Starting from a re-examination of some categories of the Prison Notebooks – folklore, common sense, religion, philosophy, ideology, language, truth, universality – an attempt is made to outline a global re-interpretation of the relationship between religion and politics from a “subaltern” point of view, in the light of the great changes in European politics and society after WWI. In the Prison Notebooks, Gramsci redefines religion, folklore, common sense and philosophy as relative to each other, that is, as notions that can be defined only in their reciprocal relations, on a vertical axis (that reproduces social stratification) that goes from the maximum of disruption and incoherence, but also of diffusiveness of popular religion, to the minimum of disruption and incoherence, but also of diffusiveness, of professional philosophies. In this way, Gramsci liquidates a whole series of traditional hierarchical representations, such as e.g. the dichotomy philosophy/common sense. As a consequence, at every level of the ideological-linguistic continuum there is some degree of “activity”, “creativity”, and “effectiveness”, and vice versa, the unity of every social formation can be reduced to the active effort to unify it by the dominant/ruling class. The production of hegemony can be therefore described as the reduction of a multiplicity of “languages” (that is, representations, ideas, political and religious beliefs) under a more or less unitary regime of signification. But, as in a society based on class division this is in last instance impossible, the history of modern Europe is – in Gramscian terms – a continuous endeavour to achieve unity in some supplementary and partially spurious way. In other words, although a hegemonic project is always represented as a bearer of universalistic values, hegemony actually carries out only a part of them, while at the same time acquiring a higher degree of concreteness and effectiveness. Failure and success of hegemony are therefore not contradictory, as they are, on the contrary, reciprocally implicated. Developing his theory of hegemony and the related notion of universality, Gramsci sheds light on a crucial aspect of power in the last decades of the nineteenth century and, with greater intensity, after WWI. The gradual entrance of the “masses” in the space of State politics, gradually changed the internal balance of hegemony, rendering more and more decisive the integration of society in its entirety under a “national” form. After the imperialistic expansionism of the nineteenth century, and as a consequence of it, masses could be absorbed into the hegemonic project of the ruling class only through a radical transformation of the liberal State. State interventionism combined with a series of violent efforts aiming at the “totalitarian” integration of subaltern classes, and a new phase of permanent mobilisation of the whole population was inaugurated. With the enlargement of the State, a sort of inversion of the perspective took place: the bourgeoisie got hold of the religious myths of the subalterns and used them as the engine of the passive inclusion of the masses in the State. Bourgeois universalism, devoid of any content of its own, absorbed the common sense of the subalterns and re-organised its meaning: popular participation became populism, and internationalism became national-socialism. The utopian energy of popular religious universalism was incorporated in a renewed model of hegemony – a populist one –, where religion is no more separated from politics, because the unitary regime of meaning is constructed not on rational-political basis any longer, but on a political-religious one. Nevertheless, this is not the last word at all. In fact, through the incorporation of the religious discourse of “the people”, bourgeois politics are forced to abandon universality to the destiny of an empty category, and to identify partiality with the basis of conservative politics. On the other side, on the side of “the wretched of the earth”, the struggle for resistance merges immediately and spontaneously, on the very same religious basis of its bourgeois antagonist, empirical concreteness and abstract universality, in the sense that in each singular moment of this struggle universality is embodied in its entirety. Subaltern perspective (which is not given substantially in a privileged “subject”, but only as an unfixed function) becomes decisive, in order to bend the signifier “people” towards a meaning of universal liberation.

Why does religion matter to politics? Truth and ideology in a Gramscian approach

FROSINI, FABIO
2013

Abstract

Starting from a re-examination of some categories of the Prison Notebooks – folklore, common sense, religion, philosophy, ideology, language, truth, universality – an attempt is made to outline a global re-interpretation of the relationship between religion and politics from a “subaltern” point of view, in the light of the great changes in European politics and society after WWI. In the Prison Notebooks, Gramsci redefines religion, folklore, common sense and philosophy as relative to each other, that is, as notions that can be defined only in their reciprocal relations, on a vertical axis (that reproduces social stratification) that goes from the maximum of disruption and incoherence, but also of diffusiveness of popular religion, to the minimum of disruption and incoherence, but also of diffusiveness, of professional philosophies. In this way, Gramsci liquidates a whole series of traditional hierarchical representations, such as e.g. the dichotomy philosophy/common sense. As a consequence, at every level of the ideological-linguistic continuum there is some degree of “activity”, “creativity”, and “effectiveness”, and vice versa, the unity of every social formation can be reduced to the active effort to unify it by the dominant/ruling class. The production of hegemony can be therefore described as the reduction of a multiplicity of “languages” (that is, representations, ideas, political and religious beliefs) under a more or less unitary regime of signification. But, as in a society based on class division this is in last instance impossible, the history of modern Europe is – in Gramscian terms – a continuous endeavour to achieve unity in some supplementary and partially spurious way. In other words, although a hegemonic project is always represented as a bearer of universalistic values, hegemony actually carries out only a part of them, while at the same time acquiring a higher degree of concreteness and effectiveness. Failure and success of hegemony are therefore not contradictory, as they are, on the contrary, reciprocally implicated. Developing his theory of hegemony and the related notion of universality, Gramsci sheds light on a crucial aspect of power in the last decades of the nineteenth century and, with greater intensity, after WWI. The gradual entrance of the “masses” in the space of State politics, gradually changed the internal balance of hegemony, rendering more and more decisive the integration of society in its entirety under a “national” form. After the imperialistic expansionism of the nineteenth century, and as a consequence of it, masses could be absorbed into the hegemonic project of the ruling class only through a radical transformation of the liberal State. State interventionism combined with a series of violent efforts aiming at the “totalitarian” integration of subaltern classes, and a new phase of permanent mobilisation of the whole population was inaugurated. With the enlargement of the State, a sort of inversion of the perspective took place: the bourgeoisie got hold of the religious myths of the subalterns and used them as the engine of the passive inclusion of the masses in the State. Bourgeois universalism, devoid of any content of its own, absorbed the common sense of the subalterns and re-organised its meaning: popular participation became populism, and internationalism became national-socialism. The utopian energy of popular religious universalism was incorporated in a renewed model of hegemony – a populist one –, where religion is no more separated from politics, because the unitary regime of meaning is constructed not on rational-political basis any longer, but on a political-religious one. Nevertheless, this is not the last word at all. In fact, through the incorporation of the religious discourse of “the people”, bourgeois politics are forced to abandon universality to the destiny of an empty category, and to identify partiality with the basis of conservative politics. On the other side, on the side of “the wretched of the earth”, the struggle for resistance merges immediately and spontaneously, on the very same religious basis of its bourgeois antagonist, empirical concreteness and abstract universality, in the sense that in each singular moment of this struggle universality is embodied in its entirety. Subaltern perspective (which is not given substantially in a privileged “subject”, but only as an unfixed function) becomes decisive, in order to bend the signifier “people” towards a meaning of universal liberation.
2013
9780203762035
9780415704465
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11576/2583978
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