Gramsci and Cultural Studies in the Dual Economy of the United States a Preliminary Sketch1 Di Renate Holub*

Gramsci and cultural studies in the dual economy of the United States A preliminary sketch1 di Renate Holub*

abstract In this article, I have tried to submit patterns in US academic cultural studies and Gramsci scholarship to a brief comparative analysis against the background of the generic amalgamations of three national formations by the 1980’s: reproduction and maintenance of a consumerist “common sense” through credit card debts, accelerations in economic under-developments in a dual-economy, and the cultural reproduction of a collective psychic anchorage in self-perceptions of exceptionality and moral superiority in relation to racialized “others” in domestic and international spheres. My analysis distinguished patterns in academic cultural studies from those in Gramsci scholarship in that the former predominantly focused on aspects of discriminatory representations in the cultural practices of the “national” spheres whereas the latter tended to orient itself on “international” analyses in human geography, environmental studies, climate change, development theory, global social moments, global conservatisms, and so on. I concluded that in light of the important role which the Gramsci’s legacy had assumed in the UK Birmingham School, the moment is opportune and necessary for Gramsci scholars in the US, as elsewhere, to make use of the most important Gramsci-inspired diagnostic instruments in the development of comprehensive research projects on the neo-liberal manipulations of the material and emotional institutions of diverse populations amidst a dual economy defined post-democratic age.

he academic rise of cultural nipulating public consciousness and con- studies by the 1980’s coin- duct2. As global capitalisms underwent T cided with the crystalliza- successive crises, and purchasing power tion of three major interconnected nation- diminutions limited further expansion of al formations in the United States. First, middle class strata, the population con- the multi-media public relations regime sented to predatory impositions of credit which had been set up since the end of card debts for the continuous satisfaction World War I to “manufacture consent” of under-scrutinized excessive consump- to patterns of material consumption had tion habits3. Second, the engineering of reached unprecedented levels of informa- consent to credit debt coincided with a tion-technological sophistication in ma- major shift in the U.S economy and so-

* University of California, Berkeley.

149 150 _ Gramsci and cultural studies in the dual economy of the United States ciety which has now resulted in what has shifts of the 1980’s and the unprecedented been defined as a “dual economy”4. The manufacturing of consent to unrelenting public relations regimes have ideological- ideologies of materialist consumerisms ly framed and articulated “the new com- pertains to an elite driven organization mon sense” of this shift. It is rooted in a of mass conformity and political acquies- neoliberal political response to the global cence to mass psychological dispositions transformations in capitalism and it now to moral superiority in the domestic and resulted in an economy in which 80% of geopolitical arenas. This organization also the population work in low-wage sectors. dates back to the end of the World War The majority is white. The remaining 20% I era and is reflected in an under-scruti- of the population work in the information nized or unconscious consent to the values technology sectors which are comprised, of “American exceptionalism” in a global according to Peter Temin, of Finance, framework. In the domestic framework, Technology, and Electronics (FTE)5. In it is reflected by both increasing and de- the FTE sector, workers arrive with high creasing historical moments of both active levels of networked social capital and and passive consent to systematic repro- “human capital”, as they are university ductions of racist and misogynistic prac- educated technologists, engineers, and fi- tices7. Against the background of these nancial analysts. The 1% or the oligarchy generic integrations of three national of the population at large have promoted formations by the 1980’s – consumption the values of low taxes and limited federal maintenance through credit card debts, government, while 1% of the 1% of the accelerations in economic under-develop- 1% purchase presidential and congressio- ment in a dual economy, and the organiza- nal elections6. The elites of the FTE sec- tion of a psychic anchorage in perceptions tors have highly influenced “the new com- of exceptionality or moral superiority as mon sense” embedded in new public pol- against domestic and non-domestic “oth- icies, which resulted in a dual education ers” – that I have tried to submit patterns system and in high incarceration levels of in Gramsci scholarship and US academ- the African American population since ic cultural studies to a brief comparative the 1980’s. Consequently, social mobility analysis. With this preliminary sketch, I from low-wage sector to the FTE sector – would like to raise the question as to what which requires high levels of education or critical Gramsci scholarship in the