Abstract
The neo-Gramscian project in International Relations (IR) has offered refined, theoretically-informed analyses of the production, deployment, and effects of power on a world scale, avoiding the narrow methodological and epistemological constrictions of problem-solving, whether rational choice, neorealism, or constructivism. Inspired by Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) and his nuanced Marxian heritage and Italian intellectual background, neo-Gramscians have sought to substantially alter the terms of discourse within IR against the predilections of positivism and empiricism in favor of a critical project of resistance, counter-hegemony, and emancipation. The achievements of the neo-Gramscians are varied and extensive: shifting the topography of social theory from the national to the international; giving conceptual density to notions of power, order, change, and transformation; salvaging historicist consciousness from the fetters of neorealist orthodoxy; and reinvigorating the aims and purposes of critical theory.
No society poses tasks for itself for which necessary and sufficient conditions for a solution do not already exist or are already in the process of appearing and developing.
—Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks
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Notes
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To be sure, hegemony goes “beyond ‘culture,’ “ as Raymond Williams suggests, “in its insistence on relating the ‘whole social process’ to specific distributions of power and influence. To say that ‘men’ define and shape their whole lives is true only in abstraction. In any actual society there are specific inequalities in means and therefore in capacity to realize the process. In a class society these are primarily inequalities between classes. Gramsci therefore introduced the necessary recognition of dominance and subordination in what has still, however, to be recognized as a whole process.” Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 108.
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The title of this chapter is obviously inspired by Amilcar Cabral’s classic statement on cultural renewal, namely, Return to the Source: Selected Speeches by Amilcar Cabral (New York: Monthly Review, 1973).
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On a Gramscian reading, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (London: Heinemann, 1958) is illustrative of this point.
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© 2008 Alison J. Ayers
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Pasha, M.K. (2008). Return to the Source. In: Ayers, A.J. (eds) Gramsci, Political Economy, and International Relations Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230616615_9
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