devient le Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Politique (LAP)

The religious experience of subaltern groups occupies a prominent place in the thought of Antonio Gramsci, particularly in Quaderni 3 and 25 where we mostly find theoretical and methodological references which highlight the nexus ‘subaltern groups and religion’. Here we perceive the great relevance of those “traces of autonomous initiative” which provide to the “integral historian” the basic component upon which to compile the “monographic histories” of these groups. Though with a shared common experience, every group recounts its own history, often the result of multiple parallel histories, which give rise to different monographs. These constitute, from the point of view of subaltern groups, a major effort to affirm – with the assistance of the integral historian – an alternative history which recounts the ‘rise’ of subalterns form the “margins of history” to the core of political life. Recent work within Gramscian scholarship will assist us in applying the trajectory indicated by Gramsci, so as to both establish the nexus ‘subaltern groups and religion’ and to provide a few examples of possible ‘monographs’ with the intent of highlighting the enormous variety of ‘typologies’ present among subaltern groups in the world. A complete list of these would be rather extensive, so I propose here to offer four concise examples of typologies – to be eventually developed into proper monographs : the history of Afro-American Blues, the concept of ‘work’ in a community in central Sardinia, José Carlos Mariátegui and “Peruvian reality”, and Gramsci and Ambedkar on subalterns and Dalits.

Prochaine séance le jeudi 15 mai 2014 : Jade Legrand (EHESS/LAIOS),
Aidland et ses habitants. Ethnographie des organisations humanitaires en
Ethiopie. Séance organisée par Chan Langaret et discutée par Riccardo Ciavolella.