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Alberto Mario Cirese
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Gramsci’s Observations on folklore: Conceptions of the world, spontaneous philosophy and class instinct
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Alberto Mario Cirese
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Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Italy
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Gramsci’s Observations on folklore: Conceptions of the world, spontaneous philosophy and class instinct
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                                               2022 | ANUAC. VOL. 11, N° 1, GIUGNO 2022: 17-48




                                                                     ANNIVERSARY FORUM

Gramsci’s Observations on folklore
Conceptions of the world, spontaneous philosophy and class instinct

Alberto Mario CIRESE


This essay was originally published with the title Concezioni del mondo, filosofia
spontanea, folclore [Conceptions of the world, spontaneous philosophy, folklore] in
1969, in the conference proceedings Gramsci e la cultura contemporanea [Gramsci
and contemporary culture], edited by Pietro Rossi (Editori Riuniti). An English
translation was published in 1982, with the title Gramsci’s Observations on folklore,
in the volume Approaches to Gramsci, edited by Anne Showstack Sassoon for Writers
& Readers, London. The present edition reproduces the 1982 English edition, with
minor modifications. We have added the references to the English translation of
Gramsci’s Observations on folklore (SCW 188-195) and to other notes from the Prison
Notebooks (PN2), not yet available when Cirese’s essay was translated. We have
translated the short unnumbered introductory section, omitted in the 1982 edition.
Finally, we have expanded the title, following the version published in the book
Intellettuali, folklore, istinto di classe [Intellectuals, folklore, class instinct]
(Einaudi, 1976). More in general, the text was revised on the basis of the 1976 Italian
edition, Concezioni del mondo, filosofia spontanea e istinto di classe nelle
Osservazioni sul folklore di Antonio Gramsci. We thank Anne Showstack Sassoon for
granting permission to republish the English translation.
                                                                         (a.m.p., f.m.z.)

Gramsci's published writings cited:
LVN = Letteratura e vita nazionale, edited by Felice Platone, Turin, Einaudi, 1950.
PN2 = Prison Notebooks. Volume II, edited and translated by Joseph Buttigieg, New York,
Columbia University Press, 1996.
QC = Quaderni del carcere, edited by Valentino Gerratana, Turin, Einaudi, 1975.
SCW = Selections from Cultural Writings, edited by David Forgacs and Geoffrey Nowell-
Smith, translated by William Boelhower, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1985.
SPN = Selections form the Prison Notebooks, edited and translated by Quintin Hoare and
Geoffrey Nowell Smith, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1971.



This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Alberto Mario Cirese
Gramsci’s Observations on folklore: Conceptions of the world, spontaneous philosophy and class instinct
2022 | Anuac. Vol. 11, n° 1, Giugno 2022: 17-48.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-5277
18                                                                     ALBERTO MARIO CIRESE




   The following notes were written with the limited purpose of checking the
validity of certain past or recent formulations that authorize or deny the
prospect, for Gramsci, of the political use of folklore. These notes then had
in some way to engage with aspects that were far enough remote from the
initial one. Nevertheless, whatever the actual results may be, the basic
intention remained that of understanding the text and reconstructing its
context, without pursuing any endorsement or condemnation.
   Without the possibility of systematically and exhaustively going through
all texts, and to avoid unspecified and intentionally preconceived selections,
I preferred to run the opposite risk, namely that of an excessive restriction of
the text to analyse, and its possible tightening. In fact, I have fundamentally
examined the corpus of Gramscian observations that were assembled by the
editors and published under the title of “Observations on folklore” in Let-
teratura e vita nazionale [LVN 215-221]. It is therefore a group of excerpts
which was created by a will different from that of the author. In the
impossibility of overcoming the diaphragm that still stands between the
manuscript and the printed work, that group of texts, however arbitrary it
may be, constitutes a legitimate unitary object of research, given that for
over twenty years it has acted in this actual constitution and not in any
other, hypothetical and unspecifiable*. Furthermore, even with all its
obvious flaws, this choice has at least the advantage of leaving unaddressed,
and instead of explicitly denouncing, the composition and limits of the text
to which the investigation applies, and of forcing one to justify the moments
and the ways of resorting to pages and passages that are beyond those limits.
   It goes without saying that, also because of the perhaps excessive
delimitation of the text-object, the analysis that follows is configured as an
extremely partial attempt.
   1.0. Looking at Gramsci’s discussion of folklore in the most general terms,
we find: firstly, that he expressly rejects the view that folklore is of no
importance (it should not be thought of “as something strange or peculiar or
colourful”); secondly, that he is no less explicit in claiming that it is
important (though only as an object of study). He not only makes the point
generically (folklore is “something very serious that must be taken

* The book was already in print when the excellent critical edition of the Quaderni edited by
Valentino Gerratana was published.


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GRAMSCI’S OBSERVATIONS ON FOLKLORE                                                19


seriously”), but argues it from the statement that the whole phenomenon of
folklore contains or expresses a “conception of the world and life” which can
be precisely located in socio-cultural terms in relation to other conceptions of
the world (SCW 191, 189).
   This conception of life and the world, as Gramsci makes clear, is
characteristic of certain strata of society, namely the “people”. The people is
taken in the sense of “the sum total of the instrumental and subaltern
classes of every form of society that has so far existed” (SCW 189), and its
conception of the world is not only “different” or “very different” from
official conceptions of the world, but is “in opposition” or “in contradiction”
or “in conflict” with them. Alternatively, “official” conceptions, characteristic
of “the cultured sectors of historically determined societies” or the ruling
strata or the “State” (SCW 190, 189, 188, 190, 193, 188, 190), are, like
“official society” in general, “in competition and conflict” with folklore
(SCW 193, 190).
   All of this leads to the crucial observation that “folklore can only be
understood as a reflection of the conditions of the people’s cultural life”.
This is the reason why “the spirit of folklore studies should be changed, as
well as deepened and extended”. Thus, pure scholarship must give way to
more adequate research-criteria, notably the principle that “the people
themselves are not a homogeneous cultural collectivity but present
numerous and variously combined cultural stratifications” which can be
identified to a certain extent “on the basis of the greater or lesser ‘isolation’”
of “specific historical popular collectivities” (SCW, 190, 191, 189, 195).
   1.1. What Gramsci does then is to validate an object or area of study on the
basis of a definition of the object itself. But, though they do not preclude it in
principle, neither Gramsci’s validation nor his definition add up to an
endorsement either of the view that folklore, or the conception of the world
which it contains or expresses, or the ways in which it goes against official
conceptions of the world are valid in themselves; or of the possibility that
they might be put to valid politico-cultural uses.
   In other words, Gramsci’s statement that folklore is “something very
serious” cannot be applied to the politico-cultural uses that might be made
of folklore. Not only is this statement limited to folklore as an object of
study, but it comes in a context where Gramsci stresses the need to bring
about “the birth of a new culture among the broad popular masses”, i.e. to
do away with “the separation between modern and popular culture or
folklore” (SCW 191).



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20                                                                    ALBERTO MARIO CIRESE


   All that we can say for the moment is that Gramsci is raising “research
into folklore” from the level of pure scholarship to that of “science or
knowledge” (SCW 191), as well as promoting folklore itself from being a
curiosity to being a conception of the world. And he takes the further step of
locating it socially and culturally “in the framework of a nation and its
culture”: characteristic of the subaltern classes on one hand, and in opposition
to official conceptions on the other.
   And closer examination of these three cardinal features of Gramsci’s
definition of folklore will show that his endorsement cannot be extended to
the politico-cultural sphere.
   1.2. If we now go on to analyze the three key-concepts, at least as far as
they emerge from the passages referred to so far, and try to bring out the
general principle underlying them, we find the following:
   1) Describing both folklore and official, or, more broadly, cultured
intellectual products as conceptions of the world puts them on the same
generic level, but there is still obviously a specific difference. It is indicated
verbally by the distinction, and opposition, between “official” and “popular”.
If we agree, for the sake of clarity, to use the adjective “folkloric” instead of
“popular”, the generic equivalence and the specific difference can be
represented thus:

                                folkloric versus official
                               conception of the world

   This formula is only partially satisfactory, but we can make do with it for
the time being.
   2) As well as the fact that the folkloric conception is in opposition to the
official one, Gramsci explicitly makes the point that: the inverse relation
obviously obtains as well, and that official conceptions of the world are in
competition or conflict with those of folklore.
   What is not clear for the moment is which of the two conceptions is active
and which is passive — a provisional uncertainty which can be represented
equally uncertainly thus:

                     (active or passive) versus (active or passive)
                                      opposition

