Liberty and domination: Civil society in Gramsci

Boundary 2

Volumn 33, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 51-74

  Fontana, Benedetto ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 35248848068     PISSN: 01903659     EISSN: 15272141     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/01903659-2006-002     Document Type: Article

References (77)

1. Thus, for example, in the United States today, it becomes possible to talk about the dangers to liberty of the power of "Washington," that is, the state, and simultaneously act to increase the state's police and security powers of intrusion into and control over the lives of citizens and their activities in civil society. See David Cole and James X. Dempsey, eds., Terrorism and the Constitution (New York: New Press, 2002);
2. and Cynthia Brown, ed., Lost Liberties (New York: New Press, 2003).
3. The literature on Gramsci and his thought is enormous and constantly growing. See the Bibliografia gramsciana, ed. John Cammett and Maria Luisa Righi (Rome: Fondazione Istituto Gramsci, 1995-)
4. and the International Gramsci Society Newsletter, ed. Joseph A. Buttigieg, available at http://www.italnet.nd.edu/gramsci/.
5. On civil society and Gramsci, see the essays in Gramsci e la cultura contemporanea, Proceedings of the International Conference of Gramsci Studies, held at Cagliari, Italy, April 23-27, 1967, ed. Pietro Rossi (Rome: Riuniti-Istituto Gramsci, 1975)
6. esp. Norberto Bobbio, "Gramsci e la concezione della società civile," 1:75-100,
7. and Eugenio Garin, "Politica e cultura in Gramsci (il problema degli intellettuali)," 1:37-74;
8. Giorgio Nardone, Il pensiero di Gramsci (Bari: De Donato, 1971);
9. Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Gramsci et l'Etat: pour une théorie matérialiste de la philosophie (Paris: Fayard, 1975);
10. and Dante Germino, Antonio Gramsci: Architect of a New Politics (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990).
11. See also Joseph A. Buttigieg, "Gramsci on Civil Society," boundary 2 22, no. 3 (Fall 1995): 1-32,
12. and his "The Contemporary Discourse on Civil Society: A Gramscian Critique," boundary 2 32, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 33-52;
13. Walter L. Adamson, "Gramsci and the Politics of Civil Society," Praxis International 3-4 (1987): 320-39;
14. and J. Texier, "Sur les sens de 'société civile' chez Gramsci," Actuel Marx 5 (1989): 50-68.
15. For an incisive analysis of the relation between politics, language, and conceptual formulation in Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, see the discussion in Joseph A. Buttigieg, "Philology and Politics: Returning to the Text of Antonio Gramsci," boundary 2 21, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 98-138.
16. See Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992).
17. See Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989)
18. as well as his Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. William Rehg (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996).
19. See also the editors' introduction in Benedetto Fontana, Cary J. Nederman, and Gary Remer, eds., Talking Democracy: Historical Perspectives on Rhetoric and Democracy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 1-26.
20. John Rawls, with his notions of "public reason" and rational deliberation, parallels Habermas in his concern with consensus and legitimacy. See his Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
21. See also the essays in John Bowman and William Rehg, eds., Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997).
22. On Gramsci's method and its relation to his political and theoretical enterprise, see Joseph A. Buttigieg, "Gramsci's Method," boundary 2 17, no. 2 (Summer 1990): 60-81.
23. See also Buttigieg's invaluable introduction to Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Joseph A. Buttigieg (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 1:1-64.
24. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 238, henceforth cited as SPN.
25. SPN translates Gramsci's original "In Oriente" as "In Russia." Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere, ed. Valentino Gerratana, 4 vols. (Turin: Einaudi, 1975), 2:866, henceforth cited as QC.
26. QC, 3:2010.
27. The literature on Gramsci's hegemony is voluminous. See Gwyn A. Williams, "The Concept of 'Egemonia' in the Thought of Antonio Gramsci: Some Notes on Interpretation," Journal of the History of Ideas 21, no. 4 (October-December 1960): 586-89;
28. Nardone, Il pensiero di Gramsci;
29. Buci-Glucksman, Gramsci et l'Etat;
30. Perry Anderson, "The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci," New Left Review 100 (November 1976-January 1977): 5-78;
31. Walter L. Adamson, Hegemony and Revolution: A Study of Antonio Gramsci's Cultural and Political Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980);
32. Germino, Antonio Gramsci;
33. and Benedetto Fontana, "Logos and Kratos: Gramsci and the Ancients on Hegemony," Journal of the History of Ideas 61, no. 2 (April 2000): 305-26.
34. See Gramsci, QC, 1:458.
35. and QC, 3:1858-60.
36. Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Joseph A. Buttigieg (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 2:52.
37. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, 2:52-53.
38. Gramsci, SPN, 267;
39. and OC, 2:763-64.
40. Gramsci, QC, 3:1638.
41. Gramsci, QC, 2:763-64, 801; 2:1020.
42. See Sheldon S. Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought, enlarged ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), in which he credits Machiavelli with the "discovery of the mass" (205-11).
