So there's this philology assignment about Gramsci and his contribution in 'hegemony'. But my lecturer is being a ultimate try hard and providing us no reading materials, and Wikipedia isn't exactly helping. Anyone has advices on book/websites to read to understand it Better?
Yeah there's a really good recent anthology on Gramsci edited by Marcus Green, _Rethinking Gramsci,_ with the article in there that you're looking for: Derek Boothman, "The Sources for Gramsci’s Concept of Hegemony." Nice and comprehensive, short too. He breaks it up into several categories, with I think primarily the Marxist-Leninist background of the term and then Gramsci's linguistics and philological training.
On the latter note, you're going to want to read his essay on The Southern Question, which is available online. He wrote it in 1926, just before his arrest, I believe. Any good Gramsci intro book will explain its relevance, but it demonstrates the debt he owes to linguistic analysis in formulating his idea of society as a milieu capable of containing various groups (whether hegemonic, subaltern, allied, subordinated, or merely inertially adrift).
Gramsci is also very difficult, for several reasons. First, he requires insane depths of interpretation because he wrote so inconsistently in his notebooks. Several ideas permit multiple interpretations, and several key concepts or phrases have mutually exclusive or even contrary meanings in various places. Second, neo-Gramscianism is very popular, and politically charged (obviously), so existing interpretations tend to be vociferously defensive and invested. For this reason, you will want an accessible but also relatively nonpartisan interpretative summary of Gramsci's main ideas, before delving into the notebooks themselves, and before diving into any random book written by someone who may be appropriating Gramsci in a more one-sided way. The best thing I've found is a very recent (2016) book: _An Introduction to Antonio Gramsci: His Life, Thought, and Legacy_. It's short and easy, but it can be a bit dense - even in interpretation, his ideas require some puzzling out.
On this note, you might also want to read Perry Anderson's famous (and long) article on the "Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci." It is mostly historically important, as recent Gramsci scholarship has moved beyond its relatively shallow reading of Gramsci. But it's still a landmark in Gramsci scholarship.
tldr: Combine the focused-in genealogy of Gramsci's use of the term from Boothman with a more general holistic approach to understanding its significance in Gramsci's overall theory. Either one will provide ample citations for you to follow up if you like.
>tfw my prof wrote neo-gramscian articles on obscure media instead of arming the working class
