading the Quaderni del carcere : the political project of Antonio Gramsci. Manuel S. Almeida Rodriguez University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Almeida Rodriguez, Manuel S., "Reading the Quaderni del carcere : the political project of Antonio Gramsci." (2006). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 2401. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/2401 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. READING THE QUADERNI DEL CARCERE: THE POLITICAL PROJECT OF ANTONIO GRAMSCI A Dissertation Presented by MANUEL S. ALMEIDA RODRIGUEZ Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 2006 Department of Political Science © Copyright by Manuel S. Almeida Rodriguez 2006 All Rights Reserved READING THE QUADERNI DEL CARCERE: THE POLITICAL PROJECT OF ANTONIO GRAMSCI A Dissertation Presented by MANUEL S. ALMEIDA RODRIGUEZ Approved as to style and content by: £ Nicholas Xenos, Chair DEDICATION To my loving daughter. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project is the end result of a long intellectual journey began almost seven years ago, when I first read Gramsci and visited the Fondazione Istituto Gramsci in Rome. I have incurred in many debts of gratitude since then. First, 1 would like to thank my chair, Nicholas Xenos, for his continual support, engaging discussion, and constant feedback through graduate school. 1 also owe thanks to the other members of the committee, Srirupa Roy and Roberto Ludovico, for their insight and support. A special appreciation and thanks are also due to mentor and friend Georg H. Fromm of the University of Puerto Rico with whom I first discussed the dissertation project and with whom I have maintained a constant dialogue over it. I want to thank a number of people in the Political Science Department for support and help provided in various capacities, including: Donna Dove, Barbara Ciesluk, M. J. Peterson, Barbara Cruickshank, and Dean Robinson. I owe a very special thanks to Roberto Alejandro, teacher and friend, to whose theory seminars I owe so much. My thanks also to colleagues and friends Antonio Y. Vazquez, Alex Betancourt, and Robert Venator. Finally, I owe very special thanks to a particular group of people. My brother Gabriel De La Luz, for his friendship, encouragement, and invaluable intellectual camaraderie. Carlos Suarez for his insight, friendship, and support. Jon E. Zibbel, for being my unofficial committee member, for the great intellectual stimulus, his friendship, and for wanting to convince me of the importance of the work I was doing. To my loving and supporting parents, Manuel Almeida and Enid Rodriguez. And to my daughter Laura V. Almeida Delgado, who has been my north throughout these last three years. V ABSTRACT READING THE QUADERNl DEL CARCERE: THE POLITICAL PROJECT OE ANTONIO GRAMSCI FEBRUARY 2006 MANUEL S. ALMEIDA RODRIGUEZ, B.A., UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Nicholas Xenos The present work provides an interpretative key with which to render a consistent approach to the mature politico-theoretical coipus of Antonio Gramsci, the Quaderni del carcere, composed from 1929 to 1935 while imprisoned under the fascist regime in Italy. My contention is that the concern over the relations between leaders and led, governing and governed, lies as a basic matrix underneath the different groups of thematic notes contained in his prison notebooks. Thus, in his notes regarding political matters the most important reflection concerns his notion of hegemony to describe the specificity of the modern state, which rests in the constant organization of the consent of the subjects and not in its coercive capacity. In his notes regarding philosophical matters, in interlocution with Benedetto Croce and N. Bukharin, Gramsci’s thinking centers on the relationship of Marxism towards common sense and proposing a dialectical relationship between them. In his notes concerning literature, Gramsci’s approach is equally political in that he 19“^ reappraises the committed literary criticism of Francesco De Sanctis in the Century in Italy as for Marxism, and in addition critiques the lack a ot a national-popular literature his notes on well as the paternalistic attitude of some Italian literary figures. Finally, in VI language, he shows great interest in the relationship between dialects and unitary language surely out of the social and political problem of the ‘language question’ in Italy. Gramsci values the progressive effect of the unification of language under standard Italian for the purpose of international communication, but is extremely sensible to the dialectal reality of the different regions in the Italian peninsula. My work is both a theoretical and historico-critical reflection on Gramsci’ s intellectual enterprise while in prison. I have drawn my interpretations and conclusions from a close reading of the main