Film, Politics, and Gramsci

by Marcia Landy

Film, Politics, and Gramsci was first published in 1994.Marcia Landy reassesses Antonio Gramsci's politics in light of contemporary Marxist critiques of mass culture. Unlike other studies of Gramsci that focus either on his political or on his cultural writings, Landy looks at the relationship between politics, culture, and history in his work. Focusing especially on Gramsci's notions of common sense and folklore, and illustrating these through readings of various films, this book encompasses issues such • the contemporary status of history• notions of education• the nature of intellectuals• the role of cultural production and media analysis Landy consolidates questions of politics and culture through a close reading of Gramsci's writings as well as of recent Gramscian scholarship. In particular, she shows how Antonio Negri's writings accommodate, and even extend, the cultural concerns Gramsci raised. Her examination of cinema—from British and Italian films to Hollywood science fiction—demonstrates how an elaboration of Gramsci's cultural and political analysis can serve as a corrective to the excesses of monolithic views of culture, whether dystopian or celebratory. Specifically, Landy shows how folklore, however "natural" and ahistorical it may seem, is constituted through changing representations of the state, civil society, subjectivity, knowledge, and power.

312 pages, Paperback

First published August 28, 1994