U.S. “human capital” as well as high levels of may have to contribute to a diagnostic of financial assets – has become increasing- the “new common sense” as we appear to ly difficult or has highly indebted young move towards a post-democratic society. generations. The third national forma- It is useful to distinguish between tion which intersected with the economic general developmental patterns in the Renate Holub _ 151 humanities discipline of Cultural Studies television, film, literature, art9. In this in the US academy since the 1980’s, on they also reflected their affinities with one hand, and between much broader the multicultural rights environments evolutions in the immense research fields which in turn had been nurtured to a of information, communication, and me- large extent by the values of the civil dia technologies, on the other hand. The rights movements, women’s movements, latter, which is often referred to in short- anti-Vietnam movements and the stu- hand as “cultural studies”, have now dent movement of the 1960’s10. Among reached such enormous expansions as these values were resistance to elite or- they focus on questions pertaining to the ganized social control through by way production, application, and use of new of cultural instruments. As a result, the technologies in the area of video games, study of visual, symbolic, and semantic digital media, reality TV, journalism, representations of minorities and wom- world media, and so on8. Here I would en in the advertisement industry, in the like to limit myself to the humanities dis- Hollywood cinema, as well as in print cipline of Cultural Studies which histor- journals, magazines, and in popular mu- ically had academic affiliations with me- sic produced an enormously large body dia, communication, and film studies. As of literature. Furthermore, Cultural such it initially focused on the history of Studies critically examined elements of the advertisement industry, on the histo- consumer culture in general, including ry of broadcasting and television, and on fashion, celebrity culture, beauty con- the history of the cinema, as well as on tests, sports cultures. In this they had the more technical relations between im- critically focused on aspects of the cul- age, sound, and word in the production ture industry, understood as practices of of messages. However, against the back- a cultural hegemony on the part of elite ground of a heightened consciousness of strata. With the exception of African the extensive history of the centrality of American contributions to these types of the multi-media information-technolog- cultural analyses, however, the predom- ical “manufacture of consent” appara- inant conceptions of cultural hegemony tuses in the structures of every-day life and culture industry remained separat- it should come as no surprise that the ed from an economic nucleus. Working specific discipline ofCultural Studies in from the premise that the practices of the US academy in the 1980’s had been Cultural Studies constituted a form of re- increasingly committed to sustained sistance to cultural hegemony, there was analysis and critique of the discriminato- also a tendency to seek expressions of re- ry representations of women and ethnic sistance performativities to mainstream minorities in visual media, print media, cultures of consumption and represen- 152 _ Gramsci and cultural studies in the dual economy of the United States tation through analyses of popular cul- and Cultural Aftereffects”, “Historical ture, youth cultures, rap music, graffiti Secularisms”, “Voyeurisms”, “Perform- cultures, and cartoon cultures. With the ing Cultural Politics”, “Bio-pedagogies”, advent of the internet, life on the screen, and “Post-Racial and Post-Racist Strat- cyberspace, virtuality, and social media, egies”. While the journal series reacted in the contexts of which questions of the to specific political events – Presidential limits to democratic participation have Election, Presidential Impeachment – reasserted themselves as against techno- in the new millennium a new sensibility logical coercions and dominations in the embraced critical questions pertaining to practices of every-day life, Cultural Stud- surveillance, biometrics, failure of intel- ies discourse has as of late shifted some- lectual leadership after nine/eleven, the what in its self-perception as resistance suppression of democratic discourse, and avant-guard. a crisis of democracy. These attempts to Thus, for instance, in almost all the more systematically link cultural ques- journal series I have consulted, there tions to politics to some extent seem to were, over the past five years, calls for reflect existential anxieties in relation to greater political articulations. Against the a new political reality of coercion, sup- background of the structural changes in pression, and self-censorship. One thing the US academy, which in effect threaten is certain, though: As the unprecedented the survival of Cultural Studies as a hu- information technological revolutions manist discipline, articles on the future have engulfed our lives, debates on the of the humanities, and the future of the relations between technology and de- research university, have also increas- mocracy, common among the Frankfurt ingly appeared. In