Antonio Gramsci - On Intellectuals
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ก.พ. 2023
- Dr. David M. Peña-Guzmán discusses the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci's account of intellectuals in The Prison Notebooks. Who is an intellectual and what does it mean to be one? What are the two kinds of intellectuals that Gramsci differentiates between? And why is an analysis of intellectuals important for understanding the dynamics of capital?
Excellent. We need more videos like this one. Can Overthink do a whole series on Gramsci?
In America the black community haemorages its intellectuals into a kind of black bourgeoisie. So alongside Obama there is Black Lives Matter under constant attack as WOKE, and the two strands don't seem to mesh. Class society is able to incorporate into its intelligentsia elements from alienated groups. The same thing might be happening in Northern Ireland where the educated Catholics not getting a fair share are drifting away from the Falls Road. We will see with Sinn Feinn and the Power Sharing under Good Friday
This would be a good idea and very timely given the extreme right wing using/mischaracterizing Gramsci's work as "proof" that some bogeyman is gonna get them. Having accurate, nuanced analysis is super important!
@@sempressfi What is the right wing characterization?
What a remarkable explanation -- especially given you ran through all of it without cuts. This channel is a treat.
The idea that all people are intellectuals is the key to Gramsci's work, and it's one that a lot of people misunderstand or skip over. Not only is it a fundamental premise of his argument, but it's the part where Gramsci establishes that he's using the term "intellectual" in a unique (or at least specific) manner. At least in my experience in grad school, a lot of people are too quick to dismiss Gramsci's theory of the intellectual simply because the term rings of Eurocentrism, classism, etc etc. It reminds me of Norbert Elias's The Civilizing Process, which also uses a very unfortunate vocabulary to establish a very useful theory.
Like how freud laid so many foundational concepts for psychology, while people today dismiss freud while not realizing so many concepts are taken for granted, such as ego vs id vs super ego.
You are so good in explaining the meanderings of philosophical theories
Thank you
Very sobering. It's worth keeping in perspective that no matter how "renegade" our convictions may be, having the "right opinions" does nothing by itself.
Best viedeo on this topic I've seen. You clarified so many things I was struggling with while reading the original text. It would be cool if you made a video explaining the main concepts from this video using modern examples. Thanks!
Thank you for sharing 🌹
Excellent video, thank you for sharing!
I feel like this is the most misunderstood or misinterpreted aspect of Gramsci's work. And you did a great job and properly explaining it
great licture , thank you so much , keep up the good work 😇
Awesome lecture!
I really benefited from this clear explanation. Thank you
Thank you!
Amazing x
Can we get a video on base and superstructure?
Nicely explained 🫶
My only encounter with him thus far is his little piece entitled "Why I Hate New Years" and as a fellow New Years celebration hater, I instantly grew attracted. Thank you so much for this lecture!
I feel compelled to share with you the post script to that text: a friend of his said to him "Toni, stfu and come have a beer", which I believe he did.
@@fede2 Ha! I love that anecdote. Thank you for sharing!
🌷😇🌷
Excellent explication of Gramsci. But you don’t mention the social relations of production or the property relations within which the forces of production exist.
Wasn’t Nestor Makhno (the Ukrainian anarchist) an organic intellectual?
Lots of us see union activists who've not been to uni (and do not come from the ruling class) as organic intellectuals.
Ah man what a grim end 😭 are there any examples he gives of organic intellectuals from the not dominant class that don’t get swept up into that pull of the traditional intellectual route?
Well, he then talks about how we need to train new intellectuals through a new system of education to create them. This criticism is not of ALL intellectuals, but of intellectuals as they existed (in his view) in his time and age. But he did think a better version of intellectuals is possible (presumably similar to him).
@@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy wonder what he would think of Paolo Freire!
@@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy - Glad there’s a ray of hope!
I have one good example, a possible role model, for the drought of intelligentsia devoted to the peasantry: Good old George Bailey, from It’s a Wonderful Life. Eh?
Mao was from peasant stock. Rosa Luxembourg etc.
