Filosofi occasionali: filologia e studi culturali da Gramsci a Said

For both Antonio Gramsci and Edward Said, culture is mediated by the notion of hegemony: they therefore strive to philologically articulate the kind of historical understanding expressed and promoted in cultural manifestations - novels, theatre, media, popular folklore - by virtue of their form and location. What also emerges from this process is a constant emphasis on the role of intellectuals in presenting, embodying and expressing a message to and for a specific audience. Last but not least, Said and Gramsci maintain that the intellectual’s specificity is an aspect of a more general reaction of modern criticism against a form of aesthetic temporality dating back to Hegel, nowadays supplanted by a powerful geographic sense. In turn, such a spatial sense of discontinuity is more appropriate for comprehending contemporary forms of disjunctive formations and experiences, such as women’s history and subaltern groups.