#prison notebooks

do not post any of my work as if your own and/or put behind a paywall.

- Antonio Gramsci, “The Modern Prince,” from the Prison Notebooks

Antonio Gramsci, from “Prison Notebooks“ (1929-1935)

Orientalism by Edward Said

- Antonio Gramsci "Selections from the Prison Notebooks"

the demagogue is the first victim of [their] own demagogy.

Thirty-three original Prison Notebooks written by Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) since 8th February 1929 during his imprisonment imposed by the Italian fascist government. At his trial, Gramsci’s prosecutor stated, “For twenty years we must stop this brain from functioning”.

This familiar problem, however, is compounded by the fact that Gramsci wrote in prison, under atrocious conditions, with a fascist censor scrutinizing everything that he produced. The involuntary disguise that inherited language so often imposes on a pioneer was thus superimposed by a voluntary disguise which Gramsci assumed to evade his jailers. The result is a work censored twice over: its spaces, ellipses, contradictions, disorders, allusions, repetitions, are the result of this uniquely adverse process of composition. The reconstruction of the hidden order within these hieroglyphs remains to be done. This difficult enterprise has scarcely yet been started. A systematic work of recovery is needed to discover what Gramsci wrote in the true, obliterated text of his thought. It is necessary to say this as a warning against all facile or complacent readings of Gramsci: he is still largely an unknown author to us. https://newleftreview.org/issues/i100/articles/perry-anderson-the-antinomies-of-antonio-gramsci