ABSTRACT
The Southern Question was for the Sardinian Gramsci a national question in so far as it was a question of political and cultural hegemony. Analysis of Gramsci's controversial notion of hegemony, and of the even more controversial interpretations attempted by scholars. Piedmontese liberals who led the Risorgimento shared primary responsibility for the failure of a liberal hegemony because they had set themselves up as both intellectuals and politicians. Gramsci's project began where liberal hegemony left off: with the goal of incorporating the South into the nation State. This interpretation of culture affected both his notion of hegemony and his reading of the relation between city and countiyside, because the interpretation allowed for a historicization of abstract categories, such as intellectuals and people, urbanism and ruralism. Gramsci's notion of an "intellectual and moral reform" is grounded in the primacy of subjectivity.
