De la mobilisation au contrôle : les formes de l'hégémonie dans les « Cahiers de prison » de Gramsci

Aim of the present essay is to track different epochs of hegemony in the history of the modern State. In the first chapter, a very peculiar although rarely studied aspect of Gramsci's method is retrieved, i.e. the semantic expansion of all the terms denoting functions involved in the concrete working of hegemony. It will be shown that this expansion is necessary to understand the role played by the public « organisational » and « connective » functions taking place within the private sphere of the « civil society ». The second chapter introduces two (not entirely distinguishable) main phases of hegemony, represented, respectively, by the predominance of « mobilisation » and of « control ». The consequence of the trend from the first to the second phase is the gradual weakening of the separation between « public » and « private ». With regard to the government of the subaltern classes, this trend means that « control » becomes more important in relation to « mobilisation », and bourgeois power is pushed towards the experimentation of new forms of proximity - not merely repressive but ideological - to the masses of the subalterns. Available online: De la mobilisation au contrôle : les formes de l'hégémonie dans les « Cahiers de prison » de Gramsci (Accessed November 28, 2016)