other words, Cultur- School oriented critical wings of the al Studies research output of the 1980’s boomer generations, have resurfaced11. and 1990’s had followed the general dis- From the current debates and research cursive and theoretical trends in the US projects on democratic participation in humanities which focused on modern- the new age of information technologies, ism-postmodernism debates, deconstruc- the internet, and the world-wide web, tion, post-structuralisms, and performa- three major trends have emerged: For tivity theory. Thematically, the journal one, generic philosophical “optimists” series moved from “The Construction view continuous unfettered technologi- of Gender”, “Punk-Deconstruction”, cal evolutions as a source of the improve- “Black Aesthetics”, and “Fanon’s Fetish” ment of the material, social, and cultur- to “Rereading of Orientalism”, “Queer al well-being of the populations at large Visibility in Commodity Culture”, “The derived from the assumption that “tech- Politics of Over-Conformity”, “Trauma nology knows what it wants”12. This is a Renate Holub _ 153 perception reflected in the general pub- culture” which holds that media users, by lic discourses of Silicon Valley high tech converging with others in the creation of leaders who are largely responsible for new ideas, art, and political projects and the knowledge generation organizations so on, create the conditions for new col- that condition the FTE sector of the US lective productive possibilities, Cultural economy. The second trend consists of Studies operators maintained a nuanced generic philosophical “pessimists” who approach to the complexities inherent problematize the relations between self in the relations between a corporate me- and technology as there is persuasive dia logic and agential empowerment of empirical evidence of increases in social individual and collective media users16. alienation, social fragmentation, politi- In sum, apart from the work of Marcia cal apathy, post-emotionality, and per- Landy, there are few direct traces to sonality disorders due to the unrelenting Gramsci’s work in the Cultural Studies technological penetrations into contem- journal series, except for a very general porary bodies, minds, and souls13. Sherry adaptation of the concept of cultural he- Turkle has pursued this line of research gemony17. One of the reasons I suppose is for over thirty years while coining key that the Gramsci editions available in En- concepts such as “the second self”, “life glish until Joe Buttigieg’s translation of on the screen” and “alone together”14. A the four Gerratana volumes of the Prison third trend upholds the argument that Notebooks were overall difficult texts to technology in itself is neither negative absorb for students interested in contem- nor positive, as it depends on its appli- porary culture. I am thinking here of the cation by individual and collective us- Hoare-Smith edition of 1971. Gramsci’s ers15. Internet technologies enable the own cultural analysis, with his extraordi- conditions for both corporate control nary detailed focus on Italian society, re- and autonomous participatory cultures. quires the kind of historical knowledge of To the credit of the academic Cultural developments and transformation which Studies community over the past thirty in the US is usually constructed by social years or so, they have neither embraced historians inspired by the Annales tra- a facile optimistic nor a facile pessimistic dition. Even the Forgacs-Nowell-Smith philosophy on the subject of information edition on cultural writings (1985) pres- technologies in the midst of an academ- ent comprehension difficulties as Gram- ic environment in which the FTE sector sci’s cultural, historical, theoretical, phil- relentlessly drives the reproduction of osophical, and economic references re- the “human capital” of future finance, quire a broad intellectual horizon. By the technology, and electronics operators. In same token, Derek Boothman’s Further a debate on the subject of “convergence Selections, while immensely attractive to 154 _ Gramsci and cultural studies in the dual economy of the United States critical historians of the social sciences, terns”, the “state” and of the formation may not be useful to contemporary me- of “passive” revolutions24. Seven, it an- dia and culture students whose focus is in alyzes the resistance to corporate hege- general not on the connections between mony and neoliberalism in the field of the present, the past, and the future. The education25. Eight, it maintains a histor- focus is predominantly on the present. ical analysis26. Nine, it addresses ques- Hopefully, with complete access to Joe tions of hegemony in law and the re- Buttigieg’s Prison Notebooks in English, lations between sovereignty and inter- greater attention to the scope and pur- national law27. Ten, it further develops pose of Gramsci’s work will result. conceptual inter-sectionalities between Compared to the Cultural Studies the categories of race, ethnicity, class, research orientations briefly reviewed and caste as developed by the Birming- above, the Gramsci research output in ham School and by Subaltern Studies28. the US distinguishes itself on at least Eleven, the experiences of diversity al- twelve accounts18. One, its