Der postmoderne Gramsci

Does the growing international concern with Antonio Gramsci involve also a revival of a global interest towards Marxism and its method? In fact, the reception and spreading of Gramsci’s thought happens in a very ambiguous background. Already in the so called “Postcolonial Studies”, Gramsci, the scholar of hegemony and of Southern Question appears tout court as a sort of merciless hater of Modernity. And appears therefore as an fiery opponent of the universalistic thought, misunderstood as the ideology of Western Imperialism, and as an opponent of Hegel’s philosophy. This kind of lecture is still stronger in Ernesto Laclau. Politics is red by the Argentinan philosopher in accordance with Gramsci’s idea of hegemony, an idea in which would be hidden the secret of the «building of the people». That is, the building of new forms of flexible identities, useful in replacing the old and vanished class identities. But in order to realize this project, we need to definitively overcome the philosophy of history that Marxism inherited from Hegel. According to Laclau, Gramsci’s greatness is exactly in his placing the basis for an escape of Marxism form the context of dialectical tradition, that is from modern metaphysics. But replaced in this way on the ground of the postmodern turn, Gramsci’s hegemony becomes now nothing different from hermeneutics and “weak thougt”. And in consequence of this strategic move, also the borders between Right and Left evaporate, shaping the political figure of a “populism” engaged for a “radical democracy” but unable in defining its own “people”.