Gramsci says that innovation cannot come from the mass, at least at the beginning, except through the mediation of an elite. Gramsci is in a world where for the most part what we think of mass culture does not yet exist and he's very interesting writing about mass serial novels or whatever. The kind of industries of popular storytelling and popular sharing of experiences that are so fundamental to say the post 1940 world are really not the world of Gramsci.
Featuring Michael Denning on Antonio Gramsci. The second of a two-part interview.
Read the passages of Selections from the Prison Notebooks that Dan read to prepare: thedigradio.com/gramscinotebooks
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Check out Socialism...Seriously: A Brief Guide to Surviving the 21st Century by Danny Katch haymarketbooks.org/books/1943-socialism-seriously
Check out Black Women Writers at Work haymarketbooks.org/books/1926-black-women-writers-at-work