Antonio Gramsci Revisited: Historians of Science, Intellectuals, and the Struggle for Hegemony

TitleAntonio Gramsci Revisited: Historians of Science, Intellectuals, and the Struggle for Hegemony
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2011
AuthorsNieto-Galan A
JournalHistory of Science
Volume49
Issue4
Start Page453
Pagination453–478.
Date Published12/2012
Abstract

Beyond the specialist area of history of science, there has been an enormous amount of scholarly interest in the life and works of the Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) in the second half of the 20th century, in particular his extraordinary intellectual output while detained in Mussolini’s prisons from 1926 until his death in 1937. Inspired by Gramsci's concepts such as hegemony and intellectuals, this paper attempts to demonstrate how Gramsci’s ideas can contribute to critically explore the value-laden nature of science and technology. Gramscian concepts can also stimulated new analysis of science communication processes such as teaching, popularising and cross-cultural knowledge transferring, which, in recent decades, have led to an increasing historiographical plurality, and self-reflexivity. The paper also shed some light on the role of historians of science as professional experts and intellectuals, and their capacity to resist and counterbalance the well-established patterns of political, economic and academic hegemony.