ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the intention is to connect Gramsci’ intellectual legacy with the contemporary contexts and issues, and to respond to the cultural theorist Stuart Hall’s exhortation to ‘think our problems in a Gramscian way’. The chapter opens by setting out the key responses that followed the publication of the Prison Notebooks in English in 1971. At the time, these debates focused on Gramsci’s critique of economism and the implications of this for agency and political strategy, while also being concerned with the relationship between class and other social movements as the basis of any alliance capable of securing transformative change. These debates have inevitably developed over time, but they remain central and defining. Much of the discussion is concerned with identifying the type of practical political action that is required in a context where political and civil society appears both complex and robust. Such activity often requires protagonists to simultaneously work ‘in and against’ the state, acting as organic intellectuals engaged in a contemporary war of position. The chapter provides three examples of this work, in schools, community organising, and adult education, and argues that the work presented offers insights into what educative leadership can look like.
