Theorist of Subaltern Subjectivity: Antonio Gramsci,Popular Beliefs,Political Passion,and Reciprocal Learning

Introduction

Despite noteworthy contributions by Grasmcian (Adamson, 1980, 1985; Billings, 1990; Fontana, 1993; Fulton, 1987; Holub, 1992) and Leftist (Aronowitz, 1990; Bennett, 1986; Larrain, 1983; Mouffe, 1981; and Turner, 1996) scholars in the English-speaking world, Antonio Gramsci remains misunderstood as a theoretical figure. In his magnum opus, Prison Notebooks, Gramsci sets out to theoretically formulate a counter-hegemonic strategy out of capitalist domination. ¹ A central position that he advances in this work is the need to develop a referential and critical relationship between the philosophy of praxis (Gramsci’s term for Marxism) and popular beliefs (i.e. common sense or the philosophy of the people or non-philosophers, including popular religion) as a necessary and strategic step for the unfolding of counter-hegemony. ² In the 1980s and 1990s this was widely accepted to mean that subaltern culture was a significant material force through which counter-hegemony or political resistance may be embodied (e.g. Bennett et al., 1986; Scott, 1985, 1990; Thompson, 1993). This general insight has been further theoretically elaborated since by many (e.g. Aronowitz, 2002, 2009; Allman, 2007, 2010; Borg et al., 2002; Clayton, 2006; Coben, 2002; Crehan, 2002; Green, 2011; Green and Ives, 2009; Ives, 2004) but especially by Italian scholars who have focused their theoretical energy on the contradictory potential of common sense and popular religion for counter-hegemony (e.g. Baratta, 2003, 2007; Burgio, 2003, 2007; Fontana, 2005, 2006; Frosini, 2009, 2010; Liguori, 2006, 2009a, 2009b; and Liguori and Frosini, 2004). Yet, some positions continue to portray Gramsci as an elitist vanguardist (heretofore understood as intellectual and political leadership of a revolutionary character) who outright rejects popular beliefs in their varied forms as playing a role in counter-hegemony or even political resistance (Hill, 2007; Robinson, 2005, 2008).

This article seeks to provide a corrective to these recent anomalous portrayals. It does so by accurately exploring Gramsci’s position on the relationship subaltern beliefs have to counter-hegemony; by considering his bottom-up stance on the relationship organic intellectuals have to the subaltern; by focusing on his cutting edge position on ideological articulation; and in light of his theoretical articulations regarding the role of subaltern passion and subaltern-centered pedagogy for counter-hegemony. As a way to illustrate the significance of the subaltern for counter-hegemony, I elucidate on the potential of popular religion as a counter-hegemonic force. The analysis below is primarily based on an evaluation of his position on the subaltern as found in Prison Notebooks – more specifically, Selections from Prison Notebooks (SPN, 1987). I also rely on Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks (FSPN, 1995), Selections from Cultural Writings (SCW, 1991), and Selections from Political Writings (SPW, 1990) because they help underscore his insights on the political potential of the subaltern. I conclude with a two-part conclusion: (1) with a general appraisal of the significance of Gramsci for Marxism and (2) with a specific appraisal of the counter-hegemonic potential of the subaltern.

Antonio Gramsci: Counter-Hegemony and the Subaltern

Unlike Georg Lukács (1968) and Vladimir Lenin (1963), Antonio Gramsci (1987, 1991) saw culture as expressive and co-determining of the materialist base, as heterogeneous and open to hegemonic re-direction, and as the very ‘terrain on which men [sic] move, acquire consciousness of their position, [and] struggle’ for change (1987: 407, 195, 377). For Gramsci class struggle is therefore more than economic struggle. It necessarily involves struggling over the hearts and minds of people, their attitudes, beliefs, and conceptions of the world. That is, class struggle is more appropriately conceived of as cultural struggle: The proletarian revolution ‘presupposes the formation of a new set of standards, a new psychology, new ways of feeling, thinking and living … Just as [the proletariat] has thought to organize itself politically and economically, it must also think about organizing itself culturally’ (Gramsci, 1991: 41; Gramsci, 1987: 165, 184). In the Gramscian revolutionary scenario, culture enables both capitalist domination and the class struggle against it (Aronowitz, 1990, 2002, 2009; Bobbio, 1979, 1989; Fontana, 1993, 2005, 2006). While capitalist domination is produced and maintained by bourgeois hegemony (intellectual and moral leadership) in civil society, ‘where a set of ideological practices guarantees the status quo anchored in political society, ultimately legitimating [correspondent] economic practices’; it can also be challenged (and ultimately replaced) through cultural intervention, also produced in civil society, on the part of working class / subaltern leadership based on praxis, alliances across subaltern classes, and humanist aspirations to break free from the social, economic, and political imperatives of capitalism (Holub, 1992: 103). By working class / subaltern hegemony (or counter-hegemony, see note 1) Gramsci means the elaboration of ‘intellectual and moral reform’ – ‘linked with a programme of economic reform’ – and the ‘development of the national-popular collective will towards the realization of a superior, total form of modern civilization’ (Gramsci, 1987: 132–133). Counter-hegemony refers to, to be more precise, a process that challenges the normative view that capitalism is the only viable politico-economic arrangement available to humanity. It unfolds through moral and intellectual leadership design to gain the consent of the masses. And it stands as an alternative to the moral and intellectual leadership that reinforces capitalism. Counter-hegemony (or working class / subaltern hegemony) is ultimately oriented toward human liberation. As a moral and intellectual process based on the philosophy of praxis it facilitates ‘an analysis of reality, a way of conceiving or understanding the structure[s of capitalist domination] that would enable people to change it’ (Allman, 2002: 207).

His early writings as a journalist for Avanti!, Il Grido del Popolo, and L’Ordine Nuovo, before his imprisonment in 1926, shed light on the cultural dynamics that reinforce bourgeois hegemony (Hill, 2007). These pre-prison writings demonstrate how religious and political ideas – in their popular literary and commodity form, and as the products of traditional intellectuals, these being, respectively, the clergy and politicians – function to preserve, justify, and legitimate the social and institutional practices that perpetuate the capitalistic order. ³ Following his incarceration Gramsci continues to elucidate the complex ways in which bourgeois hegemony is directly and indirectly reinforced, but his writing at this stage becomes more theoretically focused on formulating a counter-hegemonic strategy out of capitalist domination. ⁴ This latter strategy is detailed in Prison Notebooks, and it primarily involves studying various ideological orders of social reality – namely folklore, common sense, religion, and philosophy – and the relationship they have to counter-hegemony. In this theoretical project Gramsci sets out to tackle the problem of consciousness a counter-hegemonic (or revolutionary) project faces as it attempts to prepare the ground for the fundamental transformation of society. His purpose in Prison Notebooks is to conceptually and historically understand the psychology of the masses or their ‘spontaneous philosophy’; that is, to comprehend how people make sense of their world, their daily lives, and, most importantly, politics from their perspective as subaltern (marginalized) subjects. This focus on coming to terms with mass psychology is a significant component of his theoretical enterprise in Prison Notebooks (Gramsci, 1987: 348). It requires him to ascertain the nature and meaning of folklore, common sense, and religion, as disparate subaltern forms of consciousness, not because he conceives of these as ideologically unproblematic – Gramsci in fact identifies more negative than positive features associated with subaltern thought – but because he recognizes that the way out of capitalism is ultimately predicated on the ideological alignment the philosophy of praxis has to these forms of consciousness (Gramsci, 1987: 323). Transcending capitalism as a social formation, Gramsci notes, requires a counter-hegemonic effort to take into account ‘the interests and the tendencies’ of subaltern groups but these must be made ‘ideologically coherent’ in order to move society beyond its present capitalistic state (1987: 161, 421, 323). A key factor to the process of counter-hegemony – or moral and intellectual reform – is the role of intellectuals. Intellectuals and the organizational platforms they lead play a pivotal role in this scenario of societal transformation. Gramsci’s term for the type of intellectual at the helm of the political will behind the fundamental transformation of society is the ‘organic intellectual’. He conceives of them as national-popular leaders and organizers from the ‘ranks of the workers and other subaltern’ groups (Aronowitz, 2009: 13). They aim, unlike traditional (status-quo oriented) intellectuals, to replace existent conceptions of the world. They do this by helping make ‘critical an already existing [cultural] activity’ (Gramsci, 1987: 330). In an insight about folklore, but which is also applicable to the two other forms of subaltern thought, Gramsci notes:

Folklore must not be considered an eccentricity, an oddity or a picturesque element, but as something which is very serious and is to be taken seriously. Only in this way will the teaching of folklore be more efficient and really bring about the birth of a new culture among the broad popular masses. (1991: 191)

Counter-hegemony, Gramsci here and elsewhere suggests, unfolds as subaltern ideological orders are transformed from within, i.e. as these are dialectically overcome by the philosophy of praxis during the course of counter-hegemony itself.

