Not throwing the baby out with the bathwater: a Gramscian response to post-hegemony

Abstract

This article offers a Gramscian response to the theory of post-hegemony, suggesting that its rejection of Gramsci rests on misrepresentations of his work. Through a closer engagement with this work, the article outlines the ways in which Gramscian analysis can in fact complement the insights of post-hegemony in analysing the ways in which the social order is secured and the strategies of resistance to this order. This combination of Gramscian and post-hegemonic insights, the article argues, offers a more nuanced and comprehensive insight into power, radical politics and resistance in the twenty-first century, an insight which risks being lost in post-hegemony's rejection of Gramsci and his work. The utility of this combined approach is illustrated via four short vignettes from contemporary Latin America: the emergence of the student protest movement in Chile since 2011; the Caracazo in Venezuela; the Argentine crisis in 2001; and the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.

Keywords:

• post-hegemony
• Gramsci
• consent
• the multitude
• counter-hegemony
• Latin America

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Jim George and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and feedback on the earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

1 For recent scholarship on the use of passive revolution strategies by the state in Latin America to undermine the radical potentials of social movements, see Morton (2003, 2007), Hesketh (2010), and Del Roio (2012)

2 It should be noted that while Gramsci never actually used the term ‘counter-hegemony', this term has been utilised by Gramscian scholars to refer to the collection of strategies utilised to counter hegemonic class power which were the central focus of Gramsci's work.