This volume brings together Gramsci's writings on religion, education, science, philosophy and economic theory. The theme that links these writings is the investigation of ideology at its different levels, and the structures which embody and reproduce it. Concepts such as subalternity and corporate consciousness, hegemony and the building of a counter-hegemony necessary for the formation of a new historical bloc, thus recur throughout the book. They complement some of the more overtly political writing published in the 1971 selection from the "Notebooks."

Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks are one of the most important and original sources of modern political philosophy but the Prison Notebooks present great difficulties to the reader. Not originally intended for publication, their fragmentary character and their often cryptic language can mystify readers, leading to misinterpretation of the text. The Routledge Guidebook to Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks provides readers with the historical background, textual analysis and other relevant information needed for a greater understanding and appreciation of this classic text. This guidebook: Explains the arguments presented by Gramsci in a clear and straightforward way, analysing the key concepts of the notebooks. Situates Gramsci’s ideas in the context of his own time, and in the history of political thought demonstrating the innovation and originality of the Prison Notebooks. Provides critique and analysis of Gramsci’s conceptualisation of politics and history (and culture in general), with reference to contemporary (i.e. present-day) examples where relevant. Examines the relevance of Gramsci in the modern world and discusses why his ideas have such resonance in academic discourse Featuring historical and political examples to illustrate Gramsci's arguments, along with suggestions for further reading, this is an invaluable guide for anyone who wants to engage more fully with The Prison Notebooks

"...[I]n the autumn of 1926, on the pretext of an alleged attempt on his life, Mussolini decided to make an end of even the semblance of bourgeois democracy that still survived. All remaining opposition organisations and their publications were banned, and a new, massive series of arrests was launched throughout the country. Among those arrested was Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci was a member of parliament -- but the régime was no longer interested in niceties about parliamentary immunity. He had also, since August 1924, been the general secretary of the Communist Party -- though of course under such political conditions the identity of party officials was kept secret. He was 35 years old. At his trial in 1928, the official prosecutor ended he peroration with the famous demand to the judge: "We must stop this brain working for twenty years!" But, although Gramsci was to be dead long before those twenty years were up, released, his health broken, only in time to die under guard in a clinic rather than in prison, yet for as long as his physique held otu his jailers did not succeed in stopping his brain from working. The product of those years of slow death in prison were the 2,848 pages of handwritten notes which he left to be smuggled out of the clinic and out of Italy after his death, and of which this volume is a selection." -- Pages xvii-xviii of Introduction.

Revisiting Gramsci’s Notebooks offers a rich collection of studies addressing the thought of Antonio Gramsci, one of the most significant intellects of the twentieth century, from a global network of scholars confronting the actuality of our ‘great and terrible’ world.

In the early 1990s, E.M.S. Namboodiripad (1909-1998) came across the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937). Gramsci, one of the most significant communist theorists of his time, had spent his time in prison writing essays and notes to clarify the situation of the communist revolution in Italy, and the victory of the fascist forces. These writings, written in secret over a decade (1929-1937) largely in the prison of Turi near Bari, were smuggled out by Gramsci's family, preserved by his comrades, and then published first a little over a decade after Gramsci's death.It was P. Govinda Pillai (1926-2012) - known to his comrades as PG - who had first given EMS a volume of Gramsci's Prison Notebooks. EMS read part of it and jokingly chided PG for not giving him Gramsci's work to read a decade or more earlier as he found himself astounded by the great quality of the theoretical assessments in it.By now in his early 80s, EMS told PG to write a book about Gramsci in Malayalam. PG said that he would only do so if EMS wrote it with him, so the two of them got to work. An early fruit of the reading EMS had done was published in The Marxist in 1995. The next year, EMS and PG released a full book on Gramsci's thought in Malayalam.This book - translated by PG's son M.G. Radhakrishnan - is the English version of that effort.

Antonio Gramsci is widely celebrated as the most original political thinker in Western Marxism. Among the most central aspects of his enduring intellectual legacy is the concept of subalternity. Developed in the work of scholars such as Gayatri Spivak and Ranajit Guha, subalternity has been extraordinarily influential across fields of inquiry stretching from cultural studies, literary theory, and postcolonial criticism to anthropology, sociology, criminology, and disability studies. Almost every author whose work touches upon subalterns alludes to Gramsci’s formulation of the concept. Yet Gramsci’s original writings on the topic have not yet appeared in full in English. Among his prison notebooks, Gramsci devoted a single notebook to the theme of subaltern social groups. Notebook 25, which he entitled “On the Margins of History (History of Subaltern Social Groups),” contains a series of observations on subaltern groups from ancient Rome and medieval communes to the period after the Italian Risorgimento, in addition to discussions of the state, intellectuals, the methodological criteria of historical analysis, and reflections on utopias and philosophical novels. This volume presents the first complete translation of Gramsci’s notes on the topic. In addition to a comprehensive translation of Notebook 25 along with Gramsci’s first draft and related notes on subaltern groups, it includes a critical apparatus that clarifies Gramsci’s history, culture, and sources and contextualizes these ideas against his earlier writings and letters. Subaltern Social Groups is an indispensable account of the development of one of the crucial concepts in twentieth-century thought.