Nuestro Gramsci: Notes on Antonio Gramsci’s Theoretical Relevance for the Study of Subaltern Latino Politics Research

Abstract

This essay draws on Antonio Gramsci’s theoretical and philosophical insights to provide an alternative approach to mainstream Latino politics research that also introduces students to Gramsci. It contends that Gramsci provides a framework both for rigorously thinking about the challenges facing Latinos living in the United States and also for advancing an oppositional democratic politics in the face of the authoritarian turn in contemporary neoliberalism. Gramscian thought provides a theory and method for studying politics that can account for the structural conditions in which Latinos engage in politics, permitting the identification of dominant groups’ methods of building consensus for authoritarian rule. Moreover, Gramscian theory provides analytical tools for conceptualizing an alternative approach to Latino politics research that is oppositional, theoretically driven, and grounded in a praxis focused explicitly on the empowerment of subaltern Latinos, such as the undocumented, refugees, indigenous “Latinos”, Afro-Latinos, and LGBT Latinos, among others.

Key Words:

• Antonio Gramsci
• Neoliberalism
• Philosophy of Social Science
• Political Theory
• Subaltern Latino Politics

Acknowledgments

This essay is dedicated to my mentor and friend, Raymond Rocco, who taught Gramsci and a critical approach to politics in Latino communities to me and thousands of other Latinos at UCLA. Much of what I have written here comes from nearly two decades of conversation and debate about how to advance an alternative approach to mainstream Latino politics research—conversations with Raymond and with my esteemed colleagues Albert Ponce, Raul Moreno, Adrian Felix, Arely Zimmerman, Natasha Bell, Fred Lee, Murrell Brooks, and Parissa I’majedi Clark, among others. This is for Ray, Mark Sawyer, and the Los Angeles School of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics.

Notes

1 Walter Mignolo (2012) argues that Marxism is still useful for advancing a decolonial critique. Some students, however, have tended to read Mignolo’s work as a way to argue that Gramsci, and Marxism more generally are incompatible with decolonial thinking.

2 Matt Baretto has supported scholars who do qualitative and theoretical work in Latino politics, including my own work and that of scholars such as Ricardo Ramírez. Ramírez also trained Adrián Felix, whose research is qualitatively driven and transnational in nature.

3 In the instrumentalist approach, the state is treated as a unified and undifferentiated set of institutions that is nothing but the instrument of class domination.

4 Like many of his concepts, Gramsci used that of the historic bloc in multiple ways. In some contexts it refers to the unity between workers, peasants, and intellectuals, and in others it refers to dominant classes who have asserted their hegemony over the state and civil society to thus form a historic bloc.