In Prison Notebooks Gramsci reveals each of the aforementioned ideological orders as standing for a worldview and unique orientation toward the world, and as respectively representing variant degrees of intellectual coherence and articulation with folklore being the most fragmentary and inarticulate one on one end and philosophy (primarily in its bourgeois and socialist variants) the most coherent and systematic on the other end. Gramsci similarly reveals these ideological orders as active conceptions of the world – i.e. fluid social formations – with roots in the lived realities of its collective (but also individual) possessors. They are by definition socio-historical conceptions that mutually reinforce each other to varied degrees, in varied configurations, at different times in history, and operate, more often than not, to give solidity to the dominant practices of society. Folklore and religion stand for traditional authority, and as such they are the ideological orders of reality most resistant to change. As implicit and traditional conceptions of how life and the world operate, they do not stand for intellectual order. Folklore is the opposite of erudition and philosophy (Gramsci, 1991:140). It is fossilized, anachronistic, and provincial knowledge (Gramsci, 1991: 167; Gramsci, 1987: 35). It represents the most rigid phase of popular knowledge (Gramsci, 1991: 421). Like religion (and common sense), it ‘has always been tied to the culture of the dominant class’, is ‘contradictory and fragmentary’, and it comes in many forms (Gramsci, 1991:194, 189). Common sense is also connected to tradition – e.g. as in the conventional wisdom of the man-in-the-mass that is ‘inherited from the past and uncritically absorbed’ – but it also contains a good sense nucleus (which is driven by practical reason as opposed to traditional authority) that sets it apart from folklore and religion (Gramsci, 1987: 333). Notwithstanding their contradictory, fragmentary, and unsystematic features, the differences between them at the level of analytical and logical weaknesses, and their often uncritical, backward, and incoherent nature (in form and content), common sense, folklore, and religion possess cultural properties (e.g. they are fluid, malleable, and elastic) and social properties (e.g. they stand in opposition to official conceptions of the world) that leave them open to re-signification and counter-hegemonic direction. ⁵ For Gramsci, subaltern modes of thought do not stand for false consciousness; rather they provide points of reference for counter-hegemonic thought and action (Gramsci, 1987: 323–343. On this point see also Allman, 2001, 2002; Coben, 2002; Green, 2011; and Green and Ives, 2009).

In contrast to subaltern thought (i.e. common sense, folklore, and religion), philosophy represents ‘intellectual order’ (Gramsci, 1987: 325). Philosophy is both theoretical and substantive rationality, and in the case of the philosophy praxis the most conducive form of thought to move people beyond a capitalist mode of existence. Philosophy is critical, reflexive, and systematic. It provides a more coherent, unitary, and conscious direction to thought. Philosophy is disciplined thought. It represents critical awareness and originality. More to the point, ‘Philosophy is criticism and the superseding of religion and “common sense”’ (Gramsci, 1987: 326). The philosophy of praxis is, moreover,

‘sufficient unto itself’ … it contains in itself all the fundamental elements needed to construct a total and integral conception of the world, a total philosophy and theory of natural science, and not only that but everything that is needed to give life to an integral practical organization, that is, to become a total integral civilization. (Gramsci, 1987: 462)

Gramsci privileges philosophy over the other ideological orders – i.e. he prioritizes theoretical over traditional and practical orientations (Nun, 1996) ⁶ – but he also theorizes a dialectical and referential relationship between the philosophy of praxis and subaltern thought (including common sense) as a necessary and strategic step for the development of counter-hegemony. I now elaborate on this latter point below with a specific focus, first, on popular beliefs and common sense, their relationship to (re-)articulation, ideological alignment, passion, and pedagogy. Second, by exploring the counter-hegemonic potential of popular religion at the conceptual and historical levels.

Counter-Hegemony as Cultural Strategy: On the Ideological (Re-)Articulation of Subaltern Beliefs

Counter-hegemony, Gramsci theorized, while necessarily guided by working class organic intellectuals, needs to develop from below. This requires the latter social actors to consider existing subaltern cultural practices as potential political resources. Counter-hegemony cannot be separated from, nor can it unfold independent of popular beliefs, for these are essential constituents of, a precondition for, a new type of politics and a future social formation to emerge.

[A] proposition of the philosophy of praxis is [often] forgotten: that ‘popular beliefs’ and similar ideas are themselves material forces…. It is therefore necessary to combat economism [focusing on immediate material / objective concerns as the driving force of social change] not only in the theory of historiography, but also and especially in the theory and practice of politics…. by developing the concept of hegemony [intellectual and moral reform]. (Gramsci, 1987: 165)

Counter-hegemony, moreover, is possible: (1) to the extent that alta cultura (high culture or traditional philosophy) and cultura populare (popular culture) are understood as dialectically reinforcing (and by implication rendering as natural) the inequalities, exploitation, and alienation of a capitalist power structure (Gramsci, 1995: 123) and (2) insofar as the aforementioned modi di pensare (modes of thinking) – in a self-conscious attempt to overcome prevailing forms of bourgeois hegemony – are articulated in a socialist direction by the philosophy of praxis, which operates through a mass-based (as opposed to cadre) revolutionary party and is developed by working class organic intellectuals, rank and file, and sympathizers struggling to unbind, cultivate, and politically mobilize from the bottom up the socialist potential embryonically present in the masses (Gramsci, 1987: 321–377). ⁷

For Gramsci, the philosophy of praxis ‘does not substitute for a deficient consciousness’ in the masses, instead it ‘expresses a collective will, a historical orientation present in’ them (Larrain, 1995: 251; Larrain, 1979: 79–83). The key to working class counter-hegemony therefore lies in the socialist articulation of existent conceptions of the world, i.e. in the conversion of their respective values, beliefs, symbols, and practices from bourgeois to socialist signification. Gramsci explains:

Utopias, or abstract rationalism [ideology], have the same importance as old conceptions of the world which developed historically by the accumulation of successive experience. What matters is the criticism to which such an ideological complex is subjected by the [] representatives of [a] new historical phase. This criticism makes possible a process of differentiation and change in the relative weight that the elements of the old ideologies used to possess. What was previously secondary and subordinate, or even incidental, is now taken to be primary – becomes the nucleus of a new ideological and theoretical complex. The old collective will dissolves into its contradictory elements since the subordinate ones develop socially, etc. (1987: 195, my italics)

Since the philosophy of praxis ‘teaches that reality does not exist on its own, in and for itself, but only in an historical relationship with the men [sic] who modify it’ (Gramsci, 1987: 346, 367), counter-hegemony may be embodied to the extent socially and historically given worldviews associated with the status quo are critically disarticulated from within an existent ‘ideological complex’, during the course of politically struggling to modify cultural and material conditions (p. 195). ‘What matters is the criticism’ leveled against the existent; the degree to which such criticism is used to transform the content – or ‘change the relative weight’ – of contemporary ideological forms; the relationship that an effort at transformation has to dislocating historically marginalized concerns/outlooks from their peripheral status; and the extent to which what has been historically marginalized assumes center stage in political action designed to sustain an alternative cultural direction (counter-hegemony) (Gramsci, 1987: 195).

The key to unbinding latent socialist aspirations – and as such winning consent from subaltern classes - is to ‘fram[e] problems and offer[] solutions’ to existing conditions in a way that is ‘sufficiently in touch with popular sentiments’ (McGuigan, 1999: 205). This is to say that counter-hegemony cannot be cultivated in a social and cultural vacuum, ex-nihilo, because (1) it arises out of historically situated cultural and social relations contexts (‘What exists at any given time is a variable combination of old and new, a momentary equilibrium of cultural relations corresponding to the equilibrium of social relations’) and (2) it is itself shaped in a process of collective collaboration, one based on ‘a dialectic between the intellectuals and the masses’ (Gramsci, 1987: 398, 334).

To illustrate the significance of ideological articulation for transformative politics, let us consider Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s position on it. Inspired by a Gramscian analytical framework, their definition and application of ideological re-articulation to US racial politics underscores the position I am attempting to articulate here. ‘Rearticulation’, they note

is a practice of discursive reorganization or interpretation of ideological themes and interests already present in the subjects’ consciousness, such that these elements obtain new meanings or coherence. This practice is ordinarily the work of ‘intellectuals’ … [It is] a process of recombination of familiar ideas and values in hitherto unrecognized ways…. [During the civil-rights movement preachers rearticulated] familiar [Christian] vocabulary and textual reference-point[s] for freedom struggle … [making] the movements’ political agenda possible, especially its challenge to the existing racial state. (Omi and Winant, 1994: 195n.11, 168n.8, 99–101)

To date the racial order has yet to be overcome in the US, but the referenced historical example demonstrates the power of re-articulation as a political tool in the dynamics of social change, a counter-hegemonic moment in the long and difficult historical process of ideological persuasion – Gramsci’s war of position – in the cultural and material transformation of the racial order.

Counter-Hegemony as Ideological Alignment and Grounded Social-Psychology

The unfolding of a counter-hegemonic challenge cannot ‘supersed[e] the existing mode of thinking and existing concrete thought (the existing cultural world)’, lest people are alienated in the process (Gramsci, 1987: 330). Gramsci is very clear on this relational point between the subaltern masses and its organic intellectuals. ‘[T]he starting point’, he notes, ‘must always be that common sense which is the spontaneous philosophy of the multitude’ (Gramsci, 1987: 421). Common sense (or popular beliefs) is itself a material force through which counter-hegemonic activism may be embodied. The extent to which it is ‘historically necessary’ makes it psychologically valid, and as such viable to ‘organise human masses’ (Gramsci, 1987: 377). It constitutes the very ‘terrain on which men [sic] move, acquire consciousness of their position, [and] struggle’ for change (Gramsci, 1987: 377). A counter-hegemonic challenge, as such, cannot develop in opposition to ‘the “spontaneous” feelings of the masses’ (Gramsci, 1987: 198). Instead it must remain in contact with and find in the simple ‘the source of the problems it sets out to study and to resolve’ (Gramsci, 1987: 330). This requires the philosophy of praxis to initially base itself ‘on common sense in order to’ renovate and make ‘critical an already existing activity’ and ‘in order to demonstrate that “everyone” is a philosopher and that it is not a question of introducing from scratch a scientific form of thought into everyone’s individual life’ (Gramsci, 1987: 330–331). ‘It is a matter’, Gramsci notes, ‘of starting with a philosophy which already enjoys, or could enjoy, a certain diffusion, because it is connected to and implicit in practical life, and elaborating it so that it becomes a renewed common sense possessing the coherence and the sinew of individual philosophies’ (1987: 330).

