In his speeches he often refers to "the centrality of culture and education that put us in a position to choose". Gramscian echoes: "Educate yourselves because we will need all your intelligence", said Antonio Gramsci. Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation in Joe Biden's administration, not by chance frequently recalls the themes of culture and education, central to Gramsci's thought: his father Joseph was one of the most profound connoisseurs of the ideas and values expressed by the author of the "Prison Notebooks", of which he translated the first version into English. Antonio Gramsci's thought continues to bear fruit, a virtuous circle of ideas and values. Confirmation comes from the book "Questioni gramsciane. Dall'interpretazione alla trasformazione del mondo" by Gianni Fresu (Meltemi editore), with a preface by Peter D. Thomas, one of the major scholars of the Sardinian thinker. "Antonio Gramsci - explains Fresu - is the most studied and translated contemporary Italian author, and broadening the view to the entire cultural history of our nation, he shares this podium together with Dante Alighieri and Niccolò Machiavelli. One of the reasons for the scientific interest in him concerns the attention given by his studies to the moment of cultural direction in the definition of the power structures of a modern society. A theme of absolute topicality".

The bond with Sardinia

One of the most characteristic traits that the work appropriately highlights is the very strong bond with Sardinia («All Gramsci's work is a thread that unravels from his native land, from Sardinian life, from the Sardinian spirit», says Enrico Berlinguer on the fortieth anniversary of the death of an intellectual who left a profound mark on the culture and politics of the twentieth century). «Although evoked several times, - clarifies Gianni Fresu - the importance of this bond between Gramsci and his land, even today, appears not to be fully taken into consideration. In a not insignificant part of Italian culture, there persists, strong and deep-rooted, the tendency to never take too seriously the events of Sardinian social history, generally considered “local history” or “minor history”, of limited or secondary interest compared to “History with a capital H”. An underestimation that also involves many readings of Gramsci's work, whose genius is often traced almost exclusively to the "deprovincialization" of the future theoretician of hegemony on the continent". Gianni Fresu, now professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Cagliari, taught at the Universidade Federal de Uberlândia (MG/Brasil) from 2016 to 2023. He contributed to spreading the Gramscian "word" in Latin America as a founding member of the International Gramsci Society Brasil, of which he was president from September 2019 to September 2022.

Thought and Roots

"My state of mind synthesizes these two feelings and surpasses them: I am pessimistic with intelligence, but optimistic with will", writes Antonio Gramsci. The essence of his thought. His ideas develop from Sardinian roots. "The doors of the "great and terrible world" - notes Gianni Fresu - were not crossed by him for the first time by crossing the Tyrrhenian Sea, Gramsci's eyes were already turned towards that complexity and not despite his insular origins, but precisely because of the peripheral condition of which he was the son and from which he wanted to emancipate himself not individually but together with the social strata of the disinherited and oppressed of his land of which he always felt a part". The book will be translated into Portuguese and published in Brazil by "Boitempo" of San Paolo (one of the most important publishing houses in Latin America).

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