Abstract
In order to consider the advantages, pitfalls, and potential of employing the concept of hegemony in philosophy and the history of science, we must first of all reflect on how Antonio Gramsci is directly or indirectly present in this field of enquiry. It is a question well worth asking as Gramsci’s thought did not enter into these disciplines in a direct manner. Internationally, the influence of his Prison Notebooks was felt rather late—between the 1960s and 1970s—and only in a subordinate position within science studies. Indeed, at the end of the 1980s, Anglo-American philosophy of science could still avoid dealing with Gramsci when discussing the relationship between science and power. Thirty years later, it would be almost inconceivable to do so. Crucial concepts such as “hegemony,” "subalternity," and "civil society" have been thrust into philosophy as well as cultural studies, history, the history of ideas, and other areas of social and humanistic research. To this it must be added that the growing interest of historians of science in the political dimension of their subject has led to a re-evaluation of central categories of Gramscian thought, first and foremost that which has repeatedly been indicated as the cornerstone of his philosophical framework: hegemony.
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Notes
- 1.
Although the theme of hegemony in the political and cultural spheres preceded Gramsci’s reflection, his posthumous work constituted the culmination of earlier debates and conceptions, especially those developed in the prerevolutionary and revolutionary Soviet Union, with which he was acquainted (Brandist 2015). This is why an analysis of the relevance of the category of hegemony in science studies has to directly refer to Gramsci’s legacy.
- 2.
Cf. Rouse (1987). In this work, Rouse attempted to open up Anglo-American philosophy of science (starting with authors such as Thomas S. Kuhn) to the ‘continental’ European influences of the Frankfurt School, Martin Heidegger, and Michel Foucault.
- 3.
Hall’s account is still relevant (1980). A vigorous revival of Gramsci’s philosophical thought in English-language circles is evidenced by Thomas (2009).
- 4.
On the phases of Gramsci’s reception, see Hobsbawm (2011: 334–343).
- 5.
Nieto-Galan (2011: 464–467) provides an overview of Gramsci’s presence in history of science.
- 6.
Cf. Kołakowski (1978: vol. 1, chap. 15, “The Dialectic of Nature”).
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
As discussed in Chap. 5.
- 10.
Cf. Chap. 5.
- 11.
Bauman could have used a collection of selected writings translated into Polish in two volumes: A. Gramsci, Pisma wybrane (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1961).
- 12.
Bauman and Tester (2001: 24–25): “To put it in a nutshell, I owe to Gramsci an ‘honorable discharge’ from Marxist orthodoxy. [...] If there was a disenchantment, it concerned the ossified from which the ‘official’ vulgate version of Marxism was given, and more than anything else the official bar on applying Marxist critique to ‘really existing socialism’, coupled with effacing or playing down the ethical core and source of Marxist teachings. In a paradoxical way Gramsci saved me from turning into an anti-Marxist, as so many other disenchanted thinkers did, throwing out on their way everything that was, and remained, precious and topical in Marx’s legacy. I read good things in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks: there was a way of saving the ethical core, and the analytical potential I saw no reason to discard from the stiff carapace in which it had been enclosed and stifled.
Well, I presume one could learn such truths from other people, or even discover them on one’s own. But frankly speaking, to a person like me, trying hard to stay inside the Weltanschauung in which I came to feel home, the fact that the hint came from a thinker whose Marxist credential even officialdom’s stalwarts did not dare to question certainly helped. And the encounter with the Prison Notebooks could not have come at a better moment of my life: I had, so to speak, ‘matured’ with their ingestion and absorption.”
- 13.
See Thompson’s reprimand of Leszek Kołakowski (1978: 93–192).
- 14.
Geymonat (1958: 148): “Non si tratta evidentemente di disconoscere l’importanza del pensiero di Gramsci [...] ma soltanto di decidere se – una volta abbandonata questa tematica [la polemica con Croce] – si possano ancora trovare, ed. in quale misura nell’opera di Gramsci gli elementi fondamentali al fine di risolvere i nuovi problemi filosofici di oggi.”
- 15.
- 16.
Tronti (1959: 156): “Gramsci è un pensatore tipicamente e, io direi, fondamentalmente italiano. L’Italia è il suo ambiente naturale; in essa egli affonda le sue radici nel più profondo tessuto nazionale. Finiremmo per restringere e non per ampliare, per diluire e non per approfondire la figura storica di Gramsci, se volessimo dargli un respiro europeo. I suoi problemi e il modo di trattare i problemi, la sua cultura e la forma della sua ricerca culturale, i suoi interessi, il suo linguaggio, la sua educazione, la stessa sua sensibilità umana, tutto vive in Italia. Ecco perché, secondo me il punto fondamentale, anche se non esclusivo, di una ricerca intorno al pensiero di Gramsci, deve fare perno intorno all’ambiente del pensiero italiano.”
- 17.
Tronti (2006: 30): “Ora, il presupposto è questo: che un’ideologia è sempre borghese: perché è sempre un riflesso mistificato della lotta di classe sul terreno del capitalismo.
Il marxismo è stato concepito come “ideologia” del movimento operaio. E qui è un errore di fondo. [...] Marx non è l’ideologia del movimento operaio: è la sua teoria rivoluzionaria [...]. Marx è stato e rimane il punto di vista operaio sulla società borghese. [...] Marx è la scienza del proletariato.”
- 18.
Concerning the link between cultural studies and New Left, cf. Hall (1980: 58).
- 19.
See Burke (1986) for a reconstruction of Marxist approaches to popular culture. It will be interesting to note the divergence between the interpretations of Gramsci marked by the political distancing between the immigrant Bauman, mentioned above, and the British members of the New Left, which he considered a “Woodstock avant la lettre”. Cf. Tester and Hviid Jacobsen (2005: 45). In this context, Bauman also accuses the British New Left of being too prone to Althusserian structuralism.
- 20.
Williams (1977, chap. 6 “Hegemony” and chap. 7 “Traditions, Institutions, and Formations”).
- 21.
On the relationship between subalternity and autonomy with reference to Gramsci and Thompson, see Modonesi (2014: esp. 4–6).
- 22.
These cautions did not save Ginzburg from criticism regarding his effective ability to deal with popular culture without isolating it or hypostatizing it (Zambelli 1979).
- 23.
Modonesi (2014) has developed an articulated political theory that goes beyond past separations and connects subalternity (and its correspondent, hegemony) to antagonism and autonomy as categories capable of capturing various levels and moments of the construction of political subjectivity.
- 24.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00gmx4c/episodes/player (accessed June 10, 2016).
- 25.
- 26.
Cf. Harding (1998), even if the horizon of the reflections is far from the Gramscian matrix of subaltern studies.
- 27.
Cf. Hankinson Nelson (1990: 316): “Scrutinizing and evaluating the values, political and otherwise, incorporated in our approaches to human and nonhuman nature, and taking responsibility for their consequences, must, without the assumption of false boundaries, become part and parcel of good scientific practice. And because not anything goes in science, insofar as values, politics, and science are interfused, the same holds of values and politics.”
- 28.
Mollica (1985: 31–32). It should be noted that Mollica’s interpretation of the Notebooks was already affected by the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe.
- 29.
Cooter (2013: 156): “There is never an escape from the historical apriori.”
- 30.
In an article often cited in history of science, Secord (2004) discussed the dynamics of science as dynamics of communication and circulation. However, the political dimension remained unexplored.
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Omodeo, P.D. (2019). Hegemony and Science: Epistemological and Historiographical Perspectives. In: Political Epistemology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23120-0_6
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