scope is low it to deepen our understanding of more internationally oriented, as it pro- the variations in “structures of feeling” duces comparative analyses of neolib- underlying formations of values, norms, eralisms in a variety of global regions19. and consciousness29. Twelve, it contin- Two, it opens up new terrains of inqui- ues to provide comprehensive accounts ry by aligning Gramscian concepts with of or introductions to Gramsci’s life, human geography, environmental stud- work, and correspondence in English, ies, climate change, and development which is one of the conditions for ini- theory20. Three, it applies Gramscian tial scholarly occupation with Grams- critical concepts to contemporary so- ci by non-Italian speaking intellectual cial movements abroad and in the US, operators and it continues to organize such as analyses of the Tea Party, Oc- collective projects on key categories of cupy Wall Street, Tahrir Square, and Gramsci’s thought30. What Gramsci Podemos21. Four, it revisits questions of research output in the US over-all re- historical materialism, historical sociol- veals is, on one hand, an “international- ogy, and worker’s movements22. Five, it ization” in orientation, which, while it pays attention to the global networks is generally absent in Cultural Studies, of conservative radicals, as by looking also obtains in the work of contribu- at the role of Evangelicals in global tors to still existing US socialist jour- politics or by analyzing the return to nals. On the other hand, what it reveals religion23. Six, it analytically operates is a dialectical substratum between with Gramscian core concepts such as it and the predominant conceptual the function of “intellectuals”, “subal- frameworks of Edward Said’s Oriental- Renate Holub _ 155 ism and his other writings, and of the his murder had powerfully linked the idea of the “subaltern” as developed discrimination structures to which the by Charlene Spivack against the back- African-American populations were ground of the Indian Subaltern Studies subjected to the imperialist war in Viet- Project. To the extent to which Said’s nam32. stature as prominent public intellectual I will come to a conclusion: It is a com- is inseparable from the Question of Pal- mon place to state that US Cultural Stud- estine, and to the extent to which Spi- ies had been inspired by the Birmingham vack’s conceptual disposition is inter- School in the context of which both Ray- twined with Derridean deconstruction, mond Williams (1921-1988) and Stuart post-structuralism, and the post-mod- Hall (1932-1014) had pioneered extraor- ern project at large, there is no doubt dinary “Gramscian diagnostics” of their that most Gramsci researchers must social environments, as Perry Anderson have been faced at one point or an- articulated it in a brand-new delightful other with thinking profoundly about book on The H Word: Peripetaia of He- a number of fundamental geopolitical gemony33. In this publication, Anderson questions as well as questions pertain- traces the use of the term hegemony in ing to uneven and fragmented theoret- a variety of contexts, in particular in that ical politics that defined our era over of British and US American realist inter- the past thirty to fourty years. What national relations theorists. It includes a most Gramsci’s scholars bring to the chapter on a non-international relations table, then, is a global approach to con- oriented use of the term, and it focuses temporary problems perhaps because on critical intellectuals. In a few beauti- many of them appear to have appropri- fully sketched paragraphs, Anderson re- ated from Gramsci the insight that «the minds us that Gramsci had engaged in national personality […] just as the in- microscopic inquiries into the “structures dividual personality, is an abstraction of feeling” that bind values, norms, mean- unless we place it in an international ings on a deep level as when he wondered [and social] network»31. I think that about the values of the inner life of a this disposition is capitally important maid in her maid-quarters reading serial because it enables Gramsci scholars to novels. Attention to detail in subcultural return to an organic tradition of linking expressions in the spheres of art, music, national politics with the international, folklore, photography would reveal resis- the geopolitical, and the transnational. tance moments to hegemonic appropria- I am referring to Martin Luther King tions34. What Anderson emphasizes in his Jr, one of the major leaders of the civil brief on Birminghamian Gramscianism is rights movement, who one year before above all Stuart Hall as a profound Zeit- 156 _ Gramsci and cultural studies in the dual economy of the United States kritiker: living amidst the rise of Thatch- like to relay to the Gramsci community erism during moral, economic, and so- and other cultural operators for consider- cial crises and the reactions to these by ation his call to comprehensive research various social strata, including that of projects on the material and emotional a “backlash of petty-bourgeois stamp”, institutions of diverse populations under Hall not only anticipated Thatcher’s re- neoliberal regimes. It would require an sponse to the crisis – a hegemonic project, organization of a broad