Language and Hegemony in Gramsci READING GRAMSCI General Editor: Joseph A. Buttigieg Also available GRAMSCI, CULTURE AND ANTHROPOLOGY AN INTRODUCTORY TEXT Kate Crehan Language and Hegemony in Gramsci Peter Ives Pluto Press Fernwood Publishing LONDON ANN ARBOR, MI WINNIPEG, MANITOBA First published 2004 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 www.plutobooks.com Fernwood Publishing Site 2A, Box 5 8422 St. Margaret's Bay Rd. Black Point, Nova Scotia BOJ 1BO and 324 Clare Avenue Winnipeg, Manitoba R3L 1S3 www. fernwoodbooks.ca © Peter Ives 2004 The right of Peter Ives to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN (Pluto) 0 7453 1666 2 hardback ISBN (Pluto) 0 7453 1665 4 paperback ISBN (Fernwood) 1 55266 139 3 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Ives, Peter, 1968- Language and hegemony in Gramsci / Peter Ives. p. cm. — (Reading Gramsci) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-7453-1666-2 — ISBN 0-7453-1665-4 (pbk.) 1. Gramsci, Antonio, 1891-1937—Views on sociolinguistics. 2. sociolinguistics. I. Title. II. Series P85. G72I93 2004 335.43'092—dc22 2004006313 National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Ives, Peter R., 1968- Language and hegemony in Gramsci / Peter Ives. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 1-55266-139-3 1. Gramsci, Antonio, 1891-1937—Knowledge—Linguistics. 2. Gramsci, Antonio, 1891-1937—Contributions in political science. 3. Communism and linguistics. 4. Language and languages—Political aspects. 5. Political science. I. Title. HX298.7.G73I85 2004 335.43'092 C2004-902139-7 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21 Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England Typeset from disk by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd, Chennai Printed and bound in the European Union by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne, England Contents Reading Gramsci viii Joseph A. Buttigieg Acknowledgments xi Abbreviations xiii Introduction 1 Language and hegemony in Gramsci 1 The pervasiveness of Gramsci's hegemony 2 Approaching language and hegemony 5 Overview 8 1. Language and Social Theory: The Many Linguistic Turns 12 Language, production and politics in the twentieth century 12 The many 'linguistic turns' 15 Saussure's structural approach to language 16 The structuralist turn towards language 21 Philosophy's 'linguistic turn' 25 The many other 'linguistic turns' 29 Marxism and language 29 Conclusion 31 2. Linguistics and Politics in Gramsci's Italy 33 Gramsci's home, Sardinia 34 The Southern Question and the Risorgimento 35 The Language Question 36 Gramsci's youth 38 'Beyond the Wide Waters' 41 Gramsci's linguistics 43 Italian linguistics 44 Bartoli's polemic against the Neogrammarians 47 Idealist linguistics and Benedetto Croce 53 v vi Language and Hegemony in Gramsci Summary of various approaches to Language 54 Gramsci and Esperanto 55 Conclusion 61 3. Language and Hegemony in the Prison Notebooks 63 Approaching the Prison Notebooks 64 Non-linguistic understandings of hegemony 67 Two broad themes in hegemony 70 Gramsci's expansion of 'polities' 72 Language, philosophy and intellectuals 72 Subalternity and fragmented 'common sense' 77 Language, nation, collective popular will 82 Language and metaphor 84 The structures of language 89 Two grammars of hegemony 90 Spontaneous grammar 90 Normative grammar 92 Normative history in spontaneous grammar 96 Normative grammar and progressive hegemony 98 Conclusion 101 4. Gramsci's Key Concepts, with Linguistic Enrichment 102 Passive revolution and ineffective national language 102 War of manoeuvre and war of position 107 War of position as passive revolution 109 National-popular collective will 110 War of position and new social movement alliances 112 Language as a model for the national-popular collective will 113 Hegemony, political alliances and the united front against Fascism 114 State and civil society 116 The history of state and civil society 117 The state 119 Conclusion 125 Contents vii 5. Postmodernism, New Social Movements and Globalization: Implications for Social and Political Theory 126 Postmodernism, language and relativism: is all the world a text? 128 Nietzsche, Saussure and Derrida on language 131 Language and relativism in Gramsci 135 Foucault, language and power 138 Power in Gramsci and Foucault 141 New social movements and discourse: Laclau and Mouffe 144 Laclau and Mouffe's linguistically informed 'Hegemony' 153 Globalization 160 Notes 166 Bibliography 187 Index 195 Reading Gramsci General Editor: Joseph A. Buttigieg Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), little known outside