  3) The socio-cultural location of the two specific kinds of conception of the
world is shown by the use of a series of semantically oppositional pairs.
Generally speaking only one term of each pair is stated explicitly while the


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GRAMSCI’S OBSERVATIONS ON FOLKLORE                                                     21


other is left implicit, though it is immediately obvious. Here the implicit
term is indicated by an asterisk: subaltern/*hegemonic; instrumental/*non-
instrumental; cultured/*uncultured; ruling/*ruled; dominant/*dominated, etc.
   This series of pairs can be reduced in essence to just two opposites. The
first has to do with the socio-political sphere, the second with the socio-
cultural sphere, social class and intellectual “sector” or category
respectively.
   We can represent the first as follows:

                                subaltern versus hegemonic
   a)
                                         social class

   It does not seem arbitrary to use the term “hegemonic” here, despite its
not appearing explicitly in the pages in question.1
   The second pair could be represented by automatically employing the
term “uncultured” as the implicit opposite of “cultured”. But the resulting
contrast between cultured and *uncultured could give rise to some mis-
understanding. For there are reasonable grounds for believing that in
Gramsci’s view the usual contrast between culture and non-culture is not
exactly the same thing, and does not imply the same judgement, as that
between culture and ignorance, meaning the “complete absence of any form
or kind of culture”. He speaks, as we have seen, of “the conditions of the
people’s cultural life”; he places popular song “in the framework of a nation
and its culture”; he uses the expression “popular culture or folklore”, and so
on. We shall want to return to this point in due course, but, in order not to
prejudge the issue, we should leave open the possibility that the opposition
lies not so much between culture and non-culture as between different kinds
of culture. It therefore seems right to avoid using the term “uncultured”
which we shall replace by the very Gramscian word “simple”. Bearing these
points in mind, we can represent the opposition in the socio-cultural sphere,
as regards intellectual “sector” or category, as follows:

                                 simple versus cultured
   b)
                                  intellectual category



1. Apart from obvious considerations, the term can be inferred without a shadow of doubt
from (SCW 189). Furthermore, it can be seen as a correct equivalent of “ruling” and “domi-
nant”, which are used explicitly in the phrases “governing strata” (SCW 190) and “dominant
class” (SCW 194).

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22                                                                      ALBERTO MARIO CIRESE



   1.3. The semantic connections and distinctions so far identified can now
be recapitulated as follows:

      1     conceptions of the world          folkloric vs official
      2     in mutual opposition              (active or passive) vs (active or passive)
            located respectively in:
      3          a) social classes            subaltern vs hegemonic
                 b) intellectual categories   simple vs cultured


  Reading the table vertically, we can see at once that “folkloric” connects
with “subaltern” and “simple”. Neither of these terms go very well with an
“active” position, either in common usage or, still less, in Gramsci’s. By the
same token, the evident connection between “official” and “hegemonic” and
“cultured” does not square with “passive”. In other words, even if Gramsci
were not explicit on the point, the ambiguity still surrounding “opposition”
would have to be resolved by assigning “passiveness” to folklore and
“activeness” to official conceptions. The logic of connective and oppositional
coherence alone then would lead us to the conclusion that the proposition
underlying Gramsci’s considerations takes the following form:

          The folkloric conception            is to    the official conception
     as the subaltern social class            is to    the hegemonic social class
     as the simple intellectual category      is to    the cultured intellectual category
           as passive opposition              is to        active opposition.


   2.0. This conclusion was fairly predictable, but it is confirmed by the
specific points Gramsci makes on the material of folklore itself, the
conception of the world it embodies, and the opposition between both of
these and official conceptions. His points are not merely statements of fact.
Whether they have to do with content or form (by which we understand here
mode of organization or degree of inner coherence), they are decidedly
judgemental in character, and the judgement can very rarely be called
positive. Even if Gramsci occasionally modifies his judgement and assesses
folklore positively in certain respects, it does not seem to alter our
impression that he is being quite deliberately systematic in his devaluation
of folklore (be-ginning with those features which we have listed).


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GRAMSCI’S OBSERVATIONS ON FOLKLORE                                                    23


   2.1. It is often hard to make out whether Gramsci is talking about folk-
material as such or the conception of the world it expresses, but the
attributes he assigns all point plainly in a negative direction.
   Thus, in a context where the reference is definitely to the material itself,
Gramsci states that there is “nothing more contradictory and fragmentary
than folklore”. Elsewhere, where the reference is less certain, he notes that
“folklore” has stayed “scattered and many-sided”. Referring to the folkloric
or popular conception of the world, Gramsci says that it is “to a large extent
implicit” as well as “unelaborated”, “unsystematic”, and “many-sided” (SCW
190, 189):
      not only because it includes different and juxtaposed elements, but also
      because it is stratified, from the more crude to the less crude - if, indeed,
      one should not speak of a confused agglomerate of fragments of all the
      conceptions of the world and of life that have succeeded one another in
      history. In fact, it is only in folklore that one finds surviving evidence,
      adulterated and mutilated, of the majority of these conceptions (SCW 189).
    The negative judgement, then, affects all aspects of folklore: both the way
in which it is organized and the nature or indeed the content of the elements
which make it up. The way that Gramsci thinks and talks about this material,
whether in general terms or through specific examples, is as something
essentially debased, the spill-over of cultured conceptions. And not only is it
backward in relation to the developments of science and “cultured culture”:
it is even out of touch with the conditions under which the people actually
live.
    In addition to the passages already cited, one might look at those in which
Gramsci underlines folklore’s dependence on the “culture of the dominant
class”, or where he talks about how “certain opinions and scientific
concepts, taken out of context, and more or less distorted, are for ever falling
into the popular domain” where they are “assimilated in strange ways” (SCW
193, 189); or again where the “Ptolemaic conception” – which elsewhere is
assigned to “common sense” (SCW 190; QC 1456; SPN 420) is regarded as
“typical of folklore”; or, finally, where he points out that
      certain conceptions specific to folklore remain even after these conditions
      [of the people’s cultural life] have been (or seem to be) modified or have
      given way to bizarre combinations (SCW 190)

   The “tradition”, in short, is a “mosaic” (SCW 189).
   2.2. Passiveness and backwardness of content are of course simply a
manifestation of the fact that the material is incapable of elaboration or
systemization. With everything connected in this way, what we appear to
have is an entirely homogeneous series of attributes. Whether Gramsci is

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24                                                               ALBERTO MARIO CIRESE


referring to the material of folklore or its conception of the world, its
content or its form, he always attributes to it qualities that constitute the
weak (or negative, low-value) term of an oppositional pair whose strong (or
positive, high-value) term is reserved more or less explicitly for conceptions
to be found on the side of official society and the ruling strata.
   Looking first at formal qualities, we find explicitly associated with
folklore: contradictoriness, fragmentation, dispersal, multiplicity, implicitness,
non-elaboration, un-systematicness, difference, juxtaposition, stratification,
indigestibility, etc. Explicitly stated qualities such as elaboration, systematicness,
political organization and centralization, organic systemization, etc. are
reserved for non-folk conceptions. But it would obviously not be a distortion
to extend the list to include the negation of the remaining “weak” terms
assigned to folklore (*non-contradictoriness, *non-fragmentation, *non-
multiplicity, i.e. *unity, *non-implicitness, i.e. *explicitness, and so on).
   There are some nuances, but most of these pairs point to the fact that the
manner of ordering collections of cultural phenomena and their respective
conceptions of the world, and the results of that process, are in one case
positive and in the other negative.
   The qualities that refer particularly to the manner in which the process
takes place are elaboration, systematicness, organization, centralization,
organic systemization and the like, and their opposites, whether explicitly
stated or not. If we agree to call the positive and negative poles “organic”
and “unorganic” respectively, and to refer to the ordering-process as
“combination”, the semantic connections and distinctions can then be
schematized as:
                               unorganic versus organic
                                    combination
  Such qualities as fragmentation, dispersal, multiplicity, stratification and
their opposites are concerned on the other hand with the results of the
process. To indicate the two different kinds of internal organization we can
use the terms “fragmentary” and “unitary”, which gives us:
                              fragmentary versus unitary
                                internal organization

   One pair – implicitness/explicitness – is left over, and this we can take as
referring to the mode of expression or manifestation, schematized as:
                                implicit versus explicit
                                 mode of expression



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GRAMSCI’S OBSERVATIONS ON FOLKLORE                                                  25


   As regards the material of folklore — in other words what is contained in
its opinions or beliefs or practices — Gramsci emphasizes above all the fact
that it is a debased spill-over. This is obviously in contrast to the original
character of what is produced by “culture”, so that we can represent the
opposition as follows:
                               debased versus original
                                      content

