Antonio Gramsci Essay

2562 Words11 Pages
Name: Christian Manley Matriculation Number: 100015637 Course: IR 2005 Essay: How do theorisations derived from Antonio Gramsci’s work help us understand international relations? Tutorial Date and Time: December 2 11:00 Tutor: Jeremy Kleidosty Due: November 28, 2011 Word Count: 2100 Born in Sardinia, the revolutionary Antonio Gramsci grew up in an environment dominated by empirical approaches to science and education.1 However, it was this atmosphere to which Gramsci became opposed. Driven “to educate the new working class created by industry and the First World War”, Gramsci began to be seen as a threat to Italyʼs Fascist government who disagreed with his more communist tendencies.2 Jailed, Antonio Gramsci used his time to produce his most influential work: The Prison Notebooks.3 In this work, Gramsci noted down some of his most provocative political ideas that would eventually influence International Relationsʼ theoristsʼ perspectives on a grander scale. This essay, with particular evaluation on absolute historicism and cultural hegemony, will investigate how the ideas of this early 20th century Marxist have been instrumental to understanding International Relations. All theories are based on a particular perspective someone has come to from experience.4 Often theorists use them in the hope that they will solve problems and create a better future. Additionally, theories can transcend their original perspectives to be used in new ways. Such a position was advocated by International Relationsʼ theorists such as Robert Cox when they faced a time period where theories were dominated by natural sciences. This essay will first illustrate problems with these positivist theories and then proceed to show how Robert Cox used Gramsciʼs absolute historicism as a basis to create a new system for analysis. After describing how Cox developed Gramsciʼs ideas of hegemony, civil
Open Document