Hegemony: a genetic approach

Gramsci's theory of hegemony is currently understood as a theory of power in Western democratic societies, and therefore as a theory of cultural power ('cultural hegemony'). The aim of this article is to show that this interpretation is erroneous for at least three reasons. Firstly, because the notion of 'democracy' itself has to be placed within its historical context : the meaning of 'democracy' in the 1920s and 1930s in Europe was very different from what it would become in the post-WWII era. Secondly, because the various regimes which Gramsci might have been taking into account when he wrote the Prison Notebooks were the result of the crisis of the Liberal State and parliamentarianism. This is the case even if, in different ways, the political conflicts within each of them unfolded in ways which were quite different from what is today presupposed by the notion of cultural hegemony. And thirdly, because the genetic reconstruction of Gramsci's concept of hegemony, as developed in the Prison Notebooks, will demonstrate that the core of what is usually considered the Gramscian theory of hegemony had already been developed before 1926, in what I refer to as 'standard theory'. What we thus have in the Notebooks is a substantial updating of this theory in order to think the new conditions of political struggle in Italy and Europe. Reproduced by permission of Bibliothèque de Sciences Po