By: Matthew Libbis

Matthew Libbis — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 01:40:38 +0000

Gramsci was the central theoretical model for my Honours thesis on the Mayan cultural influences on the Marxist inspired Zapatista revolution in southern Mexico. It didn’t start out that way. I was interested in the topic first, and read widely to find a paradigm within which to fit what I was finding.
Gramsci’s notion of hegemony, and the correlation of an industrialised western north and indigenous peasant south in Mexico were a good match. The political economy, in particular the tension between formal and subsistence economies, and the advent of the North American Free Trade Agreement (‘NAFTA is great – great if you’re a gringo!’) was central to this.
On your second point, I didn’t find his work fragmented: there was a certain staccato quality to his prison diaries, necessarily as a result of how and where they were written, but the central themes are constant, and if anything, there are reminders along the way for his own benefit, which also reinforce the readers’ own comprehension. And I did find he wrote more like an anthropologist rather than a polemicist.

By: CarlD

CarlD — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 20:35:09 +0000

Nice one, Kerim. Just to add to the filmography, I’ve found the Taviani Bros. useful to illustrate and think the Southern Question, especially “Padre, padrone” and “Kaos.”

By: Rebecca Campbell

Rebecca Campbell — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 18:06:15 +0000

Thanks!

Comments on: Happy Birthday Gramsci!

By: Matthew Libbis

By: CarlD

By: Rebecca Campbell