3. “Gramsci in Action”

Space, Politics, and the Making of Solidarities

Summary

This chapter interrogates the geographies that structured and produced Antonio Gramsci's engagements with solidarities and internationalism. The first section engages with the importance that Gramsci accorded to the geographies of solidarity through a discussion of his essay “Aspects of the Southern Question.” Such geographies are central to the productive and transformative account of alliances that emerges through this essay. The second section argues for a re-evaluation of Gramsci's accounts of cosmopolitanism. To develop the focus on the importance of Gramsci's internationalist trajectories, the final section explores how Gramsci's political articulations and analyses moved in the early postwar period. Interrogating the relations between cosmopolitanism and internationalism, as Gramsci's suggestive arguments allow, permits a shift beyond narrowly nation-centered accounts of internationalism. This chapter argues that the productive relations between space, politics, and solidarity that animated some of Gramsci's writings bear serious scrutiny.