Gramsci e i detective. Un’analisi del poliziesco nei Quaderni del carcere

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate Antonio Gramsci’s analysis of detective fiction as developed in his Prison Notebooks. Specifically, it seeks to demonstrate how Gramsci’s reflections construct a conceptual framework that links the strategic analysis of fascism—as a totalitarian phenomenon that transforms public sentiment toward criminals and the apparatuses of justice—with the literary dimension of politics. To this end, the study will examine selected paragraphs from the Notebooks using a philological method inspired by the most recent contributions of the National Edition of Gramsci’s Writings, currently in progress. The development of these notes will be analyzed, along with the phenomenology of the detectives studied by Gramsci—Javert, Father Brown, and Sherlock Holmes. This investigation should help shed light on a still underexplored aspect of Gramsci’s prison work: the tight connection between the semantic and conceptual broadening of the notion of “police” and the detective story as a modern form of the popular novel.