research project the common sense of which combined for because nothing of the sort can be done popular consumption contradictory so- by a few intellectuals alone. Yet in the era cial interests, incoherent ideologies with of the dual economy, of the dual educa- coherent ones, and stable identities with tion system, the dual health care system, unstable ones. But Hall also predicted of the purchase of congressional votes, Thatcher’s return. Gramscian concepts of disproportionate incarceration of mi- such as “historic bloc”, “passive revolu- norities, of eruptions of new misogynies, tion” and “economic nucleus” applied to of surveillance, police coercion, threats to local transformations in the making that independent judiciaries and freedom of had enabled Hall to diagnose the material speech – in this time of the dual econo- and normative elements of the hegemonic my I wonder whether it would be more project and to respond to it through the adequate to begin to pursue disquisitions invention of new transformatory blocs. into the actual practices of the coercion These would involve the microscopic and domination apparatuses, the money and diagnostic study of “culture”, viewed transfer from the 1% of 1% of 1% to the from the point of view of the material insti- congressional votes. To pursue disqui- tutions (work, taxes health, wages) as well sitions into the decisions of the republi- as of that of emotional institutions (sex- can 68 governors, into the decisions of uality, family, ethnicity, race, gender, ed- 99 state legislators who are republican, ucation, leisure, consumption)35. Ander- into the creation and the actions of pa- son’s brief review of Gramscian concepts ra-military forces or police auxiliaries in of hegemony in the critical operations local government, to trace federal dollar of the Birmingham projects is extraor- diversions into private accounts, to trace dinarily timely in its recall to fine-tuned the creation of commissions of accredita- precisions on what is possible in Gram- tion of working class colleges for purpos- scian-inspired cultural studies. I wonder es of dismantling relative autonomy while if he has British Cultural Studies in mind, downsizing them and rendering them in- which to this day – in spite of backlashes operative, to trace the money chain that – is institutionally considerably more so- endows the radically conservative radio lidified than USCultural Studies. I would stations, the conservative think tanks, and Renate Holub _ 157 the violence, hatred, and the dismissive- tors, «without either proposing or willing ness spouted by their radical right wing it, […] forced to obey the imperatives intellectuals and journalists. We also need of history?»36. If so, one of the impera- inquiries into the analytics firms which tive derivatives will require us to connect from Canada and the US were involved the dots – as against the predominant in the organization of the UK Brexit. This multi-media apparatuses’s habitual sep- is a “historic bloc” of enormously broad aration of dialectical relations – between and intricate dimensions, and it requires domestic and international coercion and diagnostics of the Gramscian kind to domination regimes as the United States unprecedented degrees. Peter Temin, finds itself in the midst of what appears to the economist of the concept of the dual become another thirty years war. economy which I introduced at the be- ginning of this article, explained that he had appropriated the model of the dual _ note economy from a developmental econo- 1 _ Saggio ricevuto su invito. mist of the 1950’s. The model stated that 2 _ President Wilson had established a Com- in a developing capitalist economy, the mittee on Public Information or CPI on April 14, capitalist strata impose subsistence wages 1917, the day before the US entered World War on the peasants. When the peasants leave I. It was to influence public opinion on the legit- for the city, they are faced with wages that imacy of the war as well as message world-wide are comparable to those of the country. propaganda on the “gospel of Americanism”. They are trapped. Temin believes that New technologies, ranging from photography, this model is applicable to an un-devel- the telegraph and radio broadcast to telephony, oping capitalist formation as well as it is cables, and film were applied to the diffusion of currently unfolding in the United States. the gospel. Edward Bernays (1891-1995) joined For in today’s dual economy, 80% low the CPI, bringing to the table great interests in the wage workers are subjected to the elites nascent social sciences, particularly in social psy- of the elites of the finance, technology, chology and mass psychology which he applied and electronics sector while the elites to research on the organization of the relations purchase congressional votes of their lik- between heterogeneous collective psychic spac- ing for reductions in public policy in the es and external control and manipulation of it. area of health care, education, environ- Bernay’s public relations machine incorporated ment, transportation, universities. Faced four core ideas: 1. the active energy of the intel- with this “historic bloc” are we, as Gram- ligent few’ will make sure that the public at large sci asked, that by an “irony of nature”, or will become aware of and act upon new ideas in by historical indeterminacies and contin- politics and business; 2. the technical means that gencies, (as) individual and collective ac- had “been invented and developed” can regi- 158 _ Gramsci and cultural studies in the dual economy of the United States

