Caesarism and Bonapartism in Gramsci: Hegemony and the Crisis of Modernity

Historical Materialism #215

by Francesca Antonini

In Caesarism and Bonapartism in Gramsci, Francesca Antonini offers a fresh insight into Gramsci's account of the Caesarist-Bonapartist model, both in the pre-prison writings and the Prison Notebooks. She investigates its historical and theoretical relevance for Gramsci's conception of hegemony.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics

252 pages, Paperback

Published October 22, 2021

Reviews

[David]

One of those nothing-burger books that makes Historical Materialism look like a jobs program for a very specific subset of academic leftists. Not much here at all, would be more interested in Antonini's other works which he references in this one.

[Luis]

I can’t evaluate whether or not this adds anything to the discussion of Gramsci’s thought.

I can say that, ironically for someone who wrote to inform a public, this brings nothing to the table for anyone seeking to use Gramsci to understand the present—it’s too abstruse, too focused on Gramsci’s dialogue with the past to say anything useful about potential dialogues with the present. And that’s a shame.