Religion et hégémonie dans les écrits de Gramsci : de la postestas indirecta jésuite à l'hérésie des subalternes

The concept of hegemony, at the heart of Antonio Gramsci's research, is inseparable from a fundamental reflection on religion. Religion in Gramsci sometimes designates historical religions, in particular Catholicism, sometimes a conception of Marxism as the heresy of liberalism resulting from subordinate groups. From his Turin years, Gramsci described socialism as a religious faith replacing the supernatural horizon of Christianity with a concrete and rational project. The rise of fascism forces him to confront more directly Catholic institutions and culture, their function of intellectual and political leadership, especially among the peasant masses. This confrontation prepares the decisive turning point for Gramsci during the Concordat of 1929 between the fascist state and the Catholic Church. Starting then to write his Cahiers de prison, he studies through this politico-religious news the relationship of reciprocal influence between economy, culture and politics. To this end, he finds in the editorial, militant and missionary praxis of the Society of Jesus the paradigm of a hegemonic conquest carried out on multiple fronts. The "indirect power" of the Jesuits thus asserts itself as a model and a counter-model, admired for its efficiency but condemned for its authoritarian rigidity. Gramsci therefore opposes the disciplinary drift of Jesuitism with a modern political party carrying an actively religious hegemony, that is to say, associating the subordinates in the development of a collective conscience.