ment public opinion’ such that an “intelligent 5 _ The phenomenon of the “dual econo- minority” can guide the masses’ in a democracy; my” had been recognized over twenty years ago 3. Since every government is only a government by leading information technological sociologists through acquiescent public opinion, the tools such as Manuel Castells, whose analysis of the of propaganda would “manufacture consent” to new networked, global, and informational econ- the ideas and deeds of governments; 4. a presi- omy distinguished between “generic labor” and dential candidate may be «drafted» in response “self-programmable labor”. See his The Rise of to «over-whelming popular demand, but is well- the Network Society (Blackwell Publishers, Ox- known that his name may be decided upon by ford 19962, in particular pp. 77-163 on “The New half a dozen men sitting around a table in a hotel Economy”). Saskia Sassen also discussed the dis- room». See E. Bernays, Propaganda. With an In- proportionately growing socio-economic gaps troduction by M.C. Miller (1928), IG Publishing, between finance-technology high human capital New York, Brooklyn 2005. labor and low wage service labor in her A Sociolo- 3 _ For the historical emergence of the US gy of Globalization (W.W. Norton and Company, middle class see S. Blumin, The Emergence of the New York-London 2007) in terms of “emerg- Middle Class: Social Experience in the American ing global classes”. While both approached this City 1760-1900, Cornell University Press, Ithaca problem from a global perspective, Peter Temin (N.Y.) 1989. For the extraordinary impacts of focuses on the United States in his The Vanishing technological innovations in general, and the au- Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Econ- tomobility in particular on the transformations omy, MIT Press, Boston (Ma.) 2017. of US society see J.J. Flink, The Automobile 6 _ Recent studies from the Roosevelt Insti- Age, MIT Press, Boston (Ma.) 1988. For a more tute have indicated that it is particularly the fi- general introduction to technology and modern nance and telecommunication industry that not families see C.S. Fischer, America Calling. A So- only accumulates billions from the population at cial History of the Telephone to 1940, University large, but also that it is their lobby that most suc- of California Press, Berkeley (Ca.) 1992. cessfully pursues the purchase of congressional 4 _ As early as 1985, M.B. Katz published votes. See T. Ferguson, J. Chen, P. Jorgenson, his In the Shadow of the Poorhouse. A Social Fifty Shades of Green: High Finance, Political History of Welfare in America, Basic Books, Money, and the U.S. Congress at Rooseveltinsti- New York 1985, where he dedicated the third tute.org. They also present data on mainstream part of the book on the “war on welfare”. B. political science underestimation of the extent Ehrenreich’s Fear of Falling. The Inner Life of of this oligarchic reach. the Middle Class (Pantheon Books, New York 7 _ The Nixon-Reagan neoliberal projects 1990) poignantly described a penchant among focused on a republican “Southern Strategy” the middle-class strata to remain disinterested in in response to the success of the civil rights the working class as the society as a whole had movements, as civil rights legislation of 1964 advanced through a decade of greed. and 1965 had rendered illegal discrimina- Renate Holub _ 159

tion on the basis of race. Since discrimination Verlag, Frankfurt a.M. 1997, pp. 985-1003. I against African Americans continued de facto, am indebted to Peter Temin for the evidence republican elites had hoped to transform the on the ideological policy connections between Southern democratic vote of white citizens into infrastructure, education, criminal justice, in- a republican vote through the use of racialized carceration, and racism. discourses. The “Southern Strategy” included 8 _ Among the many recent subdivisions a “war on drugs”, in which Black citizens were within these expanding research fields are world disproportionately punished. Mass incarcera- cinema studies, world television studies, Ameri- tion began. See M. Alexander, The New Jim can media and World War II. Crow. Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color 9 _ My evidence is based on my study of Blindness, New Press, New York 2011. The the history of US based Cultural Studies jour- Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 adjusted the ratio nals such as Cultural Critique, Cultural Studies between black and white men in the severity and Critical Methodology, Communication and of punishment on drug convictions to 18 to 1. Critical/Cultural Studies, Discourse, Berkeley Before legislation was passed, the ratio was 100 Journal of Media and Culture, Camera Obscura, to 1. In addition, when the NAACP promot- Differences. A Journal of Feminist Cultural Stud- ed unified school districts in order to contain ies, Ethnic and Racial Studies Review, Journal of re-segregation tendencies in urban