Catharsis: Antonio Gramsci, Pedagogy, and the Political Independence of the Working Class

Abstract

In this chapter, based on a philological investigation of Gramsci’s pre-prison and prison writings in the context of his political practice, we make four major arguments. First, we argue that the major leitmotif of Gramsci’s writings and political practice was the struggle to achieve the political independence of the working class. The idea and goal of working-class political independence share much in common with basic principles held by many educators and particularly educators explicitly oriented toward social justice. Second, we demonstrate how the leitmotif of working-class political independence provides for a revolutionary understanding of the interrelatedness of Gramsci’s major concepts such as intellectuals, the state and civil society, hegemony, and war of position, as well as his insistence on and continuous work in revolutionary political parties. Third, we assert that the leitmotif of working-class political independence demonstrates the centrality of revolutionary pedagogy at the heart of Gramsci’s political practice. The centrality of pedagogy in Gramsci’s leitmotif is captured by his concept of catharsis. Fourth, based on the assessment that precarity or dispossession is actually the historic development of an objectively revolutionary class, we propose that Gramsci’s revolutionary pedagogical practice is increasingly relevant for development of the subjective conditions for revolutionary practice by the growing masses of dispossessed.