Overview
- Places the development of Gramsci’s ideas, before and after he was imprisoned, in an international historical perspective
- Makes use of major recent philological advances in understanding how Gramsci worked in prison
- Considers and elucidates documents of the international communist movement which were inaccessible for many years
Part of the book series: Marx, Engels, and Marxisms (MAENMA)
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About this book
Antonio Gramsci lived the Great War as a “historic break,” a profound experience that left an indelible mark on the development of his political thought. Translated into English for the first time, Alternative Modernities reconstructs and analyses this critical period of Gramsci’s intellectual formation through a systematic analysis of his writings from 1915 to 1935. For Gramsci, Soviet Communism, “Americanism,” and the “new” Fascist State were the principle responses to the crisis of the old world order. He portrayed them as the three protagonists of twentieth-century modernity, alternatives destined to tragically clash in the worldwide struggle for hegemony. Among the arguments in his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci casts doubt on the political strategy of Soviet Communism and the theoretical underpinnings of “official Marxism.” Instead, he suggests a radical revision of Marxism by breathing life into a new interpretation whose fundamental concepts are: politics as the struggle for hegemony, the “passive revolution” as a historical paradigm of modernity, and the philosophy of praxis as the welding between visions of the worlds, historical analyses, and political strategies. Gramsci’s intuitions culminate in a new theory of the political subject, supported by a reflection upon the 20th century that still speaks to us today, pointing the way toward a new narrative of world history.
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Table of contents (5 chapters)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Giuseppe Vacca is a Professor and the former President of Fondazione Istituto Gramsci, Italy.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Alternative Modernities
Book Subtitle: Antonio Gramsci's Twentieth Century
Authors: Giuseppe Vacca
Translated by: Derek Boothman, Chris Dennis
Series Title: Marx, Engels, and Marxisms
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47671-7
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-47670-0Published: 24 October 2020
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-47673-1Published: 25 October 2021
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-47671-7Published: 23 October 2020
Series ISSN: 2524-7123
Series E-ISSN: 2524-7131
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XXIV, 269
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Political Theory, Political Philosophy, Political Sociology