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Abstract

The term folclore appears infrequently in Gramsci’s pre-prison writings, but is an important feature of the Prison Notebooks, the word appearing first as “folklore” and later in its Italianized form “folclore”, in all appearing there around a hundred times. It is often linked to a “conception of the world” belonging to “given strata of society […] not touched by the modern currents of thought”. A linkage exists between folklore, common sense and philosophy with each successive philosophy leaving a sediment of “common sense” which is then the “folklore” of philosophy, standing midway between real folklore, as it is understood, and philosophy. Several points of contact can be singled out between Gramsci’s treatment of folklore and that of a contemporary of his, Giovanni Crocioni (cf. Q 1 § 89 and its “C” text Q 27 § 1), a review of whose volume Problemi fondamentali del Folklore seems to have been one of the stimuli for Gramsci’s reflections. Both recognize the dynamic aspect of folklore – its adaption to circumstances, and also the need to study it at school level in order to go beyond it (cf. Q 12 § 2). As conception of the world and life folklore is not merely a curiosity, and something merely “quaint” but, as Gramsci observes, is “very serious and to be taken seriously” (Q 27 § 1) and moreover produces innovative effects in the strata of the population able to express their own organic intellectuals; hence, by production of a new “common sense”, culture and conception of the world, they can transform their social context. Editorial Note: see also the dictionary entry “Common Sense” in International Gramsci Journal, 4(2), 2021, 125-129.

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