Abstract

This essay aims at understanding the different “uses” of the concept of hegemony in Italy and abroad by reconstructing how such term has been interpreted in the different moments of the reception of Antonio Gramsci’s thought. A limited portion of such history will be analyzed: Italy from 1948 to 1975, i. e. from the publication of the first volume of the thematic edition of Gramscis’ Prison Notebooks to the publication of the critical edition by Valentino Gerratana, and France from 1953 to 1975, i. e. from the first anthology of Gramsci’s writings to the presentation in Paris of the critical edition of the Notebooks. A recognition of the remarkable amount of secondary literature dealing with such subject will highlight some tendencies of the first decades of the debate in Italy and France. Such tendencies can be traced in a pattern which includes the growing awareness of the importance of the concept of hegemony, in the whole of Gramsci’s writings, as well as the issue of the relation between hegemony, dictatorship and democracy, direction and dominion; and, further than this, the mapping of the various field of application of the concept of hegemony.