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Discipline and Organisation: Performativity and Revolutionary Semantics in Gramsci’s and Togliatti’s Texts (1916-1928)
Bassi, Giulia
2019
Abstract
Is it possible to appreciate ‘the utopia’ of a political revolutionary text? And, if so, to what extent? How much of such a performative revolutionary potential has the actual power to orient social identities and practices? In the vein of the historiographical approach of the New Cultural History, this essay responds to the need to reevaluate the research on the political lexicon. Mostly neglected by the historiography of the Italian Communist Party, this methodology considers language not just as a mere superstructure component, but as a fundamental factor founding the structure itself. This essay carries out a historical-linguistic and semantic analysis of some keywords (such as ‘revolution’, ‘discipline’, and ‘organization’) and aims at exploring the political modalities and the instrumental use of language in a sample of early texts by Antonio Gramsci (1916-1918) and Palmiro Togliatti (1925-1928). The goal is to identify the several ways in which these authors addressed their militants so that they would identify themselves with a particular ‘must-be’ ideal (the ‘good revolutionary’, the ‘good communist’)and in order to mobilise them, first by giving them a system of values and meanings and then by giving them a transcendent motivation for the achievement of the ‘future
communist civilisation’.
Journal
Studi di Storia
Publisher
EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste
Source
Giulia Bassi, "Discipline and Organisation: Performativity and Revolutionary Semantics in Gramsci’s and Togliatti’s Texts (1916-1928)" in: "Words of Power, the Power of Words. The Twentieth-Century Communist Discourse in International Perspective", Trieste, EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2019, pp. 3-25
Languages
en
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internazionale
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