Foreword
Nadia Urbinati
Part I
From Sardinian Gramsci to National Gramsci (1891–1915)
1
In Sardinia (1891–1911)
2
A Poor Student in Turin (1911–1915)
Part II From
National Gramsci to Internationalist Gramsci (1915–1922)
3
A Socialist Journalist, Marginal and Original (1915–1919)
4
From the Experience of L’Ordine Nuovo to His Departure for Moscow
(1919–1922)
Part III The Bolshevik
(1922–1926)
5
In the Service of the Comintern (May 1922–May 1924)
6
At the Head of the New Communist Party of Italy (May 1924–November
8, 1926)
Part IV The Prisoner
(November 8, 1926–April 27, 1937)
7
For Twenty Years, We Must Stop This Brain from Functioning
(November 8, 1926–July 19, 1928)
8
The Prisoner and the Philosopher (July 19, 1928–November 19,
1933)
Epilogue: November 19, 1933–April 27, 1937
English Editions of Gramsci’s Writings
Selected Chronology of Gramsci’s Life
Appendix A: Family Tree of the Schucht Family
Appendix B: Overview of Gramsci’s Visits and Visitors between May
1927 and His Death in April 1937
Notes
Translator’s Note and Acknowledgments
Index
Jean-Yves Fretigne is maitre de conferences in the department of history at the University of Rouen in Normandy, France. He is the author of several books published in French and Italian. This is his first book published in English. Laura Marris is a poet, essayist, and translator. Her recent translations include Albert Camus's The Plague, Geraldine Schwarz's Those Who Forget, and Louis Guilloux's Blood Dark.
“If, as Primo Levi so presciently warned us in 1974, ‘every age has
its own fascism,’ it follows that every age needs its own Gramsci.
And Jean-Yves Frétigné has given us a Gramsci for our perilous
times. This lucidly translated biography traces an intellectual,
political, and personal drama that passes through Sardinia, Turin,
the Stoics, Spinoza, Machiavelli, Vico, Leopardi, and Marx. We come
to understand the origins and explicatory power of Gramscian terms
such as ‘subalternity,’ ‘hegemony,’ ‘organic intellectuals,’ and
‘pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.’ The epilogue
poignantly renders the pathos of Gramsci’s last years. Most
importantly, the reader will be inspired by a life and mind that
insisted on a participatory and permanent resistance against the
seemingly natural order of things.”
*Stanislao Pugliese, Hofstra University*
“Gramsci’s political, personal, and prison lives are the source of
renewed debate in the neoliberal postcommunist era, with archival
finds, speculative conjectures, and ideological polemics. This fine
translation of To Live Is to Resist offers a concise narrative of
Gramsci’s life as well as an informed and balanced account of the
biographical controversies.”
*Michael Denning, Yale University*
“To Live Is to Resist carries the promise of something different,
more akin to an intellectual biography that emphasizes ideas over
events. . . . Gramsci urged us to look at bad detective novels and
Jules Verne to understand our political reality, and To Live Is to
Resist’s best moments are when it takes seriously the
unserious.”
*Bookforum*
"In To Live Is To Resist, Jean-Yves Frétigné sketches the life of
Gramsci. . . . As Nadia Urbinati notes in her
stimulating foreword to Frétigné’s book, Gramsci’s was ‘a life of
prisons,’ beginning with his own infirm body, continuing with his
early life of poverty and often marginal political standing, and
ending in actual incarceration."
*TImes Literary Supplement*
"Frétigné’s volume—a lucid, sober, and well-substantiated
documentation and interpretation of Gramsci’s life and
work—unquestionably stands apart. . . . It is exemplary for
tracing the development of ideas against the backdrop of a life,
preferring to plumb the depths of the uncertain and enigmatic
rather than taking the easy way out. . . . After
studying To Live Is to Resist, I am inclined to see Gramsci
differently: as an inconvenient Marxist who truly doesn’t fit any
of our received frameworks."
*Boston Review*
"[Frétigné brings a] wealth of new material and welcome
precision to his biography. . . . If Gramsci has aged better
than many of his peers, it is in part because he became a thinker
for a defeated, rather than a triumphalist, left. The ground of
this inquiry may have shifted in the decades since his death, but
the main battle lines remain the same, and this still makes
Gramsci a thinker worth turning to in our moment."
*The New Republic*
"Particularly timely. . . Frétigné provides a rich account of
Gramsci's political engagements with the Socialist Party of Italy
(PSI), the creation of the Communist Party of Italy (PCd'I), his
years as representative to the Comintern, and his illegal
imprisonment by the Fascists. It also raises questions about the
intertwining of biographical intrigue and theoretical import."
*The Review of Politics*
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