communist circles at the time of his death, is now one of the most frequently cited and widely translated political theorists and cultural critics of the twentieth century. The first wave of interest in Gramsci was triggered by the publication, in Italy, of his prison writings, start- ing with the letters, which appeared in 1947, and continuing with the six volumes of the thematic edition of the notebooks, the last of which was brought out in 1951. Within the space of a few years, hundreds of articles and books were written explicating, analysing and debating Gramsci's concept of hegemony, his revisionist views on the history of Italy's unification, his anti-economistic and anti- dogmatic version of Marxist philosophy, his theory of the state and civil society, his anti-Crocean literary criticism, his novel approach to the study of popular culture, his extensive observa- tions on the role of intellectuals in society, along with other aspects of his thought. Although long dead, Gramsci became more than an object of dispassionate study; the intensity of the discussions surrounding his work and the often heated struggle over his legacy had, and continue to have, a profound effect on the political culture and cultural politics of postwar Italy. During the late 1960s and the 1970s Gramsci's name and ideas started circulating with increasing frequency throughout Europe, Latin America and North America (and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere too). The various currents associated with Eurocommunism and the 'New Left' that accompanied the swell of interest in what came to be known as 'Western Marxism' con- tributed immensely to Gramsci's rise to prominence during this period. In the anglophone world, the publication, in 1971, of Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith's superbly edited Selections from the Prison Notebooks made it possible for scholars to move from vague and general allusions to Gramsci to serious study and analysis of his work. Gramscian studies were further bolstered by various editions in diverse languages of the pre- prison writings - which, among other things, drew attention to viii Reading Gramsci ix the valuable essay on the Southern Question - and by the publication, in Italy, of Valentino Gerratana's complete critical edition of the Quaderni del carcere (1975). Gramsci's influence became even more pronounced in the 1980s with the spread of cultural studies, the growing fascina- tion with the question of 'power', and the greater attention that scholars from different disciplines were devoting to the relations among culture, society and politics. The rapid decline of interest in Marxist thought following the events of 1989 had no effect on Gramsci's 'fortunes'. By that time, as Stuart Hall was among the first to point out, Gramsci had already 'radically displaced some of the inheritances of Marxism in cultural studies'. Indeed, Gramsci's ideas have come to occupy a very special position in the best known of post-Marxist theories and strategies by the political left. Furthermore, the ubiquitous concern with the con- cept of civil society during the past 15 years has rekindled inter- est in Gramsci's reflections on the subject. Likewise, many of the issues and topics that currently preoccupy a broad spectrum of academic intellectuals - subaltern studies, postcolonialism and North-South relations, modernity and postmodernity, the rela- tion between theory and praxis, the genealogy of Fascism, the sociopolitical dimensions of popular culture, hegemony and the manufacturing of consent, etc. - have motivated many a read- ing and rereading of Gramsci's texts. In the 50 years since Gramsci first became an 'object' of study, his theories and concepts have left their mark on virtually every field in the humanities and the social sciences. His writings have been interpreted, appropriated, and even instrumentalized in many different and often conflicting ways. The amount of pub- lished material that now surrounds his work - John Cammett's updated Bibliografm gramsciana comprises over 10,000 items in 30 languages - threatens to overwhelm even the trained scholar and to paralyse or utterly confuse the uninitiated reader. Yet the sheer size of the Gramscian bibliography is also an important indication of the richness of Gramsci's legacy, the continuing relevance of his ideas, and the immensity of his contribution to contemporary thought. In many respects, Gramsci has become a 'classic' that demands to be read. Reading Gramsci, however, is not quite an easy undertaking; his most important writings are open-ended, fragmented, multidirectional explorations,