Antonio Gramsci and educational thought [Editorial]

Abstract

This issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory seeks to pay tribute to Antonio Gramsci, a great political figure and social thinker of the 20th century. It comprises papers from different parts of the world including New Zealand, Brazil, the United States, Canada, Germany and England. It complements another publication which I co-edited (Borg et al., 2002) in that it draws on the work of authors with which we three editors of the 2002 book were not familiar at the time of planning that volume. I was very careful therefore not to include in this special issue authors who had contributed to the 2002 book. The issues tackled are various. Deb Hill provides an in-depth philosophical discussion on the Hegelian and Marxian influence on Gramsci’s ‘philosophy of praxis’ arguably the central phrase in his prison writings originally intended as a work ‘für ewig’ (for eternity). The connections between Gramsci’s thought and Marx’s theory of consciousness and dialectical mode of thinking are carefully teased out here. This piece complements the work of Paula Allman (2002) around the subject.