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Reading Gramsci
Tue, October 13, 2015 @ 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM
$25 – $45
Reading Antonio Gramsci: Hegemony, War of Position and the Historic Bloc
3 Sessions remain with Harmony Goldberg
Tuesdays, 7:30 pm / October 13, 20 and 27
Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks is one of the most powerful left strategy documents developed in the last hundred years. It offers us a number of helpful concepts that can help us think about the revolutionary process in places like the United States, where the capitalist system is maintained through a dynamic approach to class rule—which Gramsci calls hegemony—that combines “force” and “consent”.
The class will begin with a basic introduction to Gramsci’s historical context and the fundamentals of his approach in order to support the participation of people who are new to Gramsci’s thought. Over the course of four sessions, we will learn about the concepts of “hegemony”, the “war of position”, and the “historic bloc”. We will examine several historic examples and discuss the relevance of this concept to our political work today. Because Gramsci╒s writing can be difficult, much of our class reading happens during the sessions themselves. The class combines close readings with group discussion and interactive exercises.
A founding member of SOUL: School of Unity & Liberation in Oakland, HARMONY GOLDBERG has run left political education programs for grassroots organizations in the Bay Area and New York City for more than a decade. Recently completed her PhD in Cultural Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center, and she continues to support grassroots organizations and the broader left as a popular educator, writer and facilitator.
Sliding Scale: $25-45