Gramsci asks whether phenomena are objective or cut out by practical and scientific interests.

Evidence

If reality is as we know it and if our knowledge changes continually—if, that is, no philosophy is definitive but all are historically determined—it is hard to imagine that reality changes objectively with changes in ourselves. Not only common sense but scientific thought as well make this difficult to accept. In the Holy Family 450 it is said that the whole reality is in phenomena and that beyond phenomena there is nothing, and this is certainly correct. But it is not easy to demonstrate. What are phenomena? Are they something objective, existing in and for themselves, or are they qualities which man has isolated in consequence of his practical interests (the construction of his economic life) and his scientific interests (the necessity to discover an order in the world and to describe and classify things, a necessity which is itself connected to mediated and future practical interests). — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1308

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sets up Gramsci’s core question of whether known ‘phenomena’ are products of human practical and scientific interests rather than objective things.
• XREF: Directly anticipates the construction-of-the-Other epistemology that later Islamophobia theory (Said’s Orientalism) builds from.