The synthesis between the simple and intellectual, between common sense (traditional) and the philosophy of praxis (theoretical-modern) is a necessary component for counter-hegemony to emerge as an authentic political force. A process of reciprocal accommodation – rather than imposition on the side of theory and passive absorption on the side of common sense – takes place between them as these two modes of perceiving reality come together and unfold in the politics of counter-hegemony (Urbinati, 1998: 388). To be sure ‘A philosophy of praxis cannot but present itself at the outset in a polemical and critical guise, as superseding the existing mode of thinking and existing concrete thought’, as ‘a criticism of “common sense”’, and ultimately ‘a form of thought superior to’ it (Gramsci, 1987: 330). As the ‘traditional conception of the world’, ‘primitive philosophy’, a ‘neophob[ic] and conservative’ force, a ‘primitive historical acquisition’, and the opposite of ‘intellectual order’, common sense – although it contains ‘a certain truth’ which mirrors ‘the rationality of history’ – more often than not stands as ‘dogmatic’ or ‘arbitrary’ thought, embodies an incoherent consciousness, and reinforces ‘acritical’ and ‘reactionary’ postures that delimit and stifle the political potential of the subaltern (Gramsci, 1987: 197, 332, 423, 199, 366, 423, 435, 345, 324, 420, 442). ‘Common sense’, Gramsci affirms, ‘is a chaotic aggregate of disparate conceptions, and one can find there anything that one likes’ (1987: 422).

Yet, counter-hegemony clearly calls for the philosophy of praxis to ‘educate the popular masses, whose culture [i]s’ outdated (Gramsci, 1987: 392). Such education – while brought about via participation in working class institutions such as their unions and parties, and factory councils (Gramsci, 1987: 15, 133, 147–154); in critical dialogue with organic intellectuals (Gramsci, 1987: 10, 340, 349–351); through ‘actions and reactions’ (Gramsci, 1987: 391); ‘by criticizing, suggesting, mocking, correcting, modernizing’ (Gramsci, 1991: 420); and through a process of democratic centralism (Gramsci, 1987: 186–190) – is not to be achieved against their spontaneous philosophy or common sense (Gramsci, 1987: 199). Rather, ‘The traditional popular conception of the world’ and the coherent and systematic order of ‘modern theory’ must dialectically come together to guide the very unfolding of subaltern ‘political action’ (Gramsci, 1987: 199, 198).

Gramsci does emphasize the need to critically engage common sense in his work out of concern for romantic, uncritical, and naïve tendencies that blindly embrace it. This is most apparent in his critical, if at times harsh, treatment of popular psychology found in Henri De Man’s Au-delà du Marxisme (Beyond Marxism, 1929; see Gramsci, 1987: 197–198, 287, 376, 418–419, and 430–431) and Nikolai Bukharin’s The Theory of Historical Materialism: A Popular Manual of Marxist Sociology (1922) (see Gramsci, 1987: 419–472). But this cannot be taken to mean that common sense (or popular psychology) ought to be excluded outright from playing a role in counter-hegemony; a position most recently adopted by Hill (2007) and Robinson (2005, 2008), who respectively draw on Gramsci’s criticism of Bukharin’s Popular Manual to advance the stance that subaltern (or common sense) alignment undermines the potential of counter-hegemony – its intellectual and moral reform mission – and in effect is tantamount to the ‘pande[ring of] existing beliefs’ with the inevitable result of reinforcing the very status quo counter-hegemony seeks to overcome (Robinson, 2008: 470). Such a misguided theoretical position blatantly (and conveniently) disregards Gramsci’s position on ideological articulation and some significant caveats he makes about the dialectical relationship common sense has to the philosophy of praxis, and the bottom-up, emotional, and pedagogical relationship the subaltern has to organic intellectuals (who presumably, according to this misguided interpretation, would have a monopoly on the truth that is to be imposed on the ignorant). Gramsci is a voluntarist and vanguardist, but his emphasis on the need for synthesis, education, and dialectical contact between the simple and intellectual clearly does not mean rejection of subaltern thought or common sense. Instead it refers to renovation, ‘interior transformation’, and making critical the subaltern as part of a process of reconstituting it and generating a revolutionary (counter-hegemonic) politics that is truly representational of a national-popular collective will (Gramsci, 1987: 420). Gramsci ultimately reveals himself an open vanguardist with progressive populist sympathies, and as such, a proponent of the potential of subaltern subjectivity (their common sense and cultural beliefs) in counter-hegemony.

Implicit in his criticism of common sense as acritical and reactionary is the ‘assertion of the necessity for new popular beliefs, that is to say a new common sense and with it a new culture and a new philosophy which will be rooted in the popular consciousness with the same solidity and imperative quality as traditional beliefs’ (Gramsci, 1987: 422, 425). Noted Gramsci scholar André Tosel notes that ‘The function of the philosophy of praxis is not to liquidate common sense as deteriorated ideology, but to transform and amend it’ by politically redirecting its content (quoted in Ives 2004: 130), a position most recently confirmed by Allman (2010), Aronowitz (2009), Crehan (2011), Fontana (2011), and Liguori (2006, 2009a, 2009b).

Gramsci himself notes that ‘A reciprocal “reduction” so to speak, a passage from’ common sense to theory ‘and vice versa, must be’ assured lest the potential of subaltern subjectivity be co-opted by regressive political forces, is hijacked by ill-founded ‘academic historico-political outlook[s]’, or falls prey to Cardonism (1987: 199–200). ⁸ The philosophy of praxis presupposes a cultural past, and, above all, is ‘made dialectical in the contrast between popular culture and high culture. It corresponds to the nexus Protestant Reformation [intellectual moral reform] plus French Revolution [politics from below]: it is a philosophy which is also politics, and a politics which is also philosophy’ (Gramsci, 1987: 395). The difference between the intellectual and the subaltern, between common sense and the philosophy of praxis (theory), as such, is based on quantity not quality, where quantity refers to ‘greater or lesser degrees of “homogeneity”, “coherence”, “logicality”’, i.e. ‘quantity of qualitative elements’ (Gramsci, 1987: 347).

Counter-Hegemony as the Unity of Theory and Practice, and the Unity of Reason and Emotion

But why is ‘the ideological unity between the bottom and the top, between the “simple” and the intellectuals’ necessary? (Gramsci, 1987: 329). Such unity, for one, makes possible the philosophy of praxis (Gramsci, 1987: 395). It similarly corresponds to ‘the unity between theory and practice’, and it is an indispensable component to establishing a progressive class alliance, ‘an intellectual-moral bloc which can make politically possible the intellectual progress of the mass and not only of small intellectual groups’ (Gramsci, 1987: 330, 332–333). The ‘dynamic contact’ between theory and popular common sense – two seemingly antagonistic modes of conceiving reality – is necessary to modify, develop, and transform the socialist potential that is embryonically present in people’s conceptions of the world (Gramsci, 1987: 397, 391, 327). Common sense makes counter-hegemonic leadership concrete and historical, and modern theory provides discipline of thought and ‘cultural direction’ to the simple (Gramsci, 1987: 198, 330): It gives ‘the masses a “theoretical” consciousness of being creators of historical and institutional values’ (Gramsci, 1987: 198, italics in original). Counter-hegemonic leadership (and by implication the process of revolution) needs to be rooted in the life circumstances and subjective reality of the masses. Gramsci explains:

[L]eadership cannot [be] ‘abstract’; it [cannot]consist[of] mechanically repeating scientific or theoretical formulae, nor can it confuse politics, real action, with theoretical disquisition. It must apply itself to real men, formed in specific historical relations, with specific feelings, outlooks, fragmentary conceptions of the world … Th[e] element of ‘spontaneity’ cannot be neglected and even less despised. It [can be] educated, directed … brought into line with modern theory – but in a living and historically effective manner. (1987: 198, original in past tense)

The union between counter-hegemonic intellectuals and subalterns, Gramsci similarly notes, is necessary because ‘[t]he popular element “feels” but does not always know or understand; [while] the intellectual element “knows” but does not always understand and in particular does not always feel’ (1987: 418). Leaders of counter-hegemony must be able to feel, understand, and appreciate the popular mindset as an authentic source for revolution:

Without feeling the elementary passions of the people, understanding them and therefore explaining and justifying them in the particular historical situation and connecting them dialectically to the laws of history and to a superior conception of the world, scientifically and coherently elaborated … knowledge [philosophy of praxis] … [o]ne cannot make politics-history … If the relationship between intellectuals and people-nation … is provided by an organic cohesion in which feeling-passion becomes understanding and thence knowledge (not mechanical but in a way that is alive), then and only then is the relationship one of representation … [and an active one] within the movement of history. (Gramsci, 1987: 418–419, italics added)