centers, a African American Studies. I have also consulted Supreme Court decision, Milliken v. Bradley, many of the volumes in the Routledge Series on essentially provided the constitutional condi- Media and Cultural Studies as well as the appro- tions for re-segregation. A dual educational sys- priate Series of other publishers. tem advantaged the nascent information-tech- 10 _ See R. Holub, Dagli studi culturali nological occupational strata at the expense allo studio delle culture americane: 1977-2007, of a young minority population whose schools in Gramsci le culture e il mondo, ed. Giancarlo were underfunded and whose social and family Schirru, Viella, Roma 2009. structures were impacted by the rise in incar- 11 _ D. Kellner, Television and the Crisis ceration rates among African American citi- of Democracy, Westview Press, Boulder (Co.) zens. A critique on the neo-liberal assaults on 1990. One of the most prolific critics of the the university if reflected in M. Berube’s and spectacle-culture’s relations to politics, he has C. Nelson’s Higher Education under Fire. Pol- published on the Media Spectacle and the Crisis itics, Economics, and the Crisis of the Human- of Democracy: terrorism, war, and election bat- ities, Routledge, New York and London 1995. tles (Paradigm, Boulder [Co.] 2005) and more For assaults on “affirmative actions” in this recently Cinema Wars, Hollywood Film and Pol- context see R. Holub, Difference, Integration, itics in the Bush-Cheney Era (Wiley-Blackwell, Transcommunality: The Case of California, in Malden [Ma.] 2010). Kellner is also the editor Differenz und Integration. Die Zukunft modern- of a number of Herbert Marcuse publications, er Gesellschaften, ed. Stefan Hradil, Campus some of which focus on technology and fascism. 160 _ Gramsci and cultural studies in the dual economy of the United States

12 _ See K. Kelly, What Technology 18 _ There are a number of initial difficul- Wants, Penguin Books, New York 2010; he is ties in assessing the current “Gramsci research the editor of one of the most prestigious internet output in the US”. Who should count as a magazines, Wired. Gramsci researcher in the US? Quite a few au- 13 _ See S. Vaidhyanathan, The Googliza- thors are not US intellectuals by residence or tion of Everything (And Why We Should Wor- citizenship, while others who reside in the US or ry), The University of California Press, Berkeley are US citizens, have, as immigrants, intellectual (Ca.) 2012. roots elsewhere. The criteria I have used are the 14 _ S. Turkle, The Second Self: Computers following: book publications in the US, publi- and the Human Spirit, Simon & Schuster, New cations in US journals, publications by US resi- York 1984; Id., Life on the Screen: Identity in dents or citizens in foreign journals. What they the Age of the Internet, Simon & Schuster, New have in common is that all three groups partic- York 1997; Id., Alone Together: Why we expect ipate in the unfolding development of Gram- more from Technology and Less from Each Oth- sci’s thought in international culture. When er, Basic Books, New York 2011; Id., Reclaim- compared with an earlier generation of Gramsci ing Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital scholars in the US, as of that of the last quarter Age, Penguin Press, New York 2015. of the twentieth century – Marcia Landy (1994), 15 _ Among the most outspoken intellectu- Renate Holub (1992), John Cammett (1991), als on this subject are Manuel Castells and Hen- Robert Dombroski (1989), Maurice Finocchia- ry Jenkins. See M. Castells, Communication ro (1988), Carl Boggs (1984); Walter Adamson Power, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2009. (1980), Paul Piccone (1973) – it turns out that For H. Jenkins see Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers. almost half of them were immigrants as well. Exploring Participatory Cultures, New York Uni- 19 _ Gramsci, Political Economy, and In- versity Press, New York 2006. ternational Relations Theory. Modern Princes 16 _ This debate took place from 2011- and Naked Emperors, ed. Alison Ayers, Palgrave 2014 in the Journal Cultural Studies. Macmillan, New York 2008; K. Bruhn, Antonio 17 _ M. Landy, Socialist Education Today: Gramsci and the Palabra Verdadera: The Political Pessimism or Optimism of the intellect?, in Re- Discourse of Mexico’s Guerilla Forces, «Journal thinking Gramsci, ed. Marcus E. Green, Rout- of Interamerican Studies & World Affairs», 41 ledge, New York 2011; Ead., Film, Politics, and (1999), pp. 29-56; R. Burgos, The Ups and Downs Gramsci, The University of Minnesota Press, of an Uncomfortable Legacy, «Latin American Per- Minneapolis 1994; Gramsci in and on Media, spectives», 42 (2015) 5, pp. 169-185; R. Ciavolel- in The Politics, Culture and Social Theory of la, Huunde fof ko Politik. Everything is Politics: Gramsci: A Multidisciplinary Perspective, ed. Gramsci, Fulani, and the Margins of the State in Joseph Francese, Routledge, New York 2009); Mauritania, «Africa Today», 58 (2012) 3, pp. 2-21; Ead., Gramsci, Passive Revolution, and Media, C. Gorlier, Post-Marxism in an African Context: «Boundary 2», 35 (2008) 3, pp. 99-131. The Usability of Antonio Gramsci, «Research in Renate Holub _ 161

