Accusations of foreign rationalism may mask genuine national adherence

Evidence

1. the Italian currents which are “branded” for their French rationalism and abstract illuminism are perhaps those which in fact most closely adhere to Italian reality, in so far as in reality they conceive of the State as the concrete form of an Italian economic development in progress; a similar content requires a similar political form; 2. the real “Jacobins” (in the pejorative sense which the term has taken on for certain historiographical currents) are the currents which appear most indigenous in that they seem to develop an Italian tradition. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 581

Categorization

• SEED: A generalizable inversion: ‘cosmopolitan’ thinkers may be most national, ‘indigenous’ ones most unmoored — testable in any field.