Anticipating developments in social movement theorizing on the emotionality of politics, Gramsci reveals in the preceding two quotes effective counter-hegemony as necessarily containing feeling rules (Hochschild, 1979) – emotional guidelines for appropriate and effective social interaction – between the movement leadership and membership as a precondition for framing rules (Hochschild, 1989, 1990), emotional guidelines for appropriate and effective interpretation of ideological conditions. Popular passion is a necessary component of counter-hegemony; without it counter-hegemony fails to gain a hold in the masses. Theory, as the cultural domain of organic intellectuals, does provide clarity to a counter-hegemonic struggle, but theoretical clarity in and of itself does not guarantee a favorable outcome for counter-hegemony. A theory employed in the service of changing the world requires feeling the elementary passions of the people. Noted Gramscian scholar Benedetto Fontana explains it as follows: ‘The abstract knowledge of the intellectual may be turned into life and politics as it becomes linked to the experience and passion felt by the people. At the same time, the feelings and passion of the people – by means of the intellectuals acting as filters or mediators – are infused with conscious direction and coherence’ (2002: 26–27). Adding: ‘To know something politically and socially, as opposed to abstractly or purely intellectually, is to understand it with feeling and with passion … The knowledge of the intellectual, in short, becomes life and politics only when linked to the feeling/passion of the people. The synthesis intellectual/people and knowledge/passion is what provides the motive force for political and historical activity’ (Fontana, 2005: 101).

Theoretical clarity, Gramsci notes elsewhere, must become ‘disseminated passion’, a passion that is collectively shared (Gramsci, 1987: 113). Without disseminated passion theoretical clarity is nothing more than an anomalous reflection from which a counter-hegemonic collective will (‘a general and operative national-popular consciousness’ geared toward intellectual and moral reform) inevitably fails to emerge (Gramsci, 1987: 113). More to the point, strong passion, ‘as the active centre of human life’, is necessary ‘to sharpen the intellect’, ‘help make intuition more penetrating’, and inform ‘deliberate reflection’ itself (Gramsci, 1987: 349, 171, 139). Counter-hegemony, as such, is reflexively embodied ‘political passion’ (Gramsci, 1987: 140). The understanding of subaltern feelings, passions, and ways of perceiving reality is central to the very unfolding of counter-hegemony.

Implicit in the original quotes above is also an acknowledgement that passion sustains counter-hegemony over time. This position is in fact corroborated in Gramsci’s historical observations on the Risorgimento in Italy where he notes that any political actor, including the active politician (and by extension the counter-hegemonic organic intellectual) seeking to transform society is by definition consumed by the ‘what ought to be’ imperative (Gramsci, 1987: 172). And as such, she is a person driven by passion, that is, ‘“emotion”, fever, [the] fanatical desire for action’ (Gramsci, 1987: 127). Counter-hegemony as passion, therefore, gets at the reality that emotions are ‘the “link” between personal problems and broader public issues’ (Williams and Bendelow, 1998: 13) and, correlatively, that they operate as a source of energy through which counter-hegemony itself is embodied.

In the aforementioned quotes Gramsci may also be understood as making the point that the emotional link between the simple and the intellectual is a necessary one for strengthening the collective identity and commitment that comes with a counter-hegemonic project. Without such emotional unity, or affective connection, counter-hegemony, he notes, would come to naught as a politically transcendent historical project.

Gramsci recognizes that passion can potentially ‘annihilate[] the critical sense and the corrosive irony’ needed to undermine the taken-for-granted and subjective appeal of bourgeois hegemony (cultural domination) (Gramsci, 1987: 129). The hope of ‘making it’ harbored by the urban and rural petit bourgeois, more often than not, reinforces capitalist hegemony. Passion can lent itself to ‘operational incapacity’ when it functions ‘as a condition of orgasm and of spasm’ (Gramsci, 1987: 138). Strategies of action, political courses of action, and the very functions of political agencies, whatever their political bent, he notes, can be overwhelmed by the power of subjective forces. The impassioned crowd acts precipitously (Gramsci, 1995: 275). Misguided leaders inflame the passion of the masses (Gramsci, 1995: 391). ‘Torrents of passionate feelings’, scorn, hatred, anger, and envy stemming from cultural marginality or social differences, while necessary because they provide and affix blame on social targets (e.g. company bosses, traditional intellectuals, civil servants, landlords, and small and medium entrepreneurs) and often work as a driving force of subversiveness, are not by themselves sufficient for sustained struggle, can cause disunity and, as such, ultimately undermine counter-hegemonic efforts (Gramsci, 1987: 99, 14, 91, 272). For passion to play an effective role in a national popular struggle, it requires ‘ideological and political preparation’ and it must emerge organically, free from demagogical manipulation (Gramsci, 1987: 110). But just as theory (the philosophy of praxis) must temper and give direction to passion; passion (in its popular form) must temper theory to make it historically compelling, relevant, and effective. Between reason (theory) and emotion (popular consciousness) there exists a dialectical relationship, which can ultimately produce effective counter-hegemony. Counter-hegemonic leaders, therefore, must be mindful to align themselves with the subaltern in a way that resonates with their passions (emotional lives and understanding) as well as with their lived experiences. This unity between theory and passion creates the hope for the hegemony of tomorrow the counter-hegemonic politics of the present seek to establish.

With these analytical caveats Gramsci moves beyond the emotion-reason dichotomy to reveal these human components of knowing and understanding as mutually compatible and constitutive of each other as opposed to being mutually exclusionary of each other as it was assumed in the political theorizing of the time. Passion, like reason, is here acknowledged as a purposeful and meaningful component of being-in-the world, and as a significant constituent of counter-hegemonic politics. Or, the politics of counter-hegemony, to be more precise, is recognized as a self-reflexive moment rooted in and necessarily defined by passion, the emotionally lived realities of the subaltern. Counter-hegemony, as such, contains an emotional logic that fuels its efficacy to challenge the order of things. Leaders of counter-hegemony must incorporate lived historicity – i.e. contemporaneous feelings, outlooks, and worldviews – in their understanding of social reality as a precondition for aligning their abstract attributional orientations to historico-popular ones. Such an alignment with lived subjectivity not only makes for active and concrete knowledge, but it similarly ensures the emergence and channeling of socio-affective ties within a counter-hegemonic movement, both necessary components for its stability, as well as its genuine, forward, and progressive trajectory. Gramsci’s position on the relationship between passion and theory (or the philosophy of praxis) as an essential component for the development of counter-hegemony, is lucidly summarized by Anne Showstack Sassoon:

Intellectuals and forms of intellectualism that are practical and go beyond the abstract, rationalistic schemes which Gramsci so often attacked as cut off from real life could only be developed through a new organisation of knowledge rooted in the practical activities of the people. The aim was a new balance between intellectual and manual work in which the intellectual capacities of the population are developed and “practical activity” becomes the basis of the new conceptions of the world … The only way to “know” reality involves understanding popular feelings. The educators [those who possess the knowledge of the philosophy of praxis, i.e. theory] need to be educated. (2000: 40, italics in original)

Counter-Hegemony as Learning and the Disciplining of Intellectuals ⁹

Gramsci’s position on education, to start with, requires one to recognize that he does not see the relationship between education and knowledge as politically neutral. Schools for him are sites of ideological struggle. Much of his writing on education focuses on the critical evaluation of school systems in Italian society, specifically focusing on the role of varied forms of schooling for the working masses, the degree to which their schooling (and the type of knowledge learned) reinforced their subordinate social position in society and in a division of labor that is increasingly specialized. Their technical and vocational training, Gramsci argued, denied their full development as critical thinkers and as such compromised their formation into active political subjects capable of leading society into a new moral and political direction (1987: 10). To counter the hegemonic effect of schooling among the subaltern Gramsci calls for the reform of school systems, insisting that genuine reform can only be measured to the extent that society sets out to ‘create a single type of formative school (primary-secondary) which would take the child up to the threshold of his choice of job, forming him during this time as a person capable of thinking, studying, and ruling – or controlling those who rule’ (1987: 40). Gramsci also proposes for the working class party and other subaltern political organizations to operate as alternative sites for the critical education of adults in society. While he draws attention to the problem of consciousness at the level of educational reform, Gramsci also evaluates this problem in terms of the type of pedagogical relationship the subaltern shares with counter-hegemonic leaders. Successful counter-hegemony, he clearly demonstrates, is dependent on subaltern-centered pedagogy.

