Event Details
Mon, January 27, 2025
18:00 – 19:30
VILLA SASSETTI
Villa La Pietra
Via Bolognese, 120
50139 Florence, Italy
There is something wrong with this photograph.
It shows Antonio Gramsci, 1891-1937, political activist, political prisoner under Mussolini, whose writings have had more impact globally than those of any other Italian thinker of the last 200 years. It is the best known and most widely reproduced image of Gramsci in the world. But in several ways it does not show him as he really was. It’s a misrepresentation. Why?
There are many other misrepresentations of Gramsci. Some are relatively harmless, others less so. The ones with the most negative consequences are put in circulation by the political right, who attribute to Gramsci things he never said and portray him as poisoning the minds of America’s youth. Why?
In this lecture David Forgacs will take a tour through the web of distortion and misrepresentation that has grown up around the figure of Gramsci, answering these questions and enabling the real Gramsci to emerge.
Featured Biographies
David Forgacs
GUIDO AND MARIUCCIA ZERILLI-MARIMO' CHAIR OF CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN STUDIES, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
David Forgacs teaches at New York University, where he holds the endowed Guido and Mariuccia Zerilli-Marimò Chair of Contemporary Italian Studies. He taught previously at the universities of Sussex, Cambridge, where he was Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Royal Holloway London, and University College London, where he held the Panizzi Chair of Italian. He edited The Antonio Gramsci Reader (NYU Press, 2000) and, with Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Cultural Writings (Harvard University Press, 1985). His recent publications include Messaggi di sangue. Violenza, stato e comunicazione in Italia dal Risorgimento a oggi (Laterza, 2021) and Italy’s Margins: Social Exclusion and Nation Formation since 1861 (Cambridge University Press, 2014; Italian edition Margini d’Italia. L’esclusione sociale dall’Unità a oggi, Laterza, 2015)