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- Mignolo, WD. "Mariàtegui and Gramsci in “Latin” America: Between Revolution and Decoloniality1." The Postcolonial Gramsci. January, 2012, 191-217. [doi]
Abstract:
For this volume I was asked for a contribution on Antonio Gramsci in Latin America. To focus on Gramsci without examining the intellectual and political environment in which he was translated, read, used and discussed would be a sort of anti-Gramscian endeavor. As I understand it, Gramsci would have not written about Lenin in Italy without examining the situation in Italy that may have or have not made Lenin relevant. In that regard, and for reasons that will be clarified in the following pages, it is necessary to start by examining in parallel and in contrast both Peruvian José Carlos Mariàtegui (1894-1930) and Sardinian Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937). The two great thinkers have been placed in relation several times. The general tendency is to underline the influences of Gramsci on Mariàtegui. There are a few who have doubts about it, although they do not radically contest the idea. The assumption here is that Gramsci could have influenced Mariàtegui; never that Mariàtegui could have influenced Gramsci. And the underlying presupposition under the assumptions is that “influence” goes from the center to the periphery of the modern/colonial world, never the other way around. I will come back to this issue. In the meantime, I invite you to think about it: they were almost the same age, three years difference. When Mariàtegui was in Italy, he was about twenty-four and Gramsci was twenty-seven.
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