Counter-hegemony, as a political and cultural act with transformative ramifications, presupposes for Gramsci ‘an educational relationship’ between the simple and the intellectual; an active and reciprocal relationship between them whereby ‘every teacher [the organic intellectual] is always a pupil and every pupil [the simple] a teacher’ (Gramsci, 1995: 157, 156). Let us situate these latter insights in their larger context:

Every historical act cannot but be performed by the ‘collective man’. In other words this presupposes the attainment of a ‘socio-cultural’ unity through which a multiplicity of dispersed individual wills, heterogeneous in their aims, are welded together for the same goal on the basis of an (equal) and common conception of the world … This problem can and must be seen alongside the modern way of considering educational doctrine and practice, according to which the relationship between teacher and pupil is active and reciprocal, so every teacher is always a pupil and every pupil a teacher. But the educational relationship cannot be limited to strictly ‘scholastic’ relationships, by means of which the younger generations come into contact with the older ones, absorbing the historically necessary values and experiences of the latter in the process of ‘maturing’ and developing their own historically and culturally superior personality. This relationship exists throughout all society considered as a whole as well as for each individual relative to other individuals, between intellectual and nonintellectual sections of the population, between governors and the governed, between elites and their followers, between leaders and led, between vanguards and the body of the army. Every relationship of ‘hegemony’ is necessarily an educational relationship. (Gramsci, 1995: 156–157)

Gramsci also notes that

The intellectual’s error consists in believing that one can know without understanding and even more without feeling and being impassioned (not only for knowledge in itself but also for the object of knowledge): in other words that the intellectual can be an intellectual (and not a pure pedant) if distinct and separate from the people-nation. (1987: 418)

Counter-hegemony, these basic propositions suggest, is to exercise moral and intellectual leadership and in doing so persuading and educating the simple (or nonintellectual) in the process. But counter-hegemony, Gramsci here similarly suggests, is also predicated on the learning dynamic that exists between the student (who is both student and teacher) and her teacher (who is both teacher and student). Moral and intellectual leadership, counter-hegemony, is also a process that requires educating the intellectual (or teacher), moving the educational process itself beyond the abstract realm of the intellectual, i.e. beyond a strictly scholastic relationship. Knowledge must be made historically meaningful by incorporating the raw experience of lived capitalist historicity. Intellectuals are, therefore, educated by interacting with the subaltern, whose feeling-passion informs their abstract understanding of reality. Gramsci, of course, is not suggesting that the teacher-student and student-teacher are on equal footing, nor does he discount the reality that popular consciousness may be ideologically compromised. But he does call for, anticipating Freire (1970, 1972, 1973), reciprocal learning rooted in the student’s life experiences, including her cultural life, as a precondition for the development of a critical orientation towards her own cultural and social reality. ¹⁰ Such critical orientation is effectively accomplished, first, by overcoming the dialectical contradiction between epistemological opposites, between theory (teacher) and practice (student). Theory and practice to begin with must be recognized as dialectically constitutive of transformative knowledge. Second, by accommodating the cultural perspective of the student as a necessary step in the transformation of her knowledge of social reality. These latter two points are pedagogical insights that Gramsci urges the counter-hegemonic leader to adopt, respectively, in his notes on the ‘Problems of Marxism’ and the ‘Study of Philosophy’:

In the teaching of philosophy which is aimed not at giving the student historical information about the development of past philosophy, but at giving him a cultural formation and helping him to elaborate his own thought critically so as to be able to participate in an ideological and cultural community, it is necessary to take as one’s starting point what the student already knows and his philosophical experience (having first demonstrated to him precisely that he has such an experience, that he is a ‘philosopher’ without knowing it). And since one presupposes a certain average cultural and intellectual level among the students, who in all probability have hitherto only acquired scattered and fragmentary bits of information and have no methodological and critical preparation, one cannot but start in the first place from common sense, then secondly from religion, and only at a third stage move on to the philosophical systems elaborated by traditional intellectual groups. (1987: 424–425)

Elsewhere stating:

The starting-point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and is knowing ‘thyself’ as a product of the historical process to date … When an individual from the masses succeeds in criticising and going beyond common sense, he by this very fact accepts a new philosophy. Hence the necessity, in an exposition of the philosophy of praxis, of a polemic with traditional philosophies. Indeed, because by its nature it tends towards being a mass philosophy, the philosophy of praxis can only be conceived in a polemical form and in the form of a perpetual struggle. None the less the starting point must always be that common sense which is the spontaneous philosophy of the multitude and which has to be made ideologically coherent. (Gramsci, 1987: 324, 421)

Counter-hegemony as reciprocal learning, it follows, presupposes orienting the lesson towards the culture of the student – i.e. her common sense, religion, or traditional philosophy – as starting point from which to cultivate a critical awareness of social reality, and, ultimately, develop a new type of knowledge, one informed by the philosophy of praxis (see also Gramsci, 1987: 330–331, 377). Counter-hegemony as reciprocal learning aims to prepare people for the total transformation of society. It does this in the first place by pedagogically persuading them in their own cultural terms, and, secondly, by politicizing their culture in dialectical terms (Allman, 2002, 2007, 2010).

Teaching for Gramsci is not about imposing a ‘predetermined “programme”’ – or ‘depositing’ knowledge – but engaging the student’s ‘living’ creativity, guiding the student’s critical predispositions, helping the student cultivate the art of questioning, and allowing the student to find her own place in the world, i.e. facilitating a process of student self-discovery and critical understanding about her social locations and how these condition her life-chances in variant ways (Gramsci, 1987: 33, 42, 40, 324–325). This dynamic contact between the teacher-student and student-teacher ultimately facilitates, to use Freirean terminology, the emergence of a ‘pedagogy of resistance’, ¹¹ whose ultimate goals are to persuade the subaltern, constitute collective self-understandings that challenge and transform conventional ‘understandings of culture, power, and politics’; and to operate as a basis for political organization and the transformation of society (Giroux, 2002: 54). This is in part possible because the subaltern subject as student is not a ‘mechanical receiver’ of knowledge, Gramsci reminds us, but most significantly because her critical predispositions can be transform in a pedagogical relation that engages her at the level of her living experience (Gramsci, 1987: 35). This type of pedagogical relation ensures the making of counter-hegemony out of inner conviction and rational spontaneity rather than idolatry (Gramsci in Morrow and Torres, 2002: 184). Counter-hegemony as educational relationship between the simple (subaltern) and the intellectual (philosophy of praxis), provided it is based on the principle of reciprocal learning and critical pedagogy (i.e. a pedagogy of resistance), is a source of agency and possibility within the context of capitalist domination; a collective means by which to critically reflect and move beyond the cultural and social relations that marginalize the subaltern.

The importance of the subaltern for counter-hegemony is similarly found in Gramsci’s admonition against the potential arrogance of organic intellectuals and in his recognition of the importance for the relatively autonomous self-conscious intellectual development of the subaltern masses. Drawing a significant lesson from the hegemonic history of the Catholic Church, Gramsci notes that the gulf between the simple and intellectual ‘cannot be healed by raising the simple to the level of the intellectuals … but only by imposing an iron discipline on the intellectuals so that they do not exceed certain limits of differentiation and so render [the difference] catastrophic and irreparable’ (Gramsci, 1987: 331). ‘The philosophy of praxis’, he notes,

does not tend to leave the ‘simple’ in their primitive philosophy of common sense, but rather to lead them to a higher conception of life. If it affirms the need for contact between intellectuals and simple it is not in order to restrict scientific activity and preserve unity at the low level of the masses, but precisely in order to construct an intellectual-moral bloc [an alliance made of multiple social forces, rooted in popular-cultural and theoretical understanding] which can make politically possible the intellectual progress of the mass and not only of small intellectual groups. (Gramsci, 1987: 332–333)

Further noting that ‘every leap forward towards a new breath and complexity of the intellectual stratum is tied to an analogous movement on the part of the mass of the “simple”, who raise themselves to higher levels of culture and at the same time extend their circle of influence towards the stratum of specialized intellectuals, producing outstanding individuals and groups of greater or less importance’ (Gramsci, 1987: 333–334, italics added). The counter-hegemonic instruction is clear: New ways of conceiving / perceiving reality are not imposed on the subaltern; these develop organically from within their ranks during the course of acquiring the capacity to think for themselves. The task of the teacher-student is to encourage, not to mold, human agency.

These points are instructive insofar as they set Gramsci apart from Lenin when it comes to the role a revolutionary vanguard plays in the unfolding of counter-hegemony. Whereas Gramsci’s position is more open in that he trusts – in the relative sense – the independent self-conscious development of subaltern consciousness into critical consciousness, a Leninist position outright rejects the spontaneous consciousness of the subaltern as inherently problematic and as bound to automatically assume a reformist character (Lenin, 1963: 59–81). ¹² The progress of counter-hegemony is similarly contingent on alliances between heterogeneous groups, with multiple aims, but who ‘are welded together … on the basis of an equal and common conception of the world, both general and particular, operating in transitory bursts (in emotional ways) or permanently (where the intellectual base is so rooted, assimilated, and experienced that it becomes passion …)’ (Gramsci, 1987: 349).

It follows that a counter-hegemonic unfolding, if it is to achieve political legitimation in the minds of would-be history-making agents, necessarily requires the incorporation (not denial) of subaltern subjectivity. The process of counter-hegemony requires dialectically integrating common sense feelings and understandings with the coherent (theoretical) substantive knowledge of a philosophy of praxis. Counter-hegemony cannot be accomplished in opposition to the feelings and understandings inherent in common sense but instead through these and in conjunction with a philosophy of praxis. A philosophy of praxis requires common sense feelings and understandings for it to be an authentic popular force. Common sense feelings and understandings require a philosophy of praxis for their transfiguration into counter-hegemony. Counter-hegemonic leaders must be able to base their critique of society on subaltern lived experience, what is practical, plain, and universally common to people. Common sense, in particular its fragmentary character, is ultimately dialectically transformed as counter-hegemonic processes unfold. Another key way counter-hegemony gains traction is through subaltern-centered pedagogy, a process of education whereby the student-teacher learns about her history-making capacities in light of a critical understanding of her lived experience. Ultimately, for a counter-hegemonic ‘conception of the world’ to take root ‘it is necessary, in dialectical fashion, to take into account common sense (the needs it expresses, the level of consciousness of the masses that it reflects, etc.) while at the same time enabling the subaltern classes to acquire a new awareness and, thus, a new’ critical orientation to their social conditions (Liguori, 2009a: 133).