  If we now add these new pairs of attributes to those already identified, we
get the following (simplified) table:

               folkloric              versus    official
               (active or passive)    versus    (active or passive)
               subaltern              versus    hegemonic
               simple                 versus    cultured
               unorganic              versus    organic
               fragmentary            versus    unitary
               implicit               versus    explicit
               debased                versus    original

– which makes it increasingly unlikely that the quality of activeness can be
attributed to folklore.
   2.3. Gramsci has quite different ways of talking about the forms taken by
the opposition between folk and official conceptions, depending on which
of the two aspects of the relation he is considering, and it is these explicit
statements that enable us finally to decide the question of activeness and
passiveness.
   Looked at from the point of view of folklore, the opposition is “for the
most part implicit, mechanical, objective” (SCW 188). But when it is looked
at from the other point of view, it completely changes character and
becomes something active and organized. This is what is implied when
Gramsci asks whether the “elaboration” and “systemization” of Catholicism
wrought by “intellectuals and the Church hierarchy” were not in fact
necessary “to keep folklore scattered and many-sided”. The opposition
appears even more active and organized when Gramsci refers to the state as
an entity which is “not agnostic, but has its own conception of life which it
is its duty to disseminate through education of the popular masses”: this
“educational activity”, as Gramsci observes, “is in competition and conflict
with other explicit or implicit conceptions”, amongst which is folklore
“which, therefore, has to be ‘overcome’” (SCW 190, 191).

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26                                                                    ALBERTO MARIO CIRESE



   Thus, from the point of view of folklore the opposition takes the form at
best of resistance. It might be a tenacious resistance, but in kind it is
mechanical, implicit and objective. On the opposite side, one has an
activeness which at the least is involved in “keeping things in check”, but
which has the power to “uproot”, “replace”, “hammer”, and so on (SCW
191).
   2.4. Once again, then, the weak and strong terms are distributed on each
side of a sharp dividing line, with the former linked to folklore and the
latter to official conceptions.
   There are here at least two recognizable semantic distinctions. There is
the opposition between implicit, mechanical and objective, and *explicit,
*non-mechanical, *non-objective; and there is that between the aggressive
character of official conceptions and folklore’s attitude of resistance. The
first obviously has to do with the degree of consciousness or intentionality
involved, and we can represent it by the terms “mechanical versus
intentional” (drawing on other passages in Gramsci, the terms “spontaneity
versus conscious leadership” could be used instead2) The second opposition,
which is concerned with aggressive capabilities and force of expansion, can
be represented by the terms “active” and “passive” as already used.
   It does not seem appropriate to run these two pairs together, so the
connections and distinctions concerning the “opposition” that Gramsci
speaks about require two different schematizations. The first is to do with
consciousness, the second with the capacity to influence on the outside. If we
may agree to use the term “opposition” to link the two poles of
consciousness, we shall have the following schema:


2. SPN 196-197: “Spontaneity and conscious leadership. The term “spontaneity” can be
variously defined, for the phenomenon to which it refers is many-sided. Meanwhile it must
be stressed that “pure” spontaneity does not exist in history: it would come to the same
thing as “pure” mechanicity. In the “most spontaneous” movement it is simply the case that
the elements of “conscious leadership” cannot be checked, have left no reliable document.
It may be said that spontaneity is therefore characteristic of the “history of the subaltern
classes”, and indeed of their most marginal and peripheral elements; these have not
achieved any consciousness of the class “for itself”, and consequently it never occurs to
them that their-history might have some possible importance, that there might be some
value in leaving documentary evidence of it”.
Gramsci goes on: “Hence in such movements there exist multiple elements of ‘conscious
leadership’, but no one of them is predominant or transcends the level of a given social
stratum’s ‘popular science’ — its ‘common sense’ or traditional conception of the world”.
For the continuation of this passage, see Note 3 below.


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GRAMSCI’S OBSERVATIONS ON FOLKLORE                                                    27



                             mechanical versus intentional
                                     opposition

  And if we further agree to use the term “conflict” to link the two poles of
the capacity to influence and expand, the relation will be represented as:

                                  passive versus active
                                        conflict

   In this way we have both confirmed the straightforward hypothesis that
the qualities Gramsci attributes to folklore are homogeneous in a necessarily
negative sense, and resolved the ambiguity surrounding the “opposition”
between the two conceptions. The general proposition underlying his
statements can now be formulated as follows:

         folkloric conception                      is to     official
      as subaltern social class                    is to     hegemonic
      as simple intellectual category              is to     cultured
      as unorganic combination                     is to     organic
      as fragmentary internal organization         is to     unitary
      as implicit mode of expression               is to     explicit
      as debased content                           is to     original
      as mechanical opposition                     is to     intentional
      as passive conflict                          is to     active


   2.5. Everything falls into place, then, but perhaps just a little too neatly.
Presented in this way, the constant attribution of weak or negative terms to
folklore and strong or positive ones to non-folk conceptions has all the
marks of the deliberate systematicity we mentioned before, and can
obviously look suspect. Might it not in fact be a mirage or distortion produced
by the schematization and hence excessive impoverishment of an argument
that in itself is a good deal more mobile and articulated?
   There is no question but that Gramsci’s considerations are richer than the
proposition we have come up with. Apart from anything else, there are a
number of “positive” attributes which we have passed over but which need
to be taken into account, as well as other qualifications and nuances. But
before we go on to consider these, the point must be made that the
systematic quality to which we have drawn attention is explicitly confirmed
by the text as we have examined it so far.

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28                                                             ALBERTO MARIO CIRESE


   It is Gramsci himself who says that all the negative qualities listed above
must be assigned to folklore, before moving on to an examination of its
concrete manifestations, and perhaps even quite separately from them. This
list of negatives and their attribution to folklore are to be argued by
deduction from the very concept of “people”. If the people consists of all
subaltern and instrumental classes, it follows “by definition”, as Gramsci
writes, that “the people […] cannot possess conceptions which are
elaborated, systematic and politically organized and centralized in their
albeit contradictory development” (SCW 189, Italics added). Elaboration,
systematicness and centralization are in fact expressions of hegemony (even
if not only of hegemony), which is precisely what those classes which are
still subaltern lack.
   So systematic a dichotomizing of the various attributes would seem to be
a real characteristic rather than an arbitrary impoverishment of the text.

   3.0. This being the case — at least so far as we can see — it is fairly obvious
that Gramsci’s treatment of folklore moves along two separate lines, and
that his assessment changes radically as he shifts from one to the other. On
the one hand, he considers folklore as an object of study and as such he
validates it in full. But on the other, he looks at it as a force or factor in real
life and its process of development, and from this point of view he
characterizes it with a long, and so far systematic and unbroken, s cries of
negative, low-value, qualities.
   In other words, folklore is allowed the rank of a conception of the world,
but within this category of phenomena it is placed at a lower level in the
hierarchy than that assigned to the official conceptions from which it is
distinguished and which stand in opposition to it. By definition, it is denied
all the formal qualities of coherence, unity, consciousness, etc., which are
typical of the hegemonic classes and their “official” conceptions. Gramsci’s
esteem goes entirely to the latter, quite independently of the specific
content of the conception in question or what social class it belongs to.
   The upshot is a mixture of tensions and conflicts that border on the edge
of ambiguity. The cultural expressions of the social classes with which
Gramsci solidarizes so clearly at the political level are assessed positively to
the extent that they are to be considered simply as an object of scientific
research — but are judged negatively when it comes to seeing them as
factors in real life and its process of development. Alternately, the cultural
modes of the classes which Gramsci opposes both politically and culturally
are esteemed as permanent “values” and “forces”.


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GRAMSCI’S OBSERVATIONS ON FOLKLORE                                                29


   It is precisely these tensions or ambiguities which give rise to conflicting
interpretations on the question of the political use of folklore. Thus, at one
extreme there is the tendency to shift Gramsci’s positive judgement on
folklore as an object of study onto its potential use in politics, while at the
other we find his negative judgement on the modes and content of folklore
extended to the object of study itself.
   Everything seems to revolve around the real or apparent ambivalence of
the concepts of “subaltern” and “official”. The text seems to allow of two
different interpretations which can be summarized very roughly and
schematically as follows. Depending on how they are affected by the context,
both singly and in relation to each other, the two concepts may take the
form of an opposition either:
   (a)   between “subaltern = the modern proletariat which today is
         historically in the right even if it has attained power only in a few
         cases” (for Gramsci, the USSR) and “official = the modern
         bourgeoisie which today is historically in the wrong even though in
         many cases it still retains power”; or:
   (b)   between “subaltern = those classes, past or future, that are lacking in
         or deprived of historical force” and “official = those classes whose
         hegemony, whether past or future, constitutes real history”.
  It is at this difficult point that we turn for guidance to those of Gramsci’s
observations that we have not yet taken into account.

