In the Footsteps of Gramsci: From Chicago to Turin, Tracing the Sites of Hegemony
By Marshall Pierce
English – Italiano - Français- Español
As an old follower of Antonio Gramsci – having made his motto, borrowed from Romain Rolland, “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will” my own – and having still not exhausted reading him after 50 years, I could not resist the urge to translate the two texts below. They come from Marshall Pierce, a PhD student from Chicago, who keeps a research diary that has taken him from Chicago to Turin, via Paris. From that Chicago – which, before being Al Capone’s city, was the city of the Haymarket anarchists and the Wobblies of the IWW – to the Turin that was home to the workers’ councils of over a century ago, passing through the Paris of the Commune, this path seems almost natural. Marshall reflects on the meaning of Gramsci’s most cited, least understood, and most overused concept: (cultural) hegemony.
Reappropriated by the star thinkers of the French New Right (Alain de Benoist first), this “naughty word,” as they say in Marseille, became a media cliché after Sarkozy used it—at the suggestion of writer and columnist Patrick Buisson—during the 2007 election campaign*, followed two weeks later by Jean-Marie Le Pen**. Nine years later, candidate Macron would launch his “movement with hegemonic ambitions,” En Marche, in the name of “the optimism of will.”
Today’s media vulgate would see in the rantings of Trump on his Truth (A)Social, unmistakable signs of cultural hegemony – which reveals a crass ignorance of the Gramscian approach, into whose depths the big political-media mouths have never bothered to dive, for fear of drowning. Far from the noise of keyboards, Marshall Pierce has embarked on a journey to the sources of Gramscian thought and workers’ practice, in situ. He has thus begun to map the places of cultural hegemony, which concerns not only the discursive realm but is embedded in the materiality of social practices. Enjoy the read! – FG, Tlaxcala
* “Deep down, I have adopted Gramsci’s analysis: power is won through ideas.” Sarkozy, ‘Le Figaro’, April 17, 2007
** “It was the communist writer Antonio Gramsci who wrote: ideological victories precede electoral victories.” Jean-Marie Le Pen, May 1, 2007
