Newsletter - International Gramsci Society

Editorial
The creation of the International Gramsci Society was animated by a desire to bring
individuals studying the life and thought of Antonio Gramsci in different countries and from
diverse perspectives in direct or indirect contact with each other. From the start, members of
the IGS wanted to learn more about the interpretations and uses of Gramsci that were taking
place in countries and in disciplines other than their own. In this issue of the IGS Newsletter
we have made a special effort to stress the international dimensions of Gramscian studies with
information from countries as diverse as Colombia, India, and Japan. The bibliographical
section, on the other hand, is quite illustrative of the wide range of approaches and
applications that Gramsci’s thought continues to elicit—and this is further confirmed by the
innovative exploration of certain ideas of Gramsci’s within the framework of social
psychology about which we offer some general information (that we hope to amplify in the
next issue).
One measure of the perdurable interest in Gramsci’s work is the felt need to make his
texts increasingly available to a wider readership. In the anglophone world two new
important editions will serve this purpose and are bound to have a strong impact. The first of
these is Frank Rosengarten’s complete critical edition of the Letters from Prison, translated by
Raymond Rosenthal and published in two handsome values by Columbia University Press
earlier this year. (See the description in the “Gramsci Bibliography” section in this issue of
the IGS Newsletter.) This edition is designed to attract both specialists and general readers. Its
critical apparatus is thorough without being cumbersome or pedantic while the translation
renders Gramsci’s prose faithfully and, at the same time, stylishly and lucidly. The other
important work is Derek Boothman’s edition and translation of Further Selections from the
Prison Notebooks that is about to be published in London by Lawrence & Wishart. This
edition brings into relief many important aspects of Gramsci’s thought hitherto unknown to
anglophone readers who lack a knowledge of Italian. Boothman also supplies copious textual
annotations that are of great value even to the finest Gramsci experts. (We are grateful to
Derek Boothman for providing us with the discussion of his edition which we are reproducing
in this issue of the Newsletter.) In the meantime, work is proceeding well on the German and
English language complete critical editions of the Quaderni.
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