   4 . 0 . These remaining observations are different from the foregoing
inasmuch as they provide a more or less immediately positive description of
folklore. Few though they are, this is not a reason for discounting their effect
on the systematic distribution of strong and weak terms noted above, and we
should examine them with a certain amount of care. Here to begin with is a
brief list of the relevant points.
    1) Some of folklore’s weak attributes are modified quantitatively by
         Gramsci at the level of general definition. Thus, he writes that the
         folkloric conception “is implicit to a large extent”, and that its
         opposition to official world views is “for the most part implicit,
         mechanical, and objective” (SCW 189, Italics added).
    2) Referring specifically to “morality of the people” — but without making
         it clear whether he is thinking of the conservative conceptions or the
         progressive innovations which he will distinguish between a little later
         on — Gramsci attributes a particular “tenacity” to certain folk-
         convictions: “timperatives exist that are much stronger, more tenacious
         and more effective than those of official ‘morality’” (SCW 190).

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     3) Still in the area of morality, and also that of “juridical folklore”,
        Gramsci credits at least some folk-conceptions with the ability to
        “adhere and correspond spontaneously” to actual conditions of life
        and their process of development. Hence it can happen that:
        a) they are not always necessarily just the debased, inert, spill-over
            of dominant conceptions. So much is clear from the passage in
            which he speaks of
               the ensemble of opinions and beliefs concerning one’s ‘own’ rights
               which circulate uninterruptedly among the popular masses and are
               continuously renewed under the pressure of real living conditions
               and the spontaneous comparison between the ways in which the
               various social strata live (SCW 193).
        b) they can sometimes have a progressive value which the analysis of
           cultural stratifications must take account of; thus, Gramsci
           underlines the need to “distinguish between different strata” in
           the sphere of popular morality as well:
               the fossilized ones which reflect conditions of past life and are
               therefore conservative and reactionary, and those which consist of a
               series of innovations, often creative and progressive, determined
               spontaneously by forms and conditions of life which are in the
               process of developing and which are in contradiction to or simply
               different from the morality of the governing strata (SCW 189).
        c) they may achieve a degree of expansive capacity that might throw
           official conceptions back on the defensive; thus, when discussing a
           certain kind of criticism levelled at “so-called natural law”,
           Gramsci notes that, behind its apparent objectives,
               the aim of the controversy is in fact to curb the influence that the
               popular currents of “natural law” may (and in fact do) have, particularly
               on young intellectuals (SCW 193, Italics added).
     4) Speaking about popular song — though there are indications that the
        point might be applied more widely Gramsci acknowledges that, even
        though folklore is generally speaking dependent on official
        conceptions, (i.e. the process of “cultural descent” from elites to
        masses is going on), the people is “itself” able to select according to
        its “own” criteria, these going more or less implicitly against official
        ones. Thus, he makes the point that even though popular songs “are
        written neither by nor for the people”, they have been “taken over by
        it because they conform to its way of thinking and feeling”; they are
        representative of “how it conceives life and the world, in contrast
        with official society”. This makes the phrases Gramsci uses elsewhere
        rather less generic:

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GRAMSCI’S OBSERVATIONS ON FOLKLORE                                                          31



           folklore has always been tied to the culture ofthe dominant class and, in
           its own way, has drawn from it the motifs which have then become inserted
           into combinations with the previous traditions (SCW 194, Italics added).

   5.0. It is fairly clear that there are two different ways in which what for the
sake of brevity we shall call these “positive” remarks operate in relation to
those already examined. Either they introduce “new” qualities or aspects, not
previously taken into consideration, or which have not so far come to the
fore; or they modify in a quantitative sense certain qualities already otherwise
attributed. We shall examine these two aspects separately.
   5.1.0. The following act in the first way and introduce “new” qualities: (a)
the point about the particular “tenacity” of some popular conceptions; (b)
the acknowledgement that folklore, at least in certain cases, is able to adhere
“spontaneously” to real conditions of life as they develop; (c) the attribution
of a “progressive” political value to some of the phenomena of folklore.
   We must therefore introduce these new data into our previous table. But
in so doing we have to observe that the positive remarks under examination,
as is clearly stated, concern only some features or elements of folklore, while
the negative characteristics equally clearly concerned the whole of folklore.
This means two things: firstly, that these positive attributions are not to be
placed at the same level as the negative ones already dealt with; and
secondly, that assigning them to folklore does not lead to their negations
being assigned to official conceptions as such, but at most to their affecting
some aspects of the latter.
   Thus, leaving aside the fact that the “tenacity” of popular attitudes is not
always regarded “positively” (since it is also responsible for holding back the
people in a manner deplored by Gramsci 3), the statement “certain popular
moral imperatives are more tenacious than those of official morality” means
only that certain official imperatives are weaker than those of folklore. The


3. In this connection, cf. what Gramsci writes immediately after the passage cited in Note 2
above: “This is precisely what De Man, empirically, counterposes to Marxism; but he does
not realize (apparently) that he is falling into the position of somebody who, after
describing folklore, witchcraft, etc., and showing that these conceptions have sturdy
historical roots and are tenaciously entwined in the psychology of specific popular strata,
believed that he had ‘transcended’ modern science — taking as ‘modern science’ every little
article in the popular scientific journals and periodicals. This is a real case of intellectual
teratology, of which there are other examples: precisely, the admirers of folklore, who
advocate its preservation; the ‘magicalists’ connected with Maeterlinck, who believe it is
necessary to take up anew the thread — snapped by violence — of alchemy and witchcraft,
so that science may be put back onto a course more fertile in discoveries, etc” (SPN 197).

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same is true of the capacity to adhere to reality: some popular opinions have
it, but this does not mean that non-folk opinions do not. But were any proof
needed of the particular, non-universal, character of these positive qualities
in folklore, one would only need to look at Gramsci’s acknowledgement of
the “progressive” value of certain popular beliefs or opinions. This
acknowledgement rests on the creation of an explicit contrast between
progressive and reactionary (or conservative) inside folklore itself — requiring,
at most, an identical contrast inside official conceptions.
    If, in short, we go on to fit these “new” qualities into the system of
oppositions we have set up, we find that the latter is “extended” and also
looks different on the page. Thus, if we agree to use the term “effective” for
the capacity to adhere to reality, the table would be extended in the following
(simplified) way:

                             folkloric    versus   official
                                    ...            ...
        (tenacious or not tenacious)      versus   (tenacious or not tenacious)
          (effective or not effective)    versus   (effective or not effective)
         (progressive or reactionary)     versus   (progressive or reactionary)

   Only one of the oppositional pairs to which the extension is added
appears to be affected in any way, and it is the one that concerns “content”.
From the point of view of folklore, content no longer appears as purely
“debased”: it might be “occasionally original”, or even autonomous. This
points forward to those quantitative modifications already mentioned which
we shall be looking at more closely in due course.
   Otherwise, the extension seems to leave the absolute nature of the
oppositions and their distribution intact. The fact that folklore can
sometimes be tenacious, effective and progressive (or rather, more tenacious
etc. than official conceptions sometimes are) neither affects nor limits — if
anything, to some extent it confirms and strengthens — the implicitness of
the mode of expression, the unorganic character of combination, the
fragmentation of internal organization, the passive-ness of the conflict, the
simplicity or elementariness of the intellectual category, or in short the
subaltern position of the social class to which folklore belongs. All that is
affirmed is that the implicit mode of expression does not of itself preclude
the presence of (some) progressive political values, that fragmentation or
unorganicness nevertheless allow room for (some) strata of innovations, and
so on.


