Gramsci’s ‘totalitarian’ means all-embracing, not pejorative
Evidence
It is important to realise that Gramsci does not use this word in the pejorative sense which it has acquired in bourgeois ideology today it is a quite neutral term for him, meaning approximately “all-embracing and unifying”. We have sometimes translated it by “global”. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2125
Categorization
- DEFINE: Clarifies a key Gramscian term whose modern pejorative sense would mislead a reader building a critical-theory vocabulary.
- XREF: Connects to the hegemonic ‘total’ integration of society Gramsci discusses elsewhere, and to later debates about ideology as a whole social cement. — connects to: Gramsci’s ‘totalitarian intelligentsia’ means a unified, all-absorbing intellectual stratum, not a despotism; Gramsci borrowed non-Marxist concepts while redefining them within Marxist discourse
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2125