Antonio Gramsci is widely celebrated as the most original political
thinker in Western Marxism. Among the most central aspects of his
enduring intellectual legacy is the concept of subalternity. Developed
in the work of scholars such as Gayatri Spivak and Ranajit Guha,
subalternity has been extraordinarily influential across fields of
inquiry stretching from cultural studies, literary theory, and
postcolonial criticism to anthropology, sociology, criminology, and
disability studies. Almost every author whose work touches upon
subalterns alludes to Gramsci's formulation of the concept. Yet
Gramsci's original writings on the topic have not yet appeared in full
in English.
Among his prison notebooks, Gramsci devoted a single notebook to the
theme of subaltern social groups. Notebook 25, which he entitled "On the
Margins of History (History of Subaltern Social Groups)," contains a
series of observations on subaltern groups from ancient Rome and
medieval communes to the period after the Italian Risorgimento, in
addition to discussions of the state, intellectuals, the methodological
criteria of historical analysis, and reflections on utopias and
philosophical novels. This volume presents the first complete
translation of Gramsci's notes on the topic. In addition to a
comprehensive translation of Notebook 25 along with Gramsci's first
draft and related notes on subaltern groups, it includes a critical
apparatus that clarifies Gramsci's history, culture, and sources and
contextualizes these ideas against his earlier writings and letters.
Subaltern Social Groups is an indispensable account of the development
of one of the crucial concepts in twentieth-century thought.