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GRAMSCI’S OBSERVATIONS ON FOLKLORE                                                  33


   The real consequence of the new group of oppositions is to be found at a
different level. It is directly linked to the fact which makes it impossible to
infer any positive judgement on folklore as such from what Gramsci wrote,
the fact that the new oppositions tenacious / not tenacious, effective / not
effective, progressive / reactionary do not coincide with the dichotomies
subaltern / hegemonic, un-organic / organic, etc., but are added to them.
   Because of this lack of coincidence, it is both possible and necessary to
rearrange the whole system, no longer taking the opposition between
folkloric and official as the point of reference but rather each of the new
oppositions, most particularly that of an explicitly political kind.
   The result is a complete reshuffling of the semantic connections and
distinctions. What is revealed in the long run is that in Gramsci’s text there
exist implicit terms of conceptual reference which lie beyond the
straightforward opposition between folkloric and official as it has been
presented so far.
   Pedantic though it may be, it could be of some use to represent the
schema constructed in function of the dichotomy between progressive and
reactionary in diagrammatic form. The schema would then offer us not two
but four possible kinds of conceptions of the world. While the vertical
connections between folkloric and subaltern, implicit, unorganic, etc., and
between official and hegemonic, explicit, organic, etc. remain unchanged, the
four kinds would take the following form:

            folkloric and reactionary          official and reactionary
            folkloric and progressive          official and progressive


   5.1.1. One of the most immediately obvious features of this new pattern is
that the concept of “official” is, so to speak, split in two. It is seen as capable
of assuming at least one negative quality (“reactionary”), which interrupts
the long and hitherto unbroken series of positive attributes – or of adding
one further positive quality (“progressive”) to all those preceding.
   The first is hardly surprising, and it is moreover explicitly stated in the
text with Gramsci describing some of the attitudes of the cultured and ruling
strata as “the most narrow-minded conservatism” (SCW 193). This corrective
to Gramsci’s systematic acknowledgement of positive qualities is in any case
perfectly consistent with the obvious gap between his own views and the
“official” conceptions of the time and place in which he is writing and
working. The compatibility between “official” and “progressive”, on the
other hand, might occasion some surprise, particularly since the text under
consideration does not appear to offer any immediate indications or

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concrete examples of a connection which we have brought out by purely
formal and combinatory means. There is, however, no real reason for
surprise if one reflects that the term “official” is really just a general heading
for a number of highly valued qualities. So as regards its intrinsic qualities,
the expression “official and progressive” can be translated, on the basis of
the connections which we believe we have established, as: “a conception of
the world that is organic, unitary, explicit, original in its contents,
intentional in its opposition to other conceptions and active in its conflict
with them, and finally, progressive”. Which obviously means for Gramsci the
philosophy of praxis, historical materialism, Marxism — the point of view
which he himself takes up. But “official” also means “pertaining to the
cultured sectors and the hegemonic classes”: for Gramsci, both of these
further conditions can be regarded as met only in the Soviet Union, whereas
for the rest of the world only the first is satisfied. Thus it can be seen that,
far from being produced by purely formal means, the combination of
“official and progressive” stands in fact for the goal in view or the model
which is referred to.
    But there is a good deal more. By inserting this new combination, which
in the first instance came about by purely formal means, the static nature of
the opposition between “folkloric” and “official” is decisively broken. The
four-term pattern above has no room either for Marxism as the conception
of the world belonging to social forces that are not yet hegemonic or for
those workers’ parties that are not yet in power. But it is that same pattern
which demands their presence, based as it is on three terms denoting a given
state of affairs and one which designates a goal and a model. The schema
therefore represents a process, an action in time, and thus contains Marxism
as not yet hegemonic, the workers’ parties as not yet in power, or more
precisely the class-struggle. These are present not as terms or factors, but as
mediators or agents which effect the transition from the given state of affairs
to the new situation and transform a “progressive” that is still “folkloric”
(i.e. still subaltern, implicit, fragmentary, etc.) into a definitively “official”
(i.e. fully hegemonic) “progressive”.
    5.1.2. Thus our formal repatterning of the schema in function of the
political assessment explicitly stated by the text has led us to recognize from
within the presence of an underlying context, of unspoken but decisive
conceptual reference-points. It is precisely to the tacit but active presence of
these references that the ambivalence or ambiguity mentioned above has to
be related, for it comes about as the result of repeated, sudden shifts, not
perhaps kept entirely under control, from one level or point of view to
another.


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GRAMSCI’S OBSERVATIONS ON FOLKLORE                                               35


   a) If the level concerned is that of describing a given state of affairs, and
as long as the factors taken into account are limited to bourgeois official
conceptions on the one hand and folklore as reflecting the cultural life of the
great masses of the people on the other, the oppositional, what one might
almost call alternative, value of the folkloric conception is immediately
apparent, and the way is opened to a recognition of its ability both to
produce its own autonomous culture and to select products handed down
from above for its own, opposite, ends.
   In such cases, the text authorizes us to recognize the folk conception as a
spontaneous form of the “spirit of cleavage”, which Gramsci defines
elsewhere as “the progressive acquisition of consciousness of [the innovatory
class’s] own historical personality”, (PN2 52-53) and to see “progressive” or
“protest” folklore at least as the manifestation of a class-instinct (“instinct”
of course being understood as a “primitive and elementary historical
acquisition”, not a biological phenomenon) (SPN 199).
   b) But this limitation of perspective to the level of pure description and
the straightforward comparison between folklore and bourgeois conceptions
is short-lived. Straight-away, reference to the essential terms comes into
play, the tension opens up between things as they are and the goal in view,
and we move from the area of static description to that of action or process.
At this point, there are at least three sides to the comparison (folklore,
bourgeois conceptions, Marxist conception), and all the decidedly negative
limitations of folklore come to the fore, however progressive it might be in
certain respects and however significant its opposition to the official
conceptions of the bourgeoisie. At the same time, the way is cleared for an
appreciation of all the formal qualities which are possessed by official
conceptions (whether bourgeois or proletarian) and not by folklore in its role
as the cultural expression of social classes that are still subaltern. When it
comes to an appreciation of those formal qualities, Gramsci contrasts
folklore with the Marxist conception of the world, not with bourgeois ones:
what are now in question are class-consciousness and class-struggle, the
Communist Party, proletarian hegemony, in other words, the aims and
agents of a huge transformation of things as they are.
   So it seems that the constant play of light and shadow falling across
Gramsci’s discussions of folklore and official conceptions is to be attributed
to the fact that the beam is cast from a number of different angles. But it is
controlled by a single switch movement towards a goal and adaptation to a
model.



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36                                                                        ALBERTO MARIO CIRESE


   5.1.3. We cannot, however, ignore the point that in all the criss-crossing
of levels and points of view, one perspective remains constant. This is the
esteem afforded to certain qualities which we shall call intellectual and,
which are the condition and expression of hegemony, by whichever class it is
exercised. These qualities are presented, so to speak, as crossing class-
boundaries: their possession or exercise is conditioned by class, but not their
value, which is permanent. That is why one cannot be sure what hierarchical
order all the terms, explicit and implicit, which the text relates to one
another, should be put in, except for the entirely positive elements at one
extreme (“official and progressive”) and the entirely negative ones at the
other (“folkloric and reactionary”). The order of the middle terms remains
uncertain, since it is impossible to determine whether more value is given to
what is politically positive (which would put “folkloric and progressive”
higher up the scale) or to what is formally positive (in which case it would be
“official and reactionary”).
   There is then a question whether a “progressive” content which is without
formal capacities or intellectual force should not be considered inert, if not
indeed “reactionary”, while formal and intellectual capacities, even though
their content is “reactionary”, should of themselves ultimately be regarded
as “progressive”.
   A solution to this problem might be found if we look back to Gramsci’s
examination of other forces. His interest in folklore as an object of study is
consonant with his desire for “a more cautious and precise assessment of the
forces acting in society”4. Undoubtedly he regards folklore as one of these
forces.

4. PN2 52-53: “Ideological material. A study of how the ideological structure of a ruling class
is actually organized: that is, the material organization meant to preserve, defend, and
develop the theoretical or ideological ‘front’” […].
The press is the most dynamic part of the ideological structure, but not the only one.
Everything that directly or indirectly influences or could influence public opinion belongs to
it: libraries, schools, associations and clubs of various kinds, even architecture, the layout of
streets and their names. The position that the church has maintained in the modern world
cannot be explained without knowledge of the incessant and patient efforts it makes to
ensure the continuous development of its particular sector of this material structure of
ideology. Such a study, conducted seriously, would be quite important: besides providing a
living historical model of such a structure, it would inculcate the habit of assessing the
forces of agency in society with greater caution and precision. What can an innovative class
set against the formidable complex of trenches and fortifications of the ruling class? The
spirit of cleavages—that is, the progressive acquisition of the consciousness of one’s
historical identity—a spirit of cleavage that must aim to extend itself from the protagonist
class to the classes that are its potential allies: all of this requires complex ideological work,
the first condition of which is an exact knowledge of the field that must be cleared of its
element of human mass”.


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GRAMSCI’S OBSERVATIONS ON FOLKLORE                                                         37


   We have already seen him paying tribute to the “tenacity” of folklore, and
pursuing this line a little further we would find more explicit statements
elsewhere, as for example when Gramsci writes:
      It is worth recalling the frequent affirmation made by Marx on the “solidity
      of popular beliefs” as a necessary element of a specific situation. What he
      says more or less is “when this way of conceiving things has the force of
      popular beliefs”, etc. Another proposition of Marx is that a popular
      conviction often has the same energy as a material force or something of
      the kind, which is extremely significant (SPN 377)5.