African Literatures», 33 (2002) 3, pp. 98-105; N. 24 _ B.W. Shear, Gramsci, Intellectuals, Henck, The Subcommander and the Sardinian: and Academic Practice Today, «Rethinking Marcos and Gramsci, «Mexican Studies/Estudios Marxism», 20 (2008) 1, pp. 55-67; J.R. Webber, Mexicanos», 29 (2013) 2, pp. 428-458; E. Sio-ieng Evo Morales and the Political Economy of Passive Hui, Putting the Chinese State in its Place: A March Revolution in Bolivia, 2006-15, «Third World from Passive Revolution to Hegemony, «Journal of Quarterly», 37 (2016) 10, pp. 1855-1876; M. Contemporary Asia», 47 (2017) 1, pp. 66-92. Landy, Gramsci, Passive Revolution, and Media, 20 _ M. Ekers, A. Loftus, Revitalizing the cit.; J.A. Buttigieg, Subaltern Social Groups in Production of Nature Thesis: A Gramscian Turn?, Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, in The Po- «Progress in Human Geography», 37 (2013) 2, litical Philosophies of Antonio Gramsci and B.R. pp. 234-252; B. Fontana, The Concept of Nature Ambedkar: Itineraries of Dalits and Subalterns, in Gramsci, in Gramsci, Space, Nature, Politics, ed. Cosimo Zene, Routledge, New York 2013; L. eds. Michael Ekers, Gillian Hart, Stefan Kipfer Gundula, Governing Gender: The Integral State and Alex Loftius, Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, and Gendered Subjection, in Gramsci and Glob- Malden (Ma.) 2013; J. McSweeney, The Absence al Politics: Hegemony and Resistance, eds.Mark of Class: Critical Development, NGOs and the McNally, John Schwarzmantel, Routledge, New Misuse of Gramsci’s Concept of Counter-Hege- York 2009; A. Nieto-Galan, Antonio Gramsci mony, «Progress in Development Studies», 14 Revisited: Historians of Science, Intellectuals, and (2014) 3, pp. 275-285. the Struggle for Hegemony, «History of Science», 21 _ M. Briziarelli, S. Martinez Guillem, 49 (2011) 4, pp. 453-478. Reviving Gramsci: Crisis, Communication, and 25 _ D. Hill, Hegemony and Education: Change, Routledge, New York 2016. Gramsci, Post-Marxism, and Radical Democracy 22 _ P. Seybold, Radical Legacies: Antonio Revisited, Lexington Books, Lanham 2007; S.D. Gramsci and Contemporary American Politics, Brookfield, J.D. Holst, Radicalizing Learning: «Humanity & Society», 37 (2013) 2, pp. 286- Adult Education for a Just World, Jossey-Bass, 305; D. Bjelic, Maternal Space and Intellectu- San Francisco 2010; Antonio Gramsci: A Peda- al Labour: Gramsci versus Kristeva and Zizek, gogy to Change the World, eds. N. Pizzolato, «College Literature», (2014) 2, pp. 29-55; L.E. J.D. Holst, Springer, Cham (Switzerland) 2017. Ruberto, Gramsci, Migration, and the Repre- 26 _ E. Saccarelli, Gramsci and Trotzky sentation of Women’s Work in Italy and the US, in the Shadow of Stalinism. The Political Theo- Lexington Books, Lanham 2007; D.F. Ruccio, ry and Practice of Opposition, Routledge, New Rethinking Gramsci: Class, Globalization, and York 2007. Historical Bloc, in The Politics, Culture and So- 27 _ D. Litowitz, Gramsci, Hegemony, and cial Theory of Gramsci, cit. the Law, «Brigham Young University Law Re- 23 _ B. Grelle, Antonio Gramsci and the view», (2000) 2, pp. 515-553. Question of Religion: Ideology, Ethics, and He- 28 _ C. Zene, Inner Life, Politics, and the gemony, Routledge, New York 2017. Secular: Is there a ‘Spirituality’ of Subalterns and 162 _ Gramsci and cultural studies in the dual economy of the United States

Dalits? Notes on Gramsci and Ambedkar, «Re- peared in New York and so did Mark McNal- thinking Marxism», 28 (2016), pp. 540-562. ly and John Schwarzmantel (eds.), Gramsci and 29 _ S. Olbrys Gencarella, Gramsci, Good Global Politics: Hegemony and Resistance (Rout- Sense, and Critical Folklore Studies, «Journal of ledge, New York 2009). Folklore Research», 74 (2010), pp. 221-252; G. 31 _ «La personalità nazionale (come la Casey, P.C. Mishler, John Cammett, Antonio personalità individuale) è un’astrazione fuori del Gramsci, and Dialectical Anthropology, «Dia- nesso internazionale (e sociale)» (Quaderno 9, § lectical Anthropology», 32 (2008), pp. 267-269; 99, p. 1161). K. Crehan, Living Subalternity: Antonio Gram- 32 _ http://www/americanrhetoric.com/ sci’s Concept of Common Sense, in The Politi- speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm. cal Philosophies of Antonio Gramsci and B.R. 33 _ For a synthetic brief on the “Birming- Ambedkar, cit. ham Moment” see P. Anderson, The H-Word. 30 _ F. Rosengarten, The Revolution- The Peripeteia of Hegemony, Verso, London ary Marxism of Antonio Gramsci, Brill, Leiden 2017, pp. 85-116. This is a concise review of the (Netherlands) 2013; The Politics, Culture and adventures of the concept of hegemony with an Social Theory of Gramsci: A Multidisciplinary eye to its use in international relations theory of Perspective, cit.; Rethinking Gramsci, cit.; B. the global hegemons. Grelle, Antonio Gramsci and the Question of 34 _ Ibidem. Religion, cit.; Hegemony: Studies in Consen- 35 _ P. Anderson, The H-Word, cit., pp. sus and Coercion, eds. Richard Howson, Kylie 85-87. Smith, Routledge, New York 2008. Does some- 36 _ «Si vedrà una di quelle vichiane “as- one at Routledge, New York, have a faible for tuzie della providenza” per cui gli uomini sen- Antonio Gramsci? For even J. Schwarzmantel, za proporselo e senza volerlo ubbidiscano agli The Routledge Guidebook to Gramsci’s Prison imperativi della storia?» (Quaderni, 22, § 6, p. Notebooks (Routledge, New York 2015) ap- 2157).