ABSTRACT
Along one prominent line of reasoning, Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) is the most important Marxist theorist of the twentieth century and Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975) the greatest twentieth-century theorist of literature. Both men were centrally concerned with the relationship between subjective diversity and resilience or resistance against totalizing forms of control or domination. Gramsci considers this relationship through a trenchant critique of cultural hegemony as the basis for class-based inequality. Bakhtin, on the other hand, illustrates how aesthetic forms and communication provide an irrepressible dynamic that cuts across homogenizing strains and subverts authoritarianism. From a critically humanist perspective, Gramsci and Bakhtin begin from complementary vantage points; whereas Bakhtin foregrounds the value of subjective diversity, Gramsci emphasizes critiques of inequality. Given how effectively their perspectives articulate critically humanist sensibilities, it is particularly fruitful to analyze them in relationship to each other.
