«E la poesia?». Una casella vuota nella “filosofia della praxis”?

«What about poetry?». An empty slot in the “philosophy of praxis”? · This essay examines Antonio Gramsci’s reflections on literature, art and aesthetics in his Prison Notebooks. These include an ongoing, albeit ambivalent, engagement with Benedetto Croce’s aesthetic theory. Initially, Gramsci uses Croce’s categories to develop Marxist theory beyond mechanical historical materialism. However, he later dismisses Croce’s entire philosophical approach as «theological» in essence. The paper argues that this radical inversion leads to the a√rmation of the unity of philosophy and ideology, and that this implies a complete reformulation of Croce’s categories, including his definition of beauty in his Aesthetics. Nevertheless, Gramsci’s treatment of art remains in some respects subaltern to Croce’s approach. Despite oπering numerous insights into the historicity and political context of aesthetic ‘form’, Gramsci ultimately retains the Crocean distinction between the «perpetuity» and «historicity» of art. The essay contends that this unresolved tension reveals the limits of Gramsci’s otherwise immanentist project, exposing his reluctance to apply the same radical historicisation to Croce’s notion of ‘aesthetic form’ as he does to his approach to philosophy and history.