Antonio Gramsci’s Unorthodox Marxism: Historical Complexity and Contemporary Relevance

Rosario Forlenza

Rosario Forlenza est professeur agrégé d'histoire et d'anthropologie politique au département de sciences politiques de l'université Luiss, à Rome. Il est spécialisé dans l'histoire de l'Europe moderne et de l'Italie dans ses implications mondiales, il se concentre particulièrement sur la démocratie et l'autoritarisme, les révolutions politiques, le nationalisme et la politique de la mémoire, la politique et la religion, la politique symbolique et la guerre froide.

En savoir +

Antonio Gramsci’s Unorthodox Marxism : Historical Complexity and Contemporary Relevance

These days, conservative, populist, and right-wing intellectuals and politicians are taking inspiration from Antonio Gramsci, the twentieth-century Italian Marxist thinker who drew up a battle plan for winning culture wars. In order to grasp how and why intellectuals and politicians of New Right have appropriate Gramsci, this lecture will first introduce the Gramscian concepts most appealing to them (particularly, hegemony), and then examine the role played by a pivotal, if elusive, figure: the French writer Alain de Benoist, whose reading of Gramsci’s writings made him attractive and usable beyond and outside leftist culture. The main argument of this lecture is that the most important concepts of Gramsci, while derived from a close and skillful reading of Italian history (including the history of the Catholic Church), are “anthropologically” true, and therefore hold relevance and meaning beyond a specific cultural context. 

Accès à distance via Zoom sur demande à : g.pinson@sciencespobordeaux.fr