Gramsci’s concept of totality is a neutral unifying term, not a pejorative one
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 that Gramsci’s ‘totalitarian’/‘totality’ term is neutral and unifying, easy to misread given bourgeois usage.
- XREF: The totalizing/unifying impulse of the concept connects to how later Islamophobia theory treats hegemonic worldviews as all-embracing.