texts in their original language and from a detailed analysis of the pertinent secondary literature. vii CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABSTRACT vi CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION 1 II. APPROACHING GRAMSCI AND THE QUADERNI DEL CARCERE 13 III. FIRST STEPS: READING THE FIRST NOTEBOOK 53 IV. GRAMSCrS THEORY OF HEGEMONY, THE STATE, AND POLITICAL STRATEGY 72 V. PHILOSOPHY AND MARXISM IN THE QUADERNI 1 19 VI. LITERARY CRITICISM, LITERATURE, AND LANGUAGE IN THE QUADERNI 149 VII. CONCLUSION 181 BIBLIOGRAPHY 184 viii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION To create a new culture does not mean only to individually make “original” discoveries, it means also and especially to critically promote the truths already discovered, to “socialize them” in a manner of speaking and thus make them become a foundation of vital actions, an element of coordination, and of intellectual and moral order. That a mass of men be conducted to think coherently and in a unitary way the real present is a “philosophical” fact much more important and “original” than the discovery by a philosophical “genius” of a new truth that remains as patrimony of small intellectual groups. Antonio Gramsci, Notebook 1 1, Quaderni del carcere The present work provides a consistent intei*pretative key with which to interpret the whole corpus of Gramsci’s Quadenu del carcere, an immense body of politico- theoretical work that is literally fragmentary on the surface. The elaboration of this interpretative key is at the same time an inherent incursion into Gramsci’s very rich political theory. That is, the important elements constitutive of his political theory -the leitmotifs (to take a word used by Gramsci himself in his notes on methods of interpretation) of his mature work- are projected back into the materiality ot the prison writings to convey a common theme underlying what at the suit ace is a rough collection of notes (and for Gramsci the Quadenu were no more than material tor lurther elaboration with the proper resources).' We propose that Gramsci’s concern with the relationship between governing and governed or between leaders and led -with a certain different plans ot ' For a discussion of the fragmentary nature of the Quaderni and the work thought out by Gramsci, before and while writing the notebooks, see Giorgio 129-184), and Joseph A. Baratta (2()()(): 29-44), Francisco Fernandez Buey (2001: Buttigieg ( 1992: 1-64). 1 emphasis on the elements of coercion and consent- is present even in his writings of themes that are not immediately political.^ This means that when reading his notes either on language and grammar, his critique of Bukharin and Croce, his notes on literature, on philosophy, on education, on intellectuals, on the political party, on journalism, on the State, etc., the underlying theme consists in thinking about the articulation of leaders and led, whether of the dominant social relations or of an alternative. In synthesis, underneath the supposedly disinterested //Vr ewig (for ever) of his intentions,'^ expressed very early on in his imprisonment, there still lies a potential outline for a future political project in his notebooks; a political project, moreover, that takes into account the reality of defeat of his (or ours for that matter) socio-historical circumstances.'^ As Gramsci himself writes, one has to get accustomed to being stereo della storia, although without renouncing the importance of fertilizing the terrain for better prospects of change in the future. Or, to quote what Gramsci often used as a motto, ‘pessimism of intelligence, optimism of will’.'^ The bulk of the project is composed of semi-autonomous chapters, each one putting to the test the interpretative key with a specific group of thematic notes: thus, the fourth chapter deals with his notes on the State, hegemony, and the political party; the ^ We say “not immediately political” because in Gramsci’s conception ‘everything is political’. This general contention serves in terms of our project because in a sense it wants to give filling to that general statement. ^ For the often quoted letter of Gramsci’s intention of working in prison on something /iVr ewig, see Antonio Gramsci (1996: 54-57). This letter is also important, moreover, in that studies in prison. We elaborate in it Gramsci establishes one of the first plans for his further on this matter in the second chapter. still so widely read This last remark suggests that one of the reasons why Gramsci is his; that is, we are still piacticing today is that our historical situation is analogous to and radical piojects. critical political theory in a context ot global defeat tor progressive the Although Gramsci attributed this phrase to French intellectual Romain Rolland, exact phrasing in Gramsci’s usage is his own.

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