Gramsci e l'egemonia culturale

There is an Italian thinker of the twentieth century whose ideas are read and debated across the entire world.

His name is Antonio Gramsci, born in Sardinia in 1891 and who died in prison in 1937.

The Fascist regime had condemned him to twenty years of imprisonment, but was not able to stop his thinking.

From the Prison Notebooks, written in secret between 1929 and 1935, emerges an original vision of power.

The key concept is that of cultural hegemony.

So, what does Gramsci mean by this term?

A ruling class does not maintain its dominance only through force and coercion alone.

It also needs the consent of those governed, and this consent is built through culture.

Schools, churches, the media: these are the instruments through which hegemony is exercised.

Whoever controls culture controls minds without needing to resort to violence.

This insight was revolutionary for its time: traditional Marxism focused almost exclusively on economic class struggle.

Gramsci understood that without a parallel cultural battle, economic revolution alone would not have been enough.

He also coined the concept of the organic intellectual: someone who does not think in the abstract but acts within their own social class.

Counter-hegemony, for Gramsci, is possible: subaltern classes can challenge dominant power by building their own narrative.

Gramsci's ideas have had an extraordinary impact well beyond the borders of the Italian left.

From postcolonial studies to feminist movements, anyone studying the relationship between power and culture encounters Gramsci.

And yet he wrote these ideas on torn pages, in conditions of ever-worsening health.

Understanding Gramsci means understanding how power reproduces itself through that which we take for granted.