Excellent, however did Gramsci added or differed to Marx's concept of cultural hegemony? In other words, to fell the gap between the world of mind (ideas) and material (relations)?
Yes, it seems to me that Marx already told us that intellectuals, by default, contribute to a culture that reinforces the primacy of the ruling class.
I think that Gramsci is using the term ‘organic’ in the sense that these intellectuals constitute an organ of the class whose interests they serve and from whom they arise.
Hands can be used both to sense and manipulate the world. That I have hands is a rather organic state of affairs (as opposed to artificial).
That industrialists, capitalists, aristocrats, et cetera should have intellectuals which perform the function of sensing and manipulating the cultural surroundings for the class’ sake is by analogy a rather organic state of affairs.
If it is the case that a class (such as the peasantry) is without similar intellectuals, it will be fist-less on the level of culture.
I took it to mean "naturally arising from" or "in relation to its natural function."
Surely Gramsci believes in the potential of peasant/proletariat organic intellectuals, however, yes? Would he not seem himself as producing work that defends the class interests of the oppressed?
Mao was born a peasant and became a Marxist intellectual and actor. Gramsci believed that anyone could be an intellectual, an organic intellectual represents a given class's interests.
I would be interested to hear your thoughts on Gramsci and how his works have influenced Critical Race Theory and not just related to Derrick Bell, but more specifically the movements we see today such as The 1619 Project and DEI in corporations.
Gary gets it
rereading gramsci now after listening to this episode, thanks
Scientists appearing to be beyond class interests? Not after the last three years.
This is an excellent video. I would tend to think of traditional intellectuals as those who seek degrees, titles and are schooled in status quo establishment institutions having their work funded by government like most science is today, and being very much part of the false hierarchy towing the ruling class narrative.
And I would consider organic intellectuals as those who reject hierarchies and use their time in the real world outside of an institution, actively gaining knowledge through their own rigorous research, and using that knowledge in real-life trial-and-error experiments and documenting their real-world observations not existing on government cheese, and working towards measurable changes of improvement in society.
Social media may have severed the need for intellectuals to grow out of (or into) the dominant class. I'm thinking of internet personalities that have a meaningfully large influence on the material and cultural level, whose "intellectualizing" may undermine the stability of the dominant class
This is another thought-provoking video. You seem to have forgotten the other major class in capitalism - the working class - and its own organic intellectuals: the engineers and technicians. Also a major group of the organic intellectuals of the bourgeoisie are the managers in general (you referred to the executives).
The base in the base-superstructure metaphor is not the productive forces. The base is the relations of production (possession of and separation from the means of production, producers/non-producers and approrpiation of the surplus value by the non-producers - the economic base). To this base correspond the productive forces (means of production and labour power - knowledge, skills, abilities) which, as you rightly said, is the material basis. Relations of production and productive forces make up the concept of the mode of production.
Science is not part of the superstructure. it is part of the base, although ideologies developed on the basis of science are part of the superstructure. .
Very well explained. However, it is important to preface Gramsci’s work by explaining that he is a communist, and his theories are aimed at presenting ways of overcoming capitalist society’s and replacing them with communist societies. Therefore, his work is prejudiced, particularly in his explanation of classes.
Okay, one more "mover and shaker" and I'm outta here.
Noodling
Pub philosophy
Underworld avant garde
Noodling on beer mats
A truth that’s swallowed hard
Listen to me
My disillusioned audience
Working class poets
Propping up the elite class
Tell me a story
So all the doubt will disappear
They keep fanning embers of faith
To take away these fears
A push to TH-cam
Algorithmic theology
I dreamt this morning
Of a burning nations flag
The face on the bank notes
Reminds me, it’s always in the bag
Pavlov trains each dog
They think my mind’s in the fog
Speak to me
To ease neurosis in your ear
Whisper sweet nothings
For the price of all those tears
The grocer opens early
But I still don’t buy their lychee
The crows take flight
Past my balcony
Someone seems to have trained them
To come and talk to me
All those controls
A magic feather
Dumbo grasps tightly in his trunk
Keep it up your nose
It looks like fly by wire