Newsletter - International Gramsci Society

‘open,’ fluid, and based on an immanent and heterogeneous will of the
people—is not only possible and preferable, but actually obtainable.
The consequences of his analysis are dramatic: on the one hand,
Gramsci is able to provide a conception of the structure which is no longer
static or reducible to a formal economic moment; it is, instead, profoundly
political, since it becomes both the repository and expression of change as
well as the terrain upon which a better society can emerge. On the other hand,
he is able to incorporate as fundamental to a post-liberal democratic theory a
number of concepts often overlooked in the theoretical discussions of socialist
democracy.
Gramsci demonstrates that if one is to take seriously historical
materialism and the kind of democratic society to which it points, one will
necessarily be faced with a clear choice. One can either accept a flawed but
strategically powerful methodology based on dialectics of a philosophy of
praxis or, more to the point, take as a given the profundity of the political and
the radical diversity this implies, and search for a new logic. In the concluding
chapter, Golding takes a look at the possible resolutions offered by way of a
discursive (or what has come to be known as postmodern) philosophy
outlined in part by the surrealists and further developed in the work of Laclau,
Mouffe, Foucault, and Derrida.
In his Foreward to the book, Ernesto Laclau singles out three aspects of Golding’s
“original contribution to Gramsci’s scholarship”:
First, she locates Gramsci’s work within the literature concerning democratic
theory, in relation to both the limits of liberalism and what might be
considered the best areas to be retrived and strengthened. . . . Second, she
clearly points out the relevance of Gramsci’s work for contemporary
debates—such as deconstruction or radical pluralism and the question of
contingency—debates that for so long have been considered very distant from
her subject matter. . . . Finally, the wide historical canvas within which
Golding inscribes her subject makes her acutely aware of the unresolved
tensions in Gramsci’s thought and the incompatible elements he tried—
unsuccessfully—to combine. In this respect the book is more than a mere
exercise in intellectual history: the contours of a post-liberal conception of
democracy, which are presented in the last chapter, are a very promising
contribution to political theory.
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