Counter-hegemonic leaders, as such, need to become ‘constructors, organizers, and “permanent persuaders”’ of alternative cultural practices / worldviews – i.e. a new hegemony – out of existent and emergent cultural practices in contemporaneous practical life (Gramsci, 1987: 10). In the absence of an active learning and passion nexus seeking to transform the existent from within, ‘the relations between the intellectual and people-nation are, or are reduced to, relationships of a purely bureaucratic and formal order’, they become empty and unreal connections beset by collaborative adynamia, inevitably undermining attempts at counter-hegemony (Gramsci, 1987: 418).

As a way to illustrate the potential of the subaltern I now turn to analyzing the significance of popular religion for revolution / counter-hegemony. First, I evaluate this relationship conceptually. I then briefly consider the role of popular religion in the Nicaraguan revolution as an empirical and historical example.

Popular Religion and Counter-Hegemony: A Conceptual Exploration ¹³

Gramsci is mindful of the heterogeneous nature of religion and its oppositional features in his work (1987: 420–421). ‘Every religion’, he notes ‘is in reality a multiplicity of distinct and often contradictory religions’ driven and defined by the interests of social location, e.g. class, gender, and intellectual status (Gramsci, 1987: 420). Religion by definition can function as a political culture. ‘The history of the Church’, in fact provided Gramsci ‘with examples of both traditional and organic intellectuals’, the ‘exercise of hegemony’, as well as an archetype ‘for the intellectual and moral reform’ that he himself strived for in his political activism (McLellan, 1987: 114). Gramsci found in the Protestant Reformation, German Protestantism, 18th-century French Catholicism, and Anglo-Saxon Christianities – as opposed to the Italian, Iberian, and Latin American Catholicisms of his time – historical examples of the ‘perfect suture between intellectuals and the people’ and necessary ‘dynamic contact’ between these social agents in the creation of new cultural outlooks – i.e. hegemony – and social structures (Gramsci, 1987: 23, 397).

Although Gramsci recognizes popular religion as a ‘principal element’ of common sense, and as such considers it ‘fragmentary, incoherent, and inconsequential, in conformity with’ conventional ideas and the status quo (1987: 420, 419), and therefore an obstacle to progressive change, he is also keenly aware of its affective power and its function as a source of emotional energy (pp. 337–338), as well as its cognitive role as a worldview and life orientation (p. 420). ‘In the masses as such’, he notes, ‘philosophy can only be experienced as faith’ (Gramsci, 1987: 339). The religion-of-the-people necessarily functions as a bridge between itself and philosophy (Gramsci, 1987: 420). As a cultural scheme through which people interpret their reality – a ‘way[] of seeing things and of acting’ – it can potentially sensitize the exploited and oppressed of their moral and political plight (Gramsci, 1987: 321). This is to say that it may work as an oppositional force in political mobilization. Other than through the use of historical examples, Gramsci himself does not make this point on religion directly. In fact, much of his theoretical energy is directed at determining its hegemonic role for capitalist society (Gramsci, 1995: 1–137). One may arrive at a more nuanced understanding of his religion-as-counter-hegemonic position, however, by considering his theoretical insights on common sense, ideological (re-)articulation and culture.

In a Gramscian sense the oppositional potential of popular religion for counter-hegemonic mobilization is possible for several reasons. For one, as common sense, popular religion is not a static or unchangeable thing. Instead it is open to re-redirection. ‘Common sense’, Gramsci notes, ‘is not a unique conception, identical in time and space’, nor is it ‘something rigid and immobile’ (1987: 419, 326). Common sense ‘is continually transforming itself, enriching itself with scientific ideas and with philosophical opinions which have entered ordinary life’ (Gramsci, 1987: 326). Elsewhere Gramsci states

‘Common sense’ has been treated in various ways. Sometimes it has even been taken as the base of philosophy itself. Alternatively it has been criticised from the point of view of another philosophy. In reality, in either case, the result was to transcend a particular form of common sense and to create another which was closer to the conception of the world of the leading group. (1987: 421)

Common sense is, thus, malleable and subject to modification depending on the historically situated discursive contexts in which it is located and appropriated. This adaptive quality leaves it open to incorporating coherent thought – e.g. scientific ideas and philosophical thoughts – and to potentially developing as critical disposition. Common sense as good sense (as practical reason as opposed to incoherent or fragmentary assumption), in fact, potentially ‘identifies the exact cause, simple and to hand, and does not let itself be distracted by fancy quibbles and pseudo-profound, pseudo-scientific metaphysical mumbo-jumbo’ (Gramsci, 1987: 323, 348). It contains ‘a certain measure of “experimentalism” and observation’ that makes it realistic and tangible, and, as such, the practical ground upon which ‘a cultural battle to transform the popular mentality’ may be waged and from which the critical assessment of variant social conditions may emerge with far-reaching political consequences (Gramsci, 1987: 348). Common sense can similarly be subject to ‘interior transformation’ so it may be consistent with counter-hegemonic orientation – ‘the conception of the world of the leading [counter-hegemonic] group’ (Gramsci, 1987: 420, 421).

Two, popular religion contains an oppositional potential because as a practical dimension (or in some cases the principal constituent) of common sense it already exists in opposition to both officially sanctioned religious doctrine and to given conceptions of the world from the strata of traditional intellectuals (Gramsci, 1987: 420–422). ¹⁴ Gramsci specifically notes the following on this point on its potential as opposition:

Certainly, there is a ‘religion of the people’ … which is very different from that of the intellectuals (the religious ones) and particularly from that organically set up by the ecclesiastical hierarchy…. [which] present special problems … [to the] ‘morality of the people’, understood as a determinate (in space and time) set of principles for practical conduct and of customs that derive from them or have produced them…. Imperatives exist that are much stronger, more tenacious and more effective than those of official ‘morality’. In this sphere, too, one must distinguish various strata: the fossilized ones which reflect conditions of past life and are therefore conservative and reactionary, and those which consist of a series of innovations, often creative and progressive, determined spontaneously by forms and conditions of life which are in the process of developing and which are in contradiction to or simply different from the morality of the governing strata. (1991: 190)

In a most basic sense the relationship between religious innovation and the conditions of existence is possible because of a structured class antagonism. This means that when masses appropriate, as they often, if not invariably do, the religion of intellectuals, they do so in light of their lived experience, their emotional and material realities. And while this appropriation may take a reactionary or conservative route, it may also take a ‘creative and progressive’ direction. Religious innovation, in the end, takes place because of the thinking individual, i.e. the ‘individual philosopher’ who is a product of ‘the active relationship which exists between him and the cultural environment’ which conditions ‘and imposes on him a continual process of self-criticism’ by which ‘he can draw the necessary problems for formulation and resolution’ to the developing and contradictory situations he encounters in his practical life or as social imperatives (Gramsci, 1987: 350).

Three, popular religion as organized culture can function as a heuristic mechanism for ‘the exercise of thought, acquisition of general ideas, [and the] habit of connecting causes and effects’ (Gramsci, 1991: 25). To Gramsci people are inherently capable of critically utilizing existent frameworks of interpretation to engage in political action. It is through culture – i.e. the culturally given – that one’s awareness of social reality assumes a historically significant orientation and that meaningful change may be accomplished. Anticipating symbolic anthropologists, who conceive of culture as a resource of praxis, Gramsci insists on the need to

free ourselves from the habit of seeing culture as encyclopaedic knowledge, and men as mere receptacles to be stuffed full of empirical data and a mass of unconnected raw facts, which have to be filed in the brain as in the columns of a dictionary, enabling their owner to respond to the various stimuli from the outside world…. Culture is something quite different. It is organization, discipline of one’s inner self, a coming to terms with one’s own personality; it is the attainment of a higher awareness, with the aid of which one succeeds in understanding one’s own historical value, one’s own function in life, one’s own rights and obligations. (1990: 10–11)

Organized culture, or culture oriented toward historical self-awareness, can potentially work as a foundation for ‘thinking well, whatever one thinks, and therefore acting well, whatever one does’ (Gramsci, 1991: 25). Gramsci’s point here, again, is that the introduction of a critical orientation from the outside is not necessarily a precondition for praxis, but rather, invoking the Socratic (dialogical) concept of culture, that what ultimately matters is how the culturally given is given a new direction during the course of historical and social self-discovery (politically oriented action). Organized culture, as such, but especially as a concept of socialism, makes ‘the vague concept of freedom of thought’ real – that is, it gives a critical direction to it (Gramsci, 1991: 25). Popular religion as organized culture, therefore, has ‘a direct relationship to the socialist revolution and to revolutionary forms’, as noted Gramscian scholar John Fulton has reminded us (1987:198).

