L'émancipation des subalternes par la « culture populaire ». La pensée gramscienne et l'anthropologie pour appréhender l'Italie de l'après-guerre et le Tiers monde en voie de décolonisation (1948-1960)

This article describes the first receptions and uses of Gramscian theories in anthropology, between 1948 and 1960, in Italy, France and Great Britain. At that moment, Gramsci's reflections on subalternity and the political dimension of popular culture inspired those anthropologists interested both in the regeneration of civil and cultural life in post-war Italy and the decolonisation of the peoples of the Third world. References to Gramsci were sometimes improvised from a philological point of view and often remained at the stage of intuition. Nevertheless, they disclosed a sort of tendency in anthropology - and also in social history - for thinking comparatively different spatialities and temporalities of « subalternity », between Italian South and World South. Stemming from the « politicised » conception of subaltern groups offered by Gramsci, the article describes the reception of his thinking in Italian anthropology and its uses by international anthropology interested in Third world peoples, addressing both the convergences and the « missed encounters » with some anthropological traditions such as in France.

Available online: Italie et Méditerranée modernes et contemporaines (MEFRIM) (Accessed November 28, 2016)