Subalternity, privatisation and passive revolution: a proposal for reading the 'creative popular spirit'

Abstract

The success and exponential growth of contemporary political philosophy studies devoted to the problem of subalternity—here making a generic reference to Gramsci—means that the specificity of Gramscian thought on the subject is often overlooked. This text begins with a brief exposition of the largely divergent proposals of Ranajit Guha and Ernesto Laclau (and their respective philosophical assumptions). An attempt is then made to render the full complexity of the Sardinian Communist's approach, focusing on the variations produced in the course of his reflection on the demos, between his use of the expression ‘creative popular spirit’ in 1927 and his 1935 definition of the people as the set of subordinate and ‘instrumental’ classes of every form of society that has existed thus far. To this end, we focus on some of the best-known authors that Gramsci drew on in order to develop his thought: Antonio Labriola, Michel Bréal, Benedetto Croce and Georges Sorel, among others.