To Live Is to Resist

“If, as Primo Levi so presciently warned us in 1974, ‘every age has its own fascism,’ it follows that every age needs its own Gramsci. And Jean-Yves Frétigné has given us a Gramsci for our perilous times. This lucidly translated biography traces an intellectual, political, and personal drama that passes through Sardinia, Turin, the Stoics, Spinoza, Machiavelli, Vico, Leopardi, and Marx. We come to understand the origins and explicatory power of Gramscian terms such as ‘subalternity,’ ‘hegemony,’ ‘organic intellectuals,’ and ‘pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.’ The epilogue poignantly renders the pathos of Gramsci’s last years. Most importantly, the reader will be inspired by a life and mind that insisted on a participatory and permanent resistance against the seemingly natural order of things.” * Stanislao Pugliese, Hofstra University *
“Gramsci’s political, personal, and prison lives are the source of renewed debate in the neoliberal postcommunist era, with archival finds, speculative conjectures, and ideological polemics. This fine translation of To Live Is to Resist offers a concise narrative of Gramsci’s life as well as an informed and balanced account of the biographical controversies.” * Michael Denning, Yale University *
“To Live Is to Resist carries the promise of something different, more akin to an intellectual biography that emphasizes ideas over events. . . . Gramsci urged us to look at bad detective novels and Jules Verne to understand our political reality, and To Live Is to Resist’s best moments are when it takes seriously the unserious.” -- Jennifer Wilson * Bookforum *
"In To Live Is To Resist, Jean-Yves Frétigné sketches the life of Gramsci. . . .   As Nadia Urbinati notes in her stimulating foreword to Frétigné’s book, Gramsci’s was ‘a life of prisons,’ beginning with his own infirm body, continuing with his early life of poverty and often marginal political standing, and ending in actual incarceration." -- Richard Bellamy * TImes Literary Supplement *
"Frétigné’s volume—a lucid, sober, and well-substantiated documentation and interpretation of Gramsci’s life and work—unquestionably stands apart. . . . It is exemplary for tracing the development of ideas against the backdrop of a life, preferring to plumb the depths of the uncertain and enigmatic rather than taking the easy way out. . . . After studying To Live Is to Resist, I am inclined to see Gramsci differently: as an inconvenient Marxist who truly doesn’t fit any of our received frameworks." -- Alan Wald * Boston Review *
"[Frétigné brings a] wealth of new material and welcome precision to his biography. . . . If Gramsci has aged better than many of his peers, it is in part because he became a thinker for a defeated, rather than a triumphalist, left. The ground of this inquiry may have shifted in the decades since his death, but the main battle lines remain the same, and this still makes Gram­sci a thinker worth turning to in our moment."
  -- Thomas Meaney * The New Republic *
"Particularly timely. . . Frétigné provides a rich account of Gramsci's political engagements with the Socialist Party of Italy (PSI), the creation of the Communist Party of Italy (PCd'I), his years as representative to the Comintern, and his illegal imprisonment by the Fascists. It also raises questions about the intertwining of biographical intrigue and theoretical import." * The Review of Politics *