Philosophy of Praxis

Part 2: Gramsci on Ideology, Hegemony, and Organic Intellectuals

Morning Comrades.

I know, I do go on about Gramsci a great deal and before you get bored of it please do feel free to tell me to change the tune - I probably will not but you get the point. To be fair, I do consider his work to foundational to much of what I believe to work and yes, spending 5 or so years writing a silly little PhD on his work surely play a role in all of this but hear me out. Within the context of this week’s dispatches, our understanding of power, how it is created, shaped and maintained and thus for us to challenge as he did, this work is indispensable. Especially, in light of the fact that many of us are challenging existing power structures and frankly are making the same mistakes so many of us did in the years 1999-2010 it comes negligent to not talk about said mistakes - I’ll get into those next week - and not Gramsci.

With that and in light of the introduction to Freire’s work on Wednesday let’s get into The Concepts of Ideology, Hegemony, and Organic Intellectuals in Gramsci’s Marxism. Make no mistake, as intellectually heavy this may sound, it is not, and yes, it genuinely helps creating change. Not theirs but ours.