Andy Merrifield, ‘The Subaltern in Gramsci‘

Gramsci saw the whole of the Italian “South” as a kind of goblin, as a character who got and keeps getting a bad rap, like Rumpelstiltskin. In late 1926, a month or so prior to his arrest, he was at work on a long essay about the Italian South, Alcuni temi della questione Meridionale—Some Aspects on the Southern Question. The piece was never completed; it was rudely interrupted; and while there’s a lot left dangling, there’s plenty for us still to glean. Gramsci was addressing his Marxist comrades, notably comrades from the north, in a tone that’s critical, enquiring, taking to task all camps, typically trying to get at the truth—warts and all. Gramsci chastised a Right northern bourgeoisie as well as a Left industrial proletariat, northern Marxists as well as southern liberals, workers from the north as well as a gentry from the south.

Point is that all this is voiced by a lad from the south. Gramsci’s political awakening occurred in the north, yet his cultural allegiances always rested with the south. He grew up in peasant society, spoke local Ghilarza dialect, and probably didn’t hear Italian itself until he reached grammar school; and then, in Turin, through his college professors. As a poor, set-apart kid, encountering official Italian was likely both a source of liberation and a lesson in officialdom, the tenor of a ruling class authority he was out to smash. [continues here]