Between Science and Common Sense About Gramsci’s Conception of Ideology

Abstract

The article reconstructs the genealogy of the concept of ideology in Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks by demonstrating its central role in the author’s thought and its being functional to a materialist – not reductionist reading of “over-structural” phenomena. Ideology is analyzed inside the conceptual constellation to which it belongs, together with other concepts such as historic bloc, common sense, religion, science and philosophy. The concept of ideology that emerges from this framework is a peculiar and “heterodox” one, especially if we consider that it has been theorized by a Marxist in the first half of the Twentieth century. In fact, this concept anticipates successive theories and scientific acquisitions, which derive from other fields of knowledge. The Gramscian theory of ideology, as it is constructed here, represents a necessary foreword to his theory of hegemony.