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Alternative Modernities

Antonio Gramsci's Twentieth Century

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

Authors:
  1. Giuseppe Vacca

    1. Fondazione Gramsci, Rome, Italy

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  • 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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Table of contents (5 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxiv
    Download chapter PDF

  2. The Concept of Hegemony

    • Giuseppe Vacca
    Pages 1-84

  3. The Nature of Passive Revolution

    • Giuseppe Vacca
    Pages 85-149

  4. From Historical Materialism to the Philosophy of Praxis: Foundations for a Processual Theory of the Subject

    • Giuseppe Vacca
    Pages 151-193

  5. Hegemony and Democracy

    • Giuseppe Vacca
    Pages 195-242

  6. Afterword

    • Giuseppe Vacca
    Pages 243-263

  7. Back Matter

    Pages 265-269
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Keywords

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.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Fondazione Gramsci, Rome, Italy

    Giuseppe Vacca

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

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