Four, as ideological complex, popular religion can acquire an oppositional character. Gramsci reminds us that counter-hegemony to a large extent consists of our ability to re-articulate an existent ideological system into a different direction: ‘What matters is the criticism to which … an ideological complex is subjected by the [] representatives of [a] new historical phase. This criticism makes possible a process of differentiation and change in the relative weight that the elements of the old ideologies used to possess. What was previously secondary and subordinate, or even incidental, is now taken to be primary – becomes the nucleus of a new ideological and theoretical complex’ (Gramsci, 1987: 195). This position on ideological (re-)articulation opens the door to appreciating religion as oppositional. An ideological complex, Gramsci is here suggesting, is open to alternative readings depending on the interests of actors who have historical reason(s) to appropriate it in order to take society onto a different direction. Ideological meaning, moreover, is contingent on the arrangement or accentuation (of some) of its particular content-components. Counter-hegemony here consists of creating and deriving new meaning from the reconfiguration (or re-articulation) of ideological content-components. It also consists of building a new common sense (or new ideology) by replacing the embedded assumptions (content) in an existent ideology with new ones (Gramsci, 1987: 453). Religion as ideological complex can thus work as a counter-hegemonic (or transformational) force because of how people creatively reconfigure (or articulate) its content-components – and, as such, its meaning – to mediate their interests, values, and intentions onto the political arena. This revolutionary or counter-hegemonic capacity, Gramsci noted, was ‘exemplified by the anti-establishment “heretical” movements in the Middle Ages, by the Reformation … and even by the Protestant ethic and its entrepreneurial spirit’ (Fulton 1987: 204).

Popular religion it follows possesses adaptive, adoptive, practical, and heuristic qualities that can allow it to function critically and potentially serve as a basis for the critique of society. As common sense it may fold unto itself seemingly incompatible cultural elements that potentially innovate or transform it. As familiar conviction and ideological complex it can be subject to alternative signification, respectively, by individual and collective actors facing new practical situations or historical circumstances. As culture it contains problem-solving mechanisms that allow its users to think and act well and give it critical direction in light of the circumstances facing them. Depending on the role it plays for members of society, popular religion may be an important part of the raw material out of which a counter-hegemonic narrative may be created. One can argue that Gramsci would embrace it as an ‘affective and cognitive’ cultural practice in counter-hegemonic mobilization precisely because of its functional flexibility and heuristic potential (Williams, 1996: 54). This latter possibility, of course, is more for the simple than for organic intellectuals. Yet, Gramsci notes the following: ‘While Marxist socialists are not religious, neither are they anti-religious’ for ‘the religious tie ought not … to constitute an obstacle to working class unity. All workers – over and above any belief or faith – can and must be united in the struggle against the bourgeoisie’ (Gramsci quoted in Boothman, 1995: xxi).

Popular Religion and Christian Praxis in the Nicaraguan Revolution

A historical example that speaks to the power of religion as opposition and similarly underscores the significance of ideological (re-)articulation as a mechanism of oppositional transformation is liberation theology. A religious movement with origins in Latin America and roots in Vatican II (1962–65), inspired by Episcopal developments – in Medellín, Columbia, in 1968 and in Puebla, Mexico, in 1979 – and influenced by the structural language of dependency theory, liberation theology called upon progressive Catholics to ‘opt for the poor’ and fight underdevelopment, political repression, and economic exploitation in the region (Girardi, 1968, 1989; Miranda, 1974, 1980, 1982; Gutiérrez, 1973; Segundo, 1984). Opting for the poor, to start with, meant recognizing that the Christian community had been divided by social and economic differences that made for ‘inhuman wretchedness’ (Gremillion, 1976: 471). But it also meant understanding how these conditions hindered existential and spiritual fulfillment, betrayed religious virtue, and ultimately estranged human beings from each other, undermining the Christian community itself (CELAM, 1986). This divisive development in the human condition required ‘reconstructing the community of believers’ in both the existential and social sense and changing the mission of the Church from an emphasis on proselytization and its focus on an afterlife towards one that effectively called for dealing with ‘actually-existing’ social conditions affecting the poor masses (Lancaster, 1988: 78). In the words of Gustavo Gutiérrez, one of the key founders of liberation theology, theology now meant ‘A process of understanding the faith’ from the vantage point of action aimed at changing the conditions of the poor majority (Gutiérrez, 1979: 22); and it meant recognizing ‘the work and importance of concrete behavior, of deed, of action, of praxis in the Christian life’ (Gutiérrez, 1973: 11). The new theology, as such, called on Christians to engage in ‘consciousness-raising’, to eliminate ‘anything which might destroy social peace’, to defend human rights and the rights of the poor, to sponsor grass-roots organizing, and to denounce, whenever necessary, the ‘unjust action[s] of world powers that work[] against the self-determination of weaker nations who must suffer the consequences of war and invasion’ (CELAM, 1986: 17–18).

Liberation theology inspired a wave of political movements – including revolutionary ones – during the 1960s and 1970s and prompted many religious, primarily Catholics, to engage in Christian praxis. In a variety of politicized settings these Christians – often peasants, the urban poor, and progressive agents in society, including radicalized priests and laity leaders, who operated as organic intellectuals – worked to reformulate the meaning of religious discourse from one that emphasized accepting the world to one that aimed at transforming it. Common Christian idioms such as ‘liberation’, ‘the place of the poor’, ‘salvation’, ‘exploitation’, and ‘sin’, as such, took on oppositional significance. In a general sense ‘This meant that familiar [Christian] beliefs such as “God made us poor and we don’t need to change” and “Christ came to teach us how to suffer” increasingly fell to the background and new ones such as “God has seen our suffering and He is on our side” and “Christ fought for the freedom of the poor; therefore we must follow His example”’ assumed center stage in interpretations of political-economy circumstances (Reed, 2008: 292). ¹⁵ On the ground, in a more concrete sense, in the minds of progressive Christians, their new Christianity was predicated on the idea that the scriptures and the message of Christ contained the seeds for both a program and strategy for political liberation. To them, this meant that the gospels started with people, in particular the marginalized and the poor, and their historical conditions of oppression, i.e. the Bible contained a this-worldly orientation that called for change. It also meant their historical reality – exemplified by struggles against inequalities and injustice in their varied forms – mirrored Jesus’ reality (i.e. like him, they were liberation oriented); that the church was meant to orient itself toward the fulfillment of social justice; and that the true measure of a Christian was found in the correspondence between her inner life and outer life insofar as such a life reinforced the formation of a liberated and just Christian community. Such ideological re-articulations of religion – emergent during biblical discussions at Christian Based Communities (CBCs) and other unofficial religious settings – allowed many to recognize Christianity as a legitimate source of political critique. They facilitated the emergence of a radical language of social justice, which motivated many in Latin American societies (e.g. Brazil, Columbia, Nicaragua, and El Salvador) to engage in political action against existent economic and political conditions in the name of true Christianity. In the case of revolution, Argentine theologian José Míguez Bonino noted that this meant that

Revolutionary action aimed at changing the basic economic, political, and social cultural structures and conditions of life [wa]s imperative … Ours [wa]s not a time of mere development, rearranging or correction, but for basic revolutionary change. (1976: 7)

The Nicaraguan revolutionary struggle against the Somoza dictatorship was inspired by these changes in the meaning of religion. During the 1960s and 1970s the political language of liberation theology provided a means for Nicaraguan Christians to resist and strategically challenge, and for many to participate in the overthrow of the Somoza dynasty in July 1979. While the radical language of liberation theology came from the radical priesthood, who were inspired by Vatican II and the Medellín conference, it is important to note that this language was also cultivated from below in a variety of group settings that operated as counter-hegemonic sites. These included CBCs, popular churches, popular seminaries, and cursillos (laity classes). According to Norma Lopéz, a lay leader during the period in question, CBCs set out to ‘display a new face of Christ to the poor and oppressed’, independent of official or formal guidance. She recalls:

We, the lay workers, began holding regular meetings to reexamine the Bible ourselves, and see what its message was for the Nicaraguan. We realized that the old church was failing to carry out the true mission of Christianity. And we discovered then that the priests must use their robes to keep the community off its knees…. With the youth of the barrio, we reread and rethought the Bible, from start to finish. Exodus was a choice to move forward, out of slavery and oppression. The major and minor prophets embodied a radical stance against the sin of exploitation. The mission of Christ and the message of the Bible is that of God stooping down to help the poor, of God drawing the poor closer to him, of God intervening in history to save the poor from sin…. We had found the fire of Christianity that the hierarchy had hidden from us, and it was the beginning to illuminate the … barrios like the rising of the sun or the coming of Christ. The youth were coming around, more and more, drawn by this message of the Christ of the Poor. (Lancaster, 1988: 61–63)

Our Lady of Solentiname, a popular seminary located on an island in Lake Nicaragua near the Costa Rican border, was one of these sites of struggle. Father Ernesto Cardenal, a Jesuit priest, founded it in 1966. Community members gathered at the seminary on a weekly basis to discuss the economic, political, and social impact of the Somoza dictatorship on their lives. Father Cardenal led these discussions, engaging its participants – namely fishermen, artisans, and their families – based on the Freirian principles of reciprocal learning and problem-posing education (Bradstock, 1987; Cardenal, 1987; Foroohar, 1989; Girardi, 1989; Molina, 1987). Phillip Berryman specifically notes the following about it:

The pastoral agent (Cardenal) brings [] knowledge of the scripture, and the people bring their experience of life – and both learn from each other. However, it is not simply a Scriptures-and-life division of labor, since [Cardenal] ha[s] to encourage … [participants] by showing appreciation for their culture and indeed for their ability to think and express themselves. Thus … [participants] themselves often find new pearls in the Scripture texts, despite the fact that they have hitherto usually lead to believe that those ‘above’ (authorities, authority, politicians, priests, teachers, doctors) have the word. (1984: 22)

During the course of weekly discussions discussants gave meaning to the realities associated with the dictatorship based on their interpretation of biblical passages from Matthew, John, and Luke. Readings based on these gospels opened the door to reflections on agrarian reform, capitalism, development, and imperialism, as well as the meaning of Christian praxis and revolution (Cardenal, 2010). Their bible-centered weekly discussions, ultimately, made it possible for many of the participants to assume identities as Christian revolutionaries. To illustrate the power of ideological re-articulation for the transformation of religious common sense, I now turn to one of these historical dialogues. The discussion under consideration below is centered on ‘The Temptation of Christ’, a familiar Biblical theme. It comes from The Gospel in Solentiname, a four volume historical anthology that captures the dialogic experiences of the Solentiname community from 1971 to 1976, a crucial period of revolutionary politicization. While I have edited it substantially, the dialogue, among hundred others, provides the reader with an opportunity to appreciate religion as a counter-hegemonic force.

