National cultural formations cannot be read back from a single decisive event
Evidence
What this original Gramscian idea could mean, for example, is that the Italian cultural formation cannot be read back from fascism or the Risorgimento or even the failure of the Reformation – hence the unfinished character of the Italian Renaissance; that it would have to be traced all the way back, historically, to the very moment of the ascendancy of the High Church and of High Latin as the language of that Church, as well as from the histories of subordinations following thereafter; in other words, histories, and therefore subjectivities, are constituted not by what Gramsci calls ‘moments’ but by the always-accumulating processes of sedimentation and accretion. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 307
Categorization
- XREF: The Italian example resonates with the reader’s interest in how national histories get narrated, and with the ‘Grafting & Growth’ piece’s theme of layered accumulation. — connects to: Coexisting cultures cannot be ranked by any single historical clock. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 822