In-between Hegel and Marx: Gramsci’s storicismo assoluto (absolute historicism)

In this talk, I am going to speak about Gramsci’s “absolute historicism.” In his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci develops this concept in relation to two opposed conceptions: 1) Benedetto Croce’s idealist historicism and 2) Bukharin’s positivist understanding of historical materialism. First, I will discuss how Gramsci’s absolute historicism differs from historical materialism and how the concept of the absolute, usually considered in metaphysical and idealist terms, nonetheless has meaning for his particular conception of politics. In this sense, the question is how much Gramsci can be considered a (Marxian) Hegelian. Second, I will try to show where absolute historicism stands within his theory of hegemony along with what it means for him in the context of the revolutionary subject of history.