43. Perhaps a better term might be "re-discovery of the mass," for the idea of the people, either as a political force to be used, or as the ground for political activity, played an important role in ancient Greek and Roman thought and practice. See also Niccolò Machiavelli, Il principe, chap. 18, in which he underlines the importance of the "opinion of the many." In vol. 1 of Opere, ed. Sergio Bertelli (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1960).
44. and QC, 2:1049-1050, 2:1214-37.
45. For an excellent discussion, see Ellen Meiksins Wood and Neal Wood, A Triumph of Sedition: Political Theory and the Rise of Capitalism, 1509-1688 (New York: New York University Press, 1997).
46. See Anthony Pagden, ed., The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
47. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651), intro. C. B. Macpherson (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968), pt. 1, chap. 13, p. 185.
48. Hobbes, Leviathan, pt. 2, chap. 17, p. 227.
49. John Locke, "Second Treatise of Government" (1690), in Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
50. See the essays in J. H. Burns, ed., The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
51. See C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962).
52. See Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism.
53. Locke, "Second Treatise," chaps. 5, 9.
54. Thomas Jefferson, "The Declaration of Independence," in The Federalist Papers, by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, ed. Clinton Rossiter (New York: Mentor Books, 1999), 496-99.
55. See Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les homes (1755), ed. Jean Starobinski (Paris: Gallimard, 1969).
56. Rousseau, Discours, 103-8.
57. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social (1762), ed. Robert Derathé (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), bk. 2, chaps. 1-4.
58. G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right (1821), trans. with notes T. M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952), par. 260.
59. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, par. 155.
60. See also G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History (1837) (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), 46.
61. See Rousseau, Du contrat social, bk. 1, chap. 8.
62. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, 47.
63. See Karl Marx, "Critique of Hegel's Doctrine of the State" (1843), "On the Jewish Question" (1843), and "A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Introduction" (1843-44), all in Early Writings, intra. Lucio Colletti, trans. Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton (New York: Vintage Books, 1975).
64. See Richard N. Hunt, The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels, 2 vols. (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1974);
65. George Lichtheim, Marxism: An Historical and Critical Study, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970);
66. and Robert C. Tucker, The Marxian Revolutionary Idea (New York: Norton, 1969), esp. chap. 3, "The Political Theory of Classical Marxism," 54-91.
67. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, 18, 104-5.
68. See Benedetto Fontana, "El problema del sujeto histórico: hegemonia y politica en Gramsci," in Los Estudios gramscianos hoy, ed. Dora Kanoussi (Mexico City: Plaza y Valdés Editores, 1998), 59-68.
69. See Leopold Labedz, ed., Revisionism: Essays on the History of Marxist Ideas (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1962), The essays offer an overview of the Marxist Left's reaction to twentieth-century political and social transformations and to the rise of Bolshevism. See also Lichtheim, Marxism.
70. V. I. Lenin, What Is to Be Done? (1902) (New York: International Publishers, 1942).
71. See Lucio Magri, "Problems of the Marxist Theory of the Revolutionary Party," New Left Reviewed 60 (March-April 1970): 97-128;
72. and Giorgio Bonomi, Partito e rivoluzione in Gramsci (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1976).
73. Antonio Gramsci, "Utopia," in Avanti! (Piedmont), July 25, 1918, 22, no. 204, in Scritti giovanili (Turin: Einaudi, 1958), 281-82.
74. See Benedetto Fontana, "Hegemony and Rhetoric: Political Education in Gramsci," in Gramsci and Education, ed. Carmel Borg, Joseph A. Buttigieg, and Peter Mayo (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), 25-40.
75. Thus, modern dictatorship, especially the totalitarian, presupposes the popular masses as the ground of politics. Since Machiavelli, and the advent of the modern world, all politics (democratic and nondemocratic) is mass politics, and the state of mass opinion becomes decisive in the struggle for power. See the essays in Peter Baehr and Melvin Richter, eds., Dictatorship in History and Theory: Bonapartism, Caesarism, and Totalitarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
76. The inability to recognize, and account for, modern political activity as strife, conflict, and struggle in order to capture public opinion so as to deploy it for the "conquest" (Gramsci) of state power renders the political thought of both Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls (as well as their epigones) simultaneously arid and narrow. Politics is reduced to the scholarly discussion of an academic seminar. By reducing democratic politics to "democratic deliberation," and by defining out of the public sphere all forms of conflict, the people and their opinion have been excluded from political participation, which renders problematic the democratic character of deliberative democracy. Popular politics is now paradoxically transformed into a form of aristocratic politics. See the essays in Seyla Benhabib, ed., Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996);
77. and Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement: Why Moral Conflict Cannot Be Avoided in Politics, and What Should Be Done About It (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1996).