Antonio Gramsci and the Ancient World

Description

Antonio Gramsci and the Ancient World explores the relationship between the work of the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci and the study of classical antiquity. The collection of essays engages with Greek and Roman history, literature, society, and culture, offering a range of perspectives and approaches building on Gramsci’s theoretical insights, especially from his Prison Notebooks. The volume investigates both Gramsci’s understanding and reception of the ancient world, including his use of ancient sources and modern historiography, and the viability of applying some of his key theoretical insights to the study of Greek and Roman history and literature. The chapters deal with the ideas of hegemony, passive revolution, Caesarism, and the role of intellectuals in society, offering a complex and diverse exploration of this intersection. With its fascinating mixture of topics, this volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of classics, ancient history, classical reception studies, Marxism and history, and those studying Antonio Gramsci’s works in particular. Antonio Gramsci and the Ancient World Table of contents List of figure and table List of contributors Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: The reception of Gramsci’s thought in historical and classical studies Antonio Gramsci: a biographical sketch From his death to 1975: the first long phase of Gramsci’s reception Gramsci’s early reception in the English-speaking context Gramsci and post-war Italian classical scholarship The Golden Age and the Gerratana edition (1975) The Seminario di Antichistica A philological renaissance and a global re-use Gramsci and the Classics: hegemony and ideology The structure of this volume Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography 1 Negotiating hegemony in early Greek poetry Coercion and consent among Hesiodic beasts and men Maintaining the Homeric hegemony Navigating hegemony in Archilochean abuse poetry Conclusion Notes Bibliography 2 Upside-down hegemony? Ideology and power in ancient Athens Introduction The ēthos of the politeia and Gramscian hegemony Whose ‘hegemony’ in Athens? Honorific practices as a locus of hegemony Egalitarianism and social differentiation through the honour system Conclusion Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography 3 Gramsci and ancient philosophy: Prelude to a study Introduction Gramsci on philosophy and history History of philosophy as a philosophy of praxis Conclusions, and a return to Plato Notes Bibliography 4 A Gramscian approach to ancient slavery Modalities of slavery: Artemidorus as a case-study Modalities, hegemony, and slave agency Beyond and below slavery: the alternative identities of enslaved persons and their historical consequences Conclusion Notes Bibliography 5 The Etruscan question: An academic controversy in the Prison Notebook The debate on the Etruscan language at the beginning of XX century The Etruscan language between academia and politics Finale (with a surprise) Notes Bibliography 6 Polybios and the rise of Rome: Gramscian hegemony, intellectuals, and passive revolution Gramsci’s concepts: hegemony, intellectuals, and passive revolution Polybios and the Greek world in the II century BCE Roman dominance in the East: minimal hegemony and failed passive revolution Polybios: a ‘Gramscian’ intellectual in the II century BCE Conclusion Notes Bibliography 7 Antonio Gramsci between ancient and modern imperialism Modern and ancient imperialism Gramsci on colonialism Gramsci on imperial government Gramsci’s cosmopolitanism and Rome’s legacy Conclusion Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography 8 Plebeian tribunes and cosmopolitan intellectuals: Gramsci’s approach to the late Roman Republic The plebeian State Debating Roman Italy Conclusion Notes Bibliography 9 Between Caesarism and Cosmopolitanism: Julius Caesar as an Historical Problem in Gramsci Defining Caesarism Caesarism in Italian History Cosmopolitanism and Italian History Gramsci and the Modern Historiography on the Roman Empire Notes Bibliography 10 Gramsci and the Roman Cultural Revolution Rome’s Cultural Revolution On Gramsci Coercion and consent Propaganda and ideology Augustan antinomies Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography 11 Caesarism as stasis from Gramsci to Lucan: An “Equilibrium with catastrophic prospects” Caesarism in Gramsci: A + B = AB or C? The doublethink of Caesarism Caesarism as stasis in Lucan’s Bellum ciuile Notes Bibliography 12 Hegemony in the Roman Principate: Perceptions of power in Gramsci, Tacitus, and Luke Notes Bibliography 13 Gramsci’s view of Late Antiquity: Between longue durée and discontinuity Late Antiquity: a controversial concept The “Birth” of Late Antiquity The ‘Optimistic’ turn Recent developments Gramsci on Late Antiquity Crisis East and West The beginning of the Middle Ages The ancient economic structure Concluding remarks Notes Bibliography 14 Cultural hegemonies, ‘NIE-orthodoxy’, and social-development models: Classicists’ ‘organic’ approaches to economic history in the early XXI century A short history of the first century of cultural hegemonies in the scholarship on the ancient economy “NIE orthodoxy” and the tropes of modernity “Be careful what you wish for”: Ian Morris and Walter Scheidel as organic intellectuals The social development model through Gramsci’s eyes Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography Afterthoughts 1 The author as intellectual? Hints and thoughts towards a Gramscian ‘re-reading’ of the ancient literatures Gramscian categories in Antonio La Penna’s work: a starting point The Gramscian category of ‘intellectuals’ and the literary production in the Greek and Roman world Reading Virgil through Gramsci: new questions for a long-standing debate Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography 2 Hegemony, coercion and consensus: A Gramscian approach to Greek cultural and political history Introduction Greek timē and Gramsci: prerogatives and hegemony in ancient Greece Greek political systems and Gramsci: hegemony and inequalities within the Greek polis Conclusion Notes Bibliography 3 Hegemony, ideology, and ancient history: Notes towards the development of an intersectional framework Two contextual issues: coercion and class Overcoming class binarism: subject-position and anti-essentialism Constructing hegemony in a Foucauldian power structure Notes Bibliography General index Index of the ancient sources Index of Gramsci’s texts