Gramsci

What are the essential texts to understanding his thought? Which articles specifically discuss cultural hegemony?

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If you look in the garbage you will find it. Read Bordiga

Gramsci is pretty hard to understand on your own because of the scattered nature of his notebooks and the odd order of their publishing. Also, the reception literature and scholarship on him are very weird because of the various slants and agendas. Perry Anderson's famous essay on him is fucking worthless trash for example, but also a lot of the "neo-Gramscians" will lose the forest for the trees and you can read a dozen books by orthodox Marxists niggling over some niche debate with non-orthodox Gramscians and waste your time.

I tried to tackle him myself a couple years back and what helped me the most was George Hoare's recent and short book, _An Introduction to Antonio Gramsci_. From there, I would read Gramsci's early essay on the language issue in Italy, and then just pick up the old _Selections from the Prison Notebooks_, _Further Selections_, and maybe the _Cultural Writings_.

Be ready to annotate the fuck out of the first book, the original _Selections_. Take it as topical and often redundant and retreading itself, and try to understand the key themes of Gramsci's thought as outlined by Hoare and how they are operationalized in the specific contexts Gramsci chooses - particularly things like education.

It's been a while, but what really helped me to understand Gramsci was (1) his response to Second International "scientific" communism, (2) his unwillingness to jettison the terminology of that era or to directly and clearly say they are wrong - he reappropriates, twists the Marxian theory around to show that "Marx really meant this all along," so you have to watch for how he's doing it (unlike, e.g., Max Weber who just openly states his qualifications of Marx's "system" and makes it easy for you), and (3) an awareness of Gramsci's historical situation, and how he was attempting to remain in dialogue with the Comintern and its shifting internal politics, which explains a lot of the ambiguity in the previous point. He is trying to remain orthodox while proposing a very unorthodox reading of Marx, advocating the "war of position."

I really think that if you go into the _Selections_ armed with the _Introduction_'s ideas, you can just cut it up into enjoyable chunks and pick it apart. Honestly, because of that, I've never read anything quite like it. It's more like trying to reconstruct someone's philosophy based on their correspondence with various other people rather than in a linear, unfolding exposition.

This is the most helpful post I’ve received on Veeky Forums. Thanks so much user. Can you recommend an online resource for locating the texts you cited? I found his page on Marxists.org: marxists.org/archive/gramsci/

But I wouldn’t know where to begin because his output was so prolific.

Bordiga is a terrible meme.

Or read Gentile

Ignore this guy

Just read his wikipedia article

Retarded marxist. You're better off not """understanding""" him.

All the right wingers that aren't entirely mentally retarded (nouvelle droite etc.) have actually adopted Gramsci.

I like the way you think.

All the claims about "cultural marxism" actually fit more Gramsci than Adorno.