   Another example would be his note on the “fanatical granite compactness
of the ‘popular beliefs’ which assume the same energy as ‘material forces’”
(SPN 404).
   These observations might obviously allow us to regard “material forces”
(and hence folklore in so far as it is comparable to material forces) as
“content” and intellectual qualities as “form”, tending thereby “to reinforce
the conception of ‘historic bloc’” (SPN 377). As a consequence we would be
authorized by the text at this point to see the positive aspect of folklore as
residing in the fact that it is a “force” or “energy” which is made the content
of a “form” that takes shape elsewhere, rather than in particular items of
content, however progressive they may be.
   But on the other hand, the whole argument lends itself to over-
simplification. Notwithstanding Gramsci’s declared intention to treat this
      distinction between form and content [as having] purely didactic value,
      since the material forces would be inconceivable historically without form
      and the ideologies would be individual fancies without the material forces
      (SPN 377)

   even the dialectical relationship between form and content is broken. The
intellectual form is regarded as pre-existent or at any rate determining,
while, if the material forces are regarded as essential, it is only at the
instrumental level. Their content (as well as the “other” forms which this
content cannot but take on) is completely devoid of interest. In spite of
Gramsci’s statement to the effect that “the demands of cultural contact with
the ‘simple’” must be “continually felt” (and therefore satisfied) (SPN 330f),
the only point of interest in the simple is their material force, with which
contact is made in political action rather than cultural or scientific research.

5. SPN 377. The passage goes on: “The analysis of these propositions tends, I think, to rein-
force the conception of historical bloc in which precisely material forces are the content and
ideologies are the form, though this distinction between form and content has purely di-
dactic value, since the material forces would be inconceivable historically without form and
the ideologies would be individual fancies without the material forces”.

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   5.2.0. So we come to a group of problems which go far beyond the specific
questions which we intended to deal with in these notes: problems concerning
the relation between intellectuals and masses, or between spontaneity and
conscious leadership.
   In fact, Gramsci’s observations on folklore are one aspect of this wider
batch of problems, and reflect the difficulties which arise from them. So much
is clear not only from the direct mentions of “spontaneity” which we have
already come across, but also from the remaining positive comments on
folklore to which we must now turn our attention.
   5.2.1. It has already been mentioned that, as well as introducing “new”
qualities, Gramsci’s positive comments on folklore modify certain previously-
attributed negative qualities in a quantitative sense. A glance back to the
points listed above will suffice to show that this second kind of positive
comment is concerned with what we have agreed to call “mode of expression”,
“contents” and “conflict”, and that they make the association with folklore of
the weak or negative terms in these three cases (implicit, debased, passive)
less absolute. Essentially, what is said is that the folk conception is implicit
though not entirely so; that its contents are debased spill-overs, though not all
of them; and that its conflict with official conceptions is passive, though not
always.
   As a result, there are at least three cases in which the horizontal contrasts
which we thought we could identify change character: being purely
qualitative in kind, they were discontinuous; now they take on the appearance
of a quantitative continuity. It emerges in short that there is a series of inter-
mediate and continuous nuances between “entirely implicit, debased or
passive” and “entirely explicit, original or active”, which can be expressed
verbally with phrases like “on the whole”, “a little more”, “a little less”, etc.,
or with the phrases that Gramsci himself uses, “to a large extent” and “for the
most part”.
   Bearing this in mind, we should modify the purely qualitative
schematizations worked out above in at least three cases. Just to take one
example, instead of
                       implicit versus explicit
     we should put:
                      implicit to a large extent versus implicit to a limited extent

     or
                      implicit to a limited extent versus explicit to a large extent
     or even, so as to include the outer limits:
                      implicit vs implicit to a large extent vs … vs implicit
                      to a limited extent                    vs      explicit.
     And we should do the same for “debased” and “passive”.


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GRAMSCI’S OBSERVATIONS ON FOLKLORE                                                 39


    This revision is by no means a trivial one. It involves a transition from
quality to quantity which is consonant with certain of Gramsci’s general
procedures. But could all the contrasting pairs we have before us be revised
in the same way?
    It would make sense for “simple”, “fragmentary”, “unorganic” and
“mechanical”, but a good deal less so for the contrast between “subaltern”
and “hegemonic”. It is true that, forcing the issue a little, we could conceive
of attenuations or exceptions in this case as well. Using words a little bit
loosely, one could say for example that the proletariat today is a little less
subaltern (or even, looking to the other side of a not precisely defined
dividing-line, a little more hegemonic). Gramsci himself is basically
presenting the dominant classes as a little less (or not entirely) hegemonic
when he talks about the expansive power of certain popular beliefs. But such
expressions have very little rigour about them and simply correspond to a
little stronger, a little weaker, and so on. We know perfectly well in fact that “a
little more power” is not “power”, and that the difference between them is
precisely “revolution”.
    It is in short extremely difficult to recast the qualitative contrast between
“subaltern” and “hegemonic” as a simple continuous gradation of
quantitative steps from “more subaltern” (or perhaps “less hegemonic”) to
“less subaltern” (or “more hegemonic”). But even if we did decide to do it,
and push Gramsci’s text in a “reformist” direction, so to speak, we would
come up against further and not inconsiderable difficulties.
    For even if Gramsci regarded all the qualitative contrasts he presents us
with as quantitative distinctions, the fact remains that by definition, as he
puts it, he systematically and nearly always absolutely assigns negative
qualities to folklore, and almost without exception he expresses himself in
terms of quality and discontinuity (words sometimes betray one’s thought, as
is well known, but also in the sense that they make clear what it really is).
    So we are faced with an alternative. By explicitly introducing a number of
quantitative modifications we would bring about a radical transformation in
the system of qualitative contrasts that seemed to be emerging from the
text. But there are strong arguments against such a transformation: the fact
that it is difficult to give a quantitative sense to the fundamental contrast
between subaltern and hegemonic; Gramsci’s attribution of negative qualities
to folklore and positive ones to official conceptions “by definition”, and his
use of an essentially qualitative terminology. All these factors indicate that
his modifications should be relegated to the conceptual sidelines, and lend
to his positive comments on folklore the banal character of exceptions which
confirm the rule.

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   5.2.2. Once again, then, an ambivalence is created, two possible ways of
reading the text.
   One way might be to lay emphasis on the value of the positive comments
and the quantitative modifications. But then we not only run into the
difficulties which have just been mentioned, but also have to face the fact
that folklore is the target of a whole series of negative qualifications which
extend far beyond the terms presented here, and this is not easy to get
round. Quite apart from the numerous remarks scattered through the rest of
Gramsci’s work, there is a rather revealing incongruence in the text of the
Observations itself. Having just given a rigorous definition of folklore,
Gramsci goes on to say that “it could be argued that all religions, even the
most cultured and sophisticated, are ‘folklore’ in relation to modern thought”,
even if there is the “vital difference” that “religions… are, as has been said,
‘elaborated and systematized’ by (religious) intellectuals and the Church
hierarchy” (SCW 189). With this statement, Gramsci goes against his own
definition of folklore as characteristic of the subaltern classes and standing
in opposition to official conceptions, and demonstrates that, in spite of the
rigorous terms he himself has established, the idea that “folklore” actually
means everything that modern thought (with its apex represented by
Marxism) must sweep away is firmly entrenched6.
   One can then resolve this ambivalence in the opposite direction, and the
text gives us considerable authority for so doing. But we then find ourselves
having to pose a much more important question to the text itself. The
reasons for his negative assessment of folklore are clear enough, and at the
same time it is understandable that Gramsci should take a serious interest in
the subject on more than one occasion (not only is he forced to exercise his
powerful intellectual curiosity on a large number of minutiae, but there is
also that element of tenacity that makes folklore important for the purposes
of knowing and transforming reality). But we still have to ask ourselves how
he manages conceptually to define so “indigestible” a “mass of debased
fragments” and debris as a conception of the world, when its essentially un-
organic character is enhanced rather than diminished by the presence of a
few conceptions that are progressive and effective.
6. Another slight divergence from the more rigorous concept comes where Gramsci says that
“common sense” is “philosophical folklore” (SCW 189). But elsewhere Gramsci distinguishes
between “popular” common sense, the common sense of “the more educated strata of
society” and that of “the intellectuals” (cf. SPN 331). I think that this distinction according
to socio-cultural strata or levels should be given more thought than it usually is in discussion
of Gramsci’s concept of common sense. In the first place, it confirms Gramsci’s alertness to
what I have referred to elsewhere as connotation (i.e. the solidarity between cultural
phenomena and social groups). Furthermore, it warns us to be careful not to relate to
common sense as a socially undifferentiated phenomenon what Gramsci relates, or might
relate, specifically to the common sense of the cultured strata or that of the popular strata
(which are in their turn internally socially differentiated): cf. his distinction between
“different” Catholicisms (SPN 420).


