ABSTRACT
The seventieth anniversary of Antonio Gramsci’s death has been marked by numerous conferences and symposia all across the world. Invariably, at such gatherings, attention is drawn to the enormous body of scholarly and critical work that he has inspired and to the continued widespread use of his concepts in multiple fields of inquiry. The Bibliografia Gramsciana, regularly updated and made available on-line by the Fondazione Istituto Gramsci, now lists over 15,000 titles in numerous languages.1 No Gramsci specialist, however assiduous and tireless, can possibly hope to master such a massive volume of writing. The statistic is impressive, as is the observation made by Eric Hobsbawm some years ago that Gramsci is among the most frequently cited Italian authors of the modern era (Hobsbawm 1987: 23);2 but all it tells us is that, in some sense or another, Gramsci is important. Paris Hilton, too, is important, in the sense that she is famous. In her case, she is important or famous for being famous; she is a celebrity simply because she is a celebrity. In other words, she is an instance of importance without content – a phenomenon probably unimaginable a century ago. When it comes to Gramsci, though, one would still want to know why he is important and to whom. Obviously, there are no succinct, straightforward answers. Guido Liguori’s study of the debates surrounding the significance of Gramsci’s legacy, Gramsci Conteso (Liguori 1996), is 300 pages long – and it concerns itself solely with the Italian cultural-political scene between 1922 and 1996.
