Consent and Submission

Abstract

This article examines the concept of civil society as developed in the Gramscian theory under the prism of its ideological correlations, that is, as the field of development and reproduction of consent and submission to the political. It is in the framework of this analysis that the question of whether the Gramscian theory can become a modern instrument of theoretical elaboration of the forms that civil society is taking today is raised. Moreover, the concept of the state and the role the concept of hegemony has in the analysis of the class struggle which takes on the character of “intellectual struggle” is considered. Furthermore the relationship between the meaning of hegemony and that of ideology is developed as well as that between consent and submission. Within the aforementioned analysis, the article attempts among other things to bring forward the multiple antinomies Gramsci faces and which extend throughout his theory. Finally, it is argued that the validity of Gramscian theory, in connection to the questions raised in the present article, is limited only to the interwar period and has little analytical value for contemporary sociopolitical reality.