The Temptations in the Wilderness

And afterward he felt hunger. Then the devil said to him: ‘If you really are the Son of God, command this stone to turn into bread’. Jesus answered him: ‘The Scripture says, “Man does not live by bread alone, but also by every word that God speaks”’ (Luke 4: 3–5)

And the devil said to him: ‘I will give you all this power and the greatness of these kingdoms. For I have received all of this and I give it to anybody I choose. If you will kneel down and worship me, it will all be yours’ (Luke 4: 6–7).

Father

Afterwards the devil took him to the city of Jerusalem and he took him up to the highest point of the temple and he said to him: ‘If you are truly the Son of God cast yourself down from here; because in the Scripture it says: God will order his angels to take care of you’. (Luke 4: 9–10)

Pedro Rafael

What is significant about this dialogue is the re-articulation process by which ordinary people transformed the meaning of Christianity. Rather than stress themes that would reinforce the existent order of things, dialogue participants, in keeping with liberation theology, kept equality, justice, and liberation at the center of their interpretations, making it possible for them to question the order of things. One also finds their real life conditions – political corruption, economic exploitation, and imperialism, among others – at the basis of this re-articulation process. Their life experience compelled them to question reality. But their interpretation of this reality is based on a religious vocabulary designed to move them beyond it having found a discrepancy between their way of living and biblical meaning. To be more precise, they used the biblical verse to make sense of potential obstacles standing in the way of liberation. The dialogue effectively underscores the liberation theology position that the transformation of society requires Christian praxis. It does this by focusing on the problems revolutionary Christian virtue faces during the course of Christian Praxis itself.

A true Christian, the interchanges clearly reveal, must live up to the Gospel’s message of liberation. She must, as such, not give in to the temptations of false seductions (e.g. the promise of development under imperial capitalism and the promise of material success and personal power under unequal conditions); false practices (e.g. ritualistic prayer and ceremony, the use of scripture to defend the status quo, economic exploitation, and politics-as-usual); and false beliefs (e.g. the beliefs that people are powerless, that the scriptures condemn the poor, and that religious contemplation without action oriented to change is enough for a Christian). ‘Salvation’ in this context is not going along with the status quo but rather questioning it, liberating it from its oppressive and exploitative class character. This requires the Christian of liberation to resist the temptation of political, economic, and ideological falsehoods and to work towards changing the order of things. Accepting these falsehoods, however, would defer liberation and, as such, prevent the salvation of the Christian community. Christian liberation in this discursive context is also the word of God, cultivating a culture of love that makes possible the sharing of bread, material goods, and feeding the hungry: ‘If there isn’t any love, even though there’s a lot of food people will be hungry because a few people will hoard the food’. The dialogue therefore also reinforces the emergent religious appreciation that social transformation requires cultural transformation; that is, that the construction of a new reality based on a more equitable distribution of resources must ultimately be predicated on a culture of brotherly love, a conception of reality, unlike the present dominant conception, that prevents the hoarding of resources.

Following Gramsci’s insights, one may conclude the following about religion in light of the preceding points. In the context of the Nicaraguan revolution some Christians assumed identities as revolutionaries by re-articulating their religious common sense into a counter-hegemonic direction. Their religious common sense proved ideologically fluid on several points. First, Christianity was itself enriched by the structural language of dependency theory. Theologians used it during encyclicals conferences to develop liberation theology itself and radical priests and laity leaders in Nicaragua cultivated and developed it in light of the lived realities of poor Christians. Two, Christianity’s status quo orientation was subjected to modification during the course of discussions, demonstrating that even members of a fishing and artisan community are not passive or mechanical receivers, but instead representatives of a new historical trajectory capable of assigning a new meaning to Christianity to meet their interests. Three, its oppositional features, i.e. its themes of liberation, social justice, egalitarianism, and communitarianism, assumed center stage in interpretations of political-economy conditions, showcasing both the cause and effect impact of religion as an organized culture as well as ideological re-articulation for political (and revolutionary) resistance. Four, the very process of ideological re-articulation at the hands of discussants reveals religion’s heuristic potential to question and to re-direct understanding of the socially given into a critical direction. At a basic level this religious re-direction was possible because lay organizations operated on the ground across the nation. These lay organizations, including Our Lady of Solentiname, provided an organizational and leadership structure, and, as such, a spatial opportunity to cultivate a new Christian conception of how the world operated, a significant step toward challenging the order of things. Father Cardenal, operating as an organic intellectual, played a role in the transformation of religious perspective. He provided theological direction during the course of biblical discussions, but he also engaged discussants with a pedagogical style centered on their religious common sense and their lived reality (i.e. one consistent with Freirian and Gramscian pedagogy, see note 10). By accommodating the cultural perspective of discussants (he used familiar Christian stories), connecting this perspective to their lived reality (using it to make sense of the experiences of dictatorship and economic exploitation), focusing discussions on the principles of liberation theology (infusing Christian stories with social justice meaning), and allowing them to come to terms with their own reality in light of the latter pedagogical orientations, Cardenal in effect encouraged – like other liberation priests and laity leaders operating in similar sites of struggle – the interior transformation of their religious common sense from one that accepted to one that challenged conditions in their world. Ultimately, this made it possible for Solentinameños (and thousands of others) to resist, if not participate in the struggle, against the dictatorship as Christian revolutionaries.

Conclusion

Gramsci’s work challenged Marxism from within. It confronted the economic determinist and ideological reductionist tendencies within it. In his historical materialist version of working class history class struggle is the result of political (cultural) will, not natural (economic) laws. Working class political culture plays a significant historical role in the potential overcoming of capitalist formations. With these emphases, he theoretically rescued working class politics from its epiphenomenal status in the Marxism of his time. His emphasis on counter-hegemony is unique. While he recognized that it required intellectual direction, he also understood that it could only be developed and realized through andare al popolo (by going to the people), the active participation of the masses. As such, Gramsci ascribes a role for them and their cultural forms as conduits for counter-hegemonic mobilization. Such a theoretical position stands for recognizing what is politically intelligible in the familiar and practical sense. This underscoring of the immanent potential of the subaltern, its common sense and religious features, in the dynamics of counter-hegemony is not a call to abandon the role of critical theory – as his expositions clearly reveal – but a call for ideological alignment (or dialectical synthesis) between these seemingly incompatible ways of perceiving and acting upon reality.

Because Gramsci emphasized both domination and agency in his cultural theorizing, he effectively revealed how cultural practices that maintain a status quo order can paradoxically function to undermine or resist it, a position that subsequent thinkers – Marxists and non-Marxists alike – have similarly adopted, most recently Black Feminist scholars whose scholarship draws attention to the power of marginalized subjectivity – in particular its emotional, ethical, and lived experience qualities – in its capacity to sustain activism (hooks, 2009; Collins, 2008; Lorde, 2007). ¹⁶ Gramsci’s focus on domination reveals the strength of Marxism as a critical framework of social structures and the superstructure. But his focus on subaltern mentalities – i.e. their emotional and cultural potential – as the medium through which political struggles are embodied has proven significant for the ‘agency from below’ perspective in Marxist analysis. In adopting an approach of interpretation centered on subaltern subjectivity and its historical potential for counter-hegemonic resistance from below he takes Marxism beyond the orthodox notion of false consciousness, and in effect transforms our understanding of the politics of social transformation.

The subjective dimension of counter-hegemonic / political action is a significant one for Gramsci. He chooses to emphasize time and again that the development of a new mentalité is contingent upon critically reflecting on essere (what is) and dover essere (what ought to be), ideological alignments between disparate worldviews, and taking action rooted on ‘“popular beliefs” and similar ideas’ because these ‘are themselves material forces’ (Gramsci, 1987: 165). A successful challenge to hegemonic conditions, therefore, strategically calls for a counter-hegemonic movement (primarily through its organic intellectuals) to consider subaltern popular beliefs (or common sense), passion, and lived experience as political resources. It also calls for counter-hegemonic education to be rooted in subaltern lived reality. These are necessary steps out of consideration for the role of subjectivity and popular psychology in counter-hegemony. This embracing of subaltern subjectivity is plainly revealed in the way he theorizes a role for subaltern passion, subaltern-centered pedagogy, and common sense, including religious common sense, in counter-hegemony. The problematic of action organic intellectuals face, as such, is not to discard the subaltern, but rather to transfigure it, channel its passion, and pedagogically engage it to effectively challenge the capitalist social order from the bottom-up.