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GRAMSCI’S OBSERVATIONS ON FOLKLORE                                                            41


   6.0. Gramsci’s definition of folklore as a conception of the world draws
together into a single category phenomena that differ widely from each
other, ranging from this indigestible mass to Marxism which he regards as
the only truly “original and integral conception of the world”, the harbinger
of “an historical epoch”, a conception that is incomparably superior to any
non-Marxist official conception, however elevated, and one that will be
superseded only with “the disappearance of political society and the coming
of a regulated society” (SPN 381-382).
   The range covered is so wide that one cannot help asking whether to speak of
folklore as a conception of the world is anything more than a play on words. If
not, then the common element has to be found which allows Gramsci to bring
together under a single conceptual heading phenomena which he himself shows
to be radically divergent from one another because they either have or do not
have certain qualities regarded by him as being of decisive importance
(originality, critical consciousness, organicity, centralization, etc.).
   In short, what is it that makes them alike or brings them together in spite
of such deep (and repeatedly emphasized) intrinsic differences?
   There seem to me two different answers to this question.
   The first answer is explicitly stated by Gramsci, but is the less persuasive.
It is the solution he gives to the wider problem of the relations between
“spontaneous” philosophy and “scientific” philosophy, of which the relation
between un-organic conceptions of the world and critical conceptions are only
a specific example. From it derives the quality of “spontaneity” which Gramsci
explicitly attributes to folklore’s capacity to adhere to reality (SCW 190, 192).
   The second, and in my view, more valid answer is also to be found in
Gramsci, but not in anything he says explicitly. Rather, it is contained in the
very nature of the conceptual operation that he undertook specifically, but
not exclusively, in respect of folklore.
   6.1. The first solution alluded to above consists in the distinction which
he makes (and it is already implicit in the Observations) between “differences
of quality” and “differences of quantity”.
   Discussing the relations between “modern theory” (i.e. Marxism) and “the
‘spontaneous’ feelings of the masses”7, Gramsci asserts that
7. SPN 198-199: “At this point, a fundamental theoretical question is raised: can modern
theory be in opposition to the “spontaneous” feelings of the masses? (“spontaneous” in the
sense that they are not the result of any systematic educational activity on the part of an
already conscious leading group, but have been formed through everyday experience
illuminated by “common sense”, i.e. by the traditional popular conception of the world — what
is unimaginatively called “instinct” although it too is in fact a primitive and elementary
historical acquisition). It cannot be in opposition to them. Between the two there is a
“quantitative” difference of degree, not one of quality. A reciprocal “reduction” so to speak, a
passage from one to the other and vice versa, must be possible. (Recall that Immanuel Kant
believed it important for his philosophical theories to agree with common sense; the same
position can be found in Croce. Recall too Marx’s assertion in The Holy Family that the political
formulae of the French Revolution can be reduced to the principles of classical German
philosophy”.

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42                                                                   ALBERTO MARIO CIRESE


       there can be no “opposition” between them because “between the two
       there is a “quantitative” difference of degree, not one of quality. A
       reciprocal “reduction” so to speak, a passage from one to the other and vice
       versa, must be possible (SPN 199).

     If one recalls that just before Gramsci had written:
       It may be said that spontaneity is […] characteristic of the “history of the
       subaltern classes”, and indeed of their most marginal and peripheral
       elements, [which] have not achieved any conscious-ness of the class “for
       itself” (SPN 196);
   and bearing in mind the quality of spontaneity attributed to folklore’s
capacity to adhere to reality, and, finally, the identification of the “people”
with all the subaltern classes, it becomes clear that the quantitative
continuity which Gramsci establishes between “modern theory” and
“spontaneous feelings”, between the highest form of consciousness and the
most unconscious experiences, can immediately be transferred to the
relation between folklore at its most fragmented and official conceptions at
their most organic. They are both conceptions of the world because the
difference between them is one of “quantity”, not one of “quality” (SPN 347).
   But the assertion that there is a quantitative continuity between Marxism
and spontaneous feelings (in support of which Gramsci turns first to Kant
and Croce and only subsequently to Marx: SPN 199) is simply a more specific
and clearer application of a far more general principle: “the principle that all
men are ‘philosophers’”: this idea too is not exclusive to Gramsci, and
Gramsci himself regards it as in a certain sense a common sense truth (SPN
323, 330). What this means is that
       between the professional or “technical” philosophers and the rest of
       mankind, the difference is not one of “quality” but only of “quantity” (SPN
       347).

     Admittedly, Gramsci adds at once:
       The term “quantity” is being used here in a special sense, which is not to be
       confused with its meaning in arithmetic, since what it indicates is greater —
       or lesser degrees of “homogeneity”, “coherence”, “logicality”, etc; in other
       words, quantity of qualitative elements (SPN 347, Italics added).
     In Gramsci’s view, the difference is not limited to the fact that the
       philosopher […] “thinks” with greater logical rigour, with greater
       coherence, with more systematic sense than do other men,
     but consists primarily in the fact that



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GRAMSCI’S OBSERVATIONS ON FOLKLORE                                                        43


      the professional or technical philosopher […] knows the entire history of
      thought. In other words, he is capable of accounting for the development of
      thought up to his own day and he is in a position where he can take up a
      problem from the point which it has reached after having under-gone every
      previous attempt at a solution.
   For that reason,
      he has the same function in the field of thought that specialists have in
      their various scientific fields.
   Nevertheless, a “qualitative” continuity between “the specialist
philosopher” and “the rest of mankind” appears to be re-established by
virtue of the fact that the philosopher is a specialist in an activity that is
common to everyone, namely thought:
      it is not possible to conceive of any man who is not also a philosopher, who
      doesn’t think, because thought is proper to man as such, or at least to any
      man who is not a pathological cretin (SPN 347).
  These statements are clearly the realization of the programme that
Gramsci sets himself in the study of philosophy and culture.
      It is essential to destroy the widespread prejudice that philosophy is a
      strange and difficult thing just because it is the specific intellectual activity
      of a particular category of specialists or of professional and systematic
      philosophers. It must first be shown that all men are “philosophers”, by
      defining the limits and characteristics of the “spontaneous philosophy”
      which is proper to everybody (SPN 323).

  It is worth adding that Gramsci sees this “spontaneous philosophy” (or
what he also calls “common and popular”: SPN 328) as being contained, “not
only in language” and “in common sense and good sense”, but also
      in popular religion and, therefore, also in the entire system of beliefs,
      superstitions, opinions, ways of seeing things and of acting, which are
      collectively bundled together under the name of “folklore”.

   And finally that he goes on to say that
      everyone is a philosopher, though in his own way and unconsciously, since
      even in the slightest manifestation of any intellectual activity whatever, in
      “language”, there is contained a specific conception of the world (SPN 323).
   There is then more than enough to establish a direct link between
Gramsci’s concept of “spontaneous philosophy” and his definition of folklore
as a “conception of the world”. Folklore, as Gramsci conceives it, is in fact a
special form of “spontaneous” philosophy; thus, considerations about the
latter could, it would appear in principle, be transferred to the former. On
this basis, Gramsci’s remark elsewhere that “‘pure’ spontaneity does not
exist in history”: it would come to the same thing as “‘pure’ mechanicity”
(SPN 196) may also be applied to the folk conception of the world.

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44                                                               ALBERTO MARIO CIRESE


   This is further confirmation of the fact that elaborated and critical
conceptions on the one hand and on the other the indigestible mass which
folklore might be defined as can both be placed in the same category because
the difference between them for Gramsci is one not of quality, but only of
quantity of qualitative elements. The “positive” remarks on folklore, like the
modifications to its negative attributes, are the more or less explicit pointer
to this underlying conceptual intention.
   This would seem to be the end of the matter, were it not for the
difficulties we have already outlined in connection with the transformation
of the resolutely qualitative system of characterization attributed by Gramsci
to folklore and folkloric conceptions; and were it not further for the fact that
the specific differences which Gramsci insists on as soon as he has connected
things at a general level are always more radical and decisive than the
affinities.
   In addition to what has already been noted in connection with folklore,
the reader’s attention is drawn to the decisive distinction between
philosophy tout court — which alone is “an intellectual order” — and forms
of spontaneous philosophy such as “religion and common sense”, which
      cannot constitute an intellectual order, because they cannot be reduced to
      unity and coherence even within an individual consciousness, let alone
      collective consciousness (SPN 326).

