Gramsci and the Colonial Question : Sardinia, Subalternity, and the Global South

Through rigorous engagement with Gramsci’s writings, this book reexamines Marxist theory within the socio-political contradictions of Sardinia and the broader Italian national formation, and provides a fresh and interdisciplinary perspective on Gramsci’s legacy, challenging dominant interpretations that marginalize Sardinian history.

Although Antonio Gramsci is widely known as the theorist of hegemony, his enduring relevance to struggles against colonial oppression across the Global South reveals a deeper, often overlooked dimension of his thought. With this book, Gianni Fresu explores Gramsci’s formative experiences in Sardinia, a peripheral, peasant island marked by internal colonialism, and shows how these shaped his vision of human emancipation as both a continuation and critique of bourgeois universalism. Through a rigorous engagement with Gramsci’s writings, Fresu reexamines key categories of Marxist theory, situating them within the socio-political contradictions of Sardinia and the broader Italian national formation. He argues that Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis, conceived as absolute historicism, offers a powerful framework for understanding the dialectic between civil and political society, liberalism and socialism, and the transformation of modern power structures. Divided into three interrelated sections (the Colonial Question, the Liberal Question, and Questions of Political Theory) Gramsci and the Colonial Question provides a fresh and interdisciplinary perspective on Gramsci’s legacy. It challenges dominant interpretations that marginalize Sardinian history and offers new insights into the conceptual renewal of Marxism, making it essential reading for scholars in political theory, students of postcolonial studies, Italian history, and Gramscian thought.