SELECTIONS FROM THE PRISON NOTEBOOKS

One lets a man starve until he is fifty; when he is fifty, one finally notices him. In private life, such behaviour would warrant a good kicking. In the case of the State, it appears to be a “merit” (1933). Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) Even today, our States and their actors tell the same story. This explains the continued appeal of Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks for our cultural theorists and political commentators, including Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Edward Said, and Terry Eagleton, and the New Left Review contributors. Gramsci’s relentless conflict with alternative and oppositional forces finds the most lucid and extended expression in his Prison Notebooks. Selections from the Prison Notebooks,translated, edited, and annotated helpfully in this edition, will make it easier for both the seasoned scholar and budding researcher who wish to study Gramsci’s salient reflections and political observations. Gramsci’s major ideas and sketches of polemical thought have been ordered under larger units in this book. The introductory essay places the Notebooks in their socio-historical background. The considerable range of their address and focus will inspire and challenge students who have only had limited access to Gramscian terminology, such as hegemony, national-popular, subaltern, war of position, organic intellectual, etc. This book is a precious resource for scholars and students from a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, political science, history, geography, education, cultural studies and literary studies. Antonio Gramsci was an Italian Marxist thinker and theorist whose thoughts and ideas continue to be influential even today. Editors and translators: Quintin Hoare is a British leftist intellectual and literary translator. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith is Honorary Professorial Fellow in the School of History at Queen Mary, University of London.