Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements

by Richard J.F. Day

Book Overview

"Inspired to contribute to the symbiotic relationship between the academic and activist worlds, Day has decided to pick up the pen instead of the Molotov cocktail. The result is this brilliant book." Ann Hansen Ann was sentenced to life imprisonment for blowing up a cruise-missile component factory, and is the author of Direct Action: The Memoirs of an Urban Guerilla "If revolutionary politics are to be reconstituted for the twenty-first century,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0745321127
• ISBN13: 9780745321127
• Release Date: November 2005
• Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.4" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Clear, concise and innovative: great for both activists and academics

This book can be read as an extended literature review, a sociological account of radical social movements, or a valorization of non-hegemonic politics. It is a refreshing break from poststructuralist authors who are unable to communicate in language that can be understood without a PhD. This book can be read by activists and academics alike. One of Day's aims is to highlight the problematic orientation towards hegemony within social and political thought and social movements. His critique is nuanced, leaving room for considerations of and orientations towards hegemony, while opening up a whole new field of possibilities. It is not so much that Gramsci is dead, but that he is forced off center stage by a different form of politics. Day's argument isn't simply a critique of hegemonically-oriented forms, but rather a celebration of what he calls 'the newest social movements' which operate outside the logic of hegemony. Day's appropriation of post-structuralism, anarchism, postanarchism, postmarxism and other theories are both insightful and clear.