   6.2. The fact is that in order to maintain a link between the opposite terms
of his repeated swings back and forth from identities to differences and from
quantitative continuity to qualitative discontinuity, as Gramsci wished, he
must be able to call on a precise, and more than purely verbal, criterion of
distinction between qualitative differences (which would break the continuity
he claims) and differences of quantity of qualitative elements (which on the
contrary would not undermine the connection he seeks between the
“specialist” philosopher and the “common” philosopher, “conscious
leadership” and “spontaneity”, intellectuals and “simple people”, or, to use
more current and realistic terms, between leaders and masses, central
committees and the rank-and-file, and so on).
   But in the absence of such a criterion — and it seems to me that it is
absent, at any rate in the uses which more or less frequently we have actually
made of Gramsci’s thought — in its absence, the link is broken; the subtle
and indefinite dividing-line between quality a n d quantity of qualitative
elements is erased; the constantly emphasized specific differences prove far
more decisive than the attribution to a single common genus; to
acknowledge the presence of a conception of the world even in the slightest


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GRAMSCI’S OBSERVATIONS ON FOLKLORE                                                         45


intellectual activity becomes a game of words without further consequence;
to assert that “all men think” becomes a trivial banality in face of the fact
that some men think well and many think badly, and does not so much as
scratch the surface of the prejudice which Gramsci wanted to destroy.
   All of this would matter very little if all that was involved were a few
marginal questions concerning the debris of folklore. But far larger problems
are involved, problems as important, precisely, as that of “conscious
leadership”. Above all it would not matter were it not that — in the process
of its becoming “the common sense of a [particular] environment”, as is the
fate of “every philosophy” (SPN 330f) — the uneasy balance between
quantitative continuities and qualitative separations was not in fact broken
in favour of the second term. As a result, certain hierarchies of subject-
matter and sectional interests traditional to our culture remain essentially
intact. This is also meant, let me be quite clear, as a note of self-criticism.
   6.3. Nevertheless, the extremely wide range that Gramsci allows to his idea
of conception of the world, the way in which he extends it to include even the
most bizarre, disparate and chance combinations of heterogeneous and
indigestible elements, has an undoubtedly aggressive power in the face of
traditional conceptions, their identification of culture with their own culture
and their reduction of history to the history of the upper reaches of society.
   This aggressiveness — which is active even in spite of other indications of
Gramsci to the contrary — does certainly not originate from the generic
principle that all men think so everyone is a bit of a philosopher. It would in
any case be hard to find in this one principle any criterion whereby one
might assign some form of unity to even the most indigestible masses of
material — something that must be done if we are to distinguish one
conception from another, let alone talk about a conception of the world.
   The fact of the matter is that this aggressive drive springs from Gramsci’s
entire political and theoretical commitment.
   It is this commitment which brings about, for example, certain sudden
and even disquieting ruptures in the carefully weighted balance — whether
of a didactic or a dialectical kind between form and content, intellectuals
and common people, and so on. As an example, take the passage where
Gramsci asks (but only in very indirect relation to folklore):
      Is it possible that a “formally” new conception can present itself in a guise
      other than the crude, unsophisticated version of the populace? (SPN 342)8


8. The passage goes on: “And yet the historian, with the benefit of all necessary perspective,
manages to establish and to understand the fact that the beginnings of a new world, rough
and jagged though they always are, are better than the passing away of the world in its
death-throes and the swan-song that it produces” (SPN 342-343).

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46                                                                          ALBERTO MARIO CIRESE


   But another, and very important, part of Gramsci’s political and theoretical
commitment is his tendency to set up a constant relationship between
cultural phenomena and the social groups by which they are conveyed. At
the same time as always being concerned with formal coherence and
organicity, Gramsci pays continual attention to the links between
indigestible masses of material as well as organic philosophies and one or
other of the “many social groups in which everyone is automatically
involved from the moment of his entry into the conscious world” (SPN 323).
Precisely because he is aiming for a “more cautious and precise assessment
of the forces acting in society”, Gramsci does not draw up his observations
on the basis of very general class-distinctions, but provides a working scale-
model, articulated into categories, groups and sub-groups. He makes a
distinction between “the common sense of the more educated strata of
society”, that “of the people” and that of the “intellectuals” (SPN 330f)9; he
emphasizes the fact that
       there is one Catholicism for the peasants, one for the petits bourgeois and
       town workers, one for women and one for intellectuals which is itself
       variegated and disconnected (SPN 420);
     and still more directly he makes the point that
       in acquiring one’s conception of the world one always belongs to a
       particular grouping which is that of all the social elements which share the
       same mode of thinking and acting (SPN 324).
   This “grouping” can sometimes consist simply of dispersed and isolated
individuals, whose only link with each other is that of shared conceptions.
However, it can also be a concrete social or socio-cultural group: it “can be
one’s village or province”. Furthermore, though the conception of the world
which holds sway there and is “mechanically” imposed on its members may
be pieced together from other sources, it is born or can be born — whatever
its more distant origins — from a cultural activity which is socially internal
to the group and qualitatively homogeneous with it:

9. Elsewhere Gramsci writes: “Common sense is not a single unique conception, identical in
time and space. It is the “folklore” of philosophy, and, like folklore, it takes countless different
forms. Its most fundamental characteristic is that it is a conception which, even in the brain of
one individual, is fragmentary, incoherent and inconsequential, in conformity with the social
and cultural position of those masses whose philosophy it is. At those times in history when a
homogeneous social group is brought into being, there comes into being also, in opposition to
common sense, a homogeneous — in other words coherent and systematic — philosophy”
(SPN 419).
On another occasion, Gramsci affirms even more explicitly: “Every social stratum has its
‘common sense’ and its ‘good sense’, which amount in effect to the most wide-spread
conception of life and mankind” (QC 2271).


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GRAMSCI’S OBSERVATIONS ON FOLKLORE                                                   47


      it can have its origins in the parish and the “intellectual activity” of the
      local priest or aging patriarch whose wisdom is law, or in the little old
      woman who has inherited the lore of the witches or the minor intellectual
      soured by his own stupidity and inability to act (SPN 323).
   Thus the use Gramsci makes of the idea of conception of the world, at least
when dealing with “spontaneous” conceptions, is constantly supported by a
dense network of references to concrete social situations, however humble,
whose “way of seeing and acting” is constituted by the cultural formation
with which Gramsci is engaged at the time. Thus, any judgement on the
formal qualities or content of such material is accompanied by the
acknowledgement that, whatever its origins or level, that particular
“combination” of cultural elements is the intellectual heritage of a particular
social group. The group lives it and makes use of it from the inside, without
realizing its contradictoriness, or at any rate not realizing it in the same way
as somebody looking in from the outside. Thus, any combination of cultural
elements which is embodied by an identifiable social group comes to
constitute a kind of “de facto unity”. It can be looked at from the point of
view of the group which recognizes itself in it and so can legitimately be
called a “conception of the world” because, even if it is not so for us, it is for
others. Not for nothing do phrases such as “in its own way” recur in Gramsci.
   Gramsci’s continual linking of cultural phenomena and social groups —
and nowhere more clearly than in the pages on folklore — seems then to
provide the real explanation for the way in which he is able to bring radically
different phenomena under a single conceptual heading, without the
concept itself dissolving. To regard folklore too as a conception of the world
is not a mere play on words precisely to the extent that, if only for a
moment, judgement is suspended on its content and formal qualities, and it
is acknowledged as having a unitary existence for the “people”.
   It is no less true of course that the moment of judgement is essential and
decisive in Gramsci, than it is that the distinction between the two moments
seems to be resolved in favour of the judgement, or rather the condemnation.
For while the ways in which he uses the idea of conception of the world
appear closer (with all due reservations) to the ethno-anthropological
concept of “culture” than to the traditionally selective conception of culture
as an elite-phenomenon, it cannot be forgotten that in a section entitled
Hegemony of western culture over the whole world culture (SPN 416-418),
Gramsci has left us one of the most inward-looking formulations both of the
ethnocentric view of world cultural history and of the limitation of the
European “cultural process” to the elites, to the definite exclusion of
“popular cultures”.

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48                                                          ALBERTO MARIO CIRESE


   But to refer to this passage must not in its turn lead us to forget all the
rest, that is to say, what was actually achieved. Above all, it should not lead
us to ignore the tensions, some of them serious, which build up in the course
of the work. It is precisely the need prompted by these tensions to identify
what Gramsci says and how, that enables him to be actively, and not just
historically, present in the field of socio-cultural research today.




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