INTRODUCTION ²

Among the numerous formulations developed by Antonio Gramsci during his reflections and studies in prison, an ambitious research project that he intended to develop on the history of intellectuals stands out. Although he could not complete his project as he might have wished, precisely because of the limitations of prison and his health, which led to his untimely death, he contributed like no one else in this direction, so it seems impossible to talk about intellectuals without mentioning Gramsci.

To understand the importance of this formulation, it is relevant to recall the elements that make up his historicist conception the elements that make up his historicist conception and philosophical and political vision of the world. For Gramsci, knowledge is the fruit of human production established in the relationship with other subjects and the environment and is, therefore, in constant movement but acquiring greater or lesser diffusion depending on how the power relations are shown. Ideologies comprise the ideas and conceptions that are inherently connected to practical actions and historically construct reality. They are the meanings that make us read and be in the world. In this sense, knowledge and truth are also ideologies; they are human historical productions that can be refuted and modified. However, in a society of subjects in asymmetric positions, the circulation of ideologies does not happen linearly and harmoniously but is the result of the social division of the world. On the contrary, it results from the social division established by the relations that underpin society’s structural and superstructural organization and make a certain conception of the world become common sense and underpin the hegemony of a particular group.

Therefore, the importance attributed by Gramsci to the ideological framework is due to the delimitation of the role of the superstructures in the political struggle, inescapable to the relations of force, which determines the need for hegemonic apparatuses within the ideological dispute. Thus, in this process, the role of intellectuals takes on special relevance. As Gramsci stated that “a mass cannot be distinguished without organizing, and there is no organization without intellectuals” (2007, Q11, §12, p. 2362).

Gramsci understood that all subjects were intellectuals, but not everyone assumed this societal role. The author rejects the simplistic conception of an intellectual and expands the concept, not limiting himself to the current notion of the “great intellectual,” an outstanding holder of superior knowledge and above the majority. It is not possible to deprive any human activity of an intellectual dimension. However, as he observes in Notebook 12:

it would be possible to say that all men are intellectuals, but not all men have the have in society the function of intellectuals (thus, the fact that someone can, at a given moment, fry two eggs or sew a tear in a jacket does not mean that all are cooks or tailors). Thus, historically, the specialized categories for exercising the intellectual function are formed, are formed in connection with all groups, but above all in connection with the most important social groups, and undergo broader and more complex elaborations in correlation with the dominant social group (^{GRAMSCI, 2007}, §1, p. 1516-1517).

However, the extension of the intellectual character to all human beings did not imply that there were no distinctions in degrees and practical exercise of this intellectuality. Gramsci differentiates categories of intellectuals according to how they were constituted, their function, and the character of their intellectual activity: traditional, organic, cosmopolitan, and national-popular. All are translatable to our time.

Still, in this effort to understand the conceptual enlargement of the intellectual, Gramsci is concerned with the intellectual that he calls vulgar, superficial, and opportunistic. In this sense, he will elaborate on the concepts of Brescianism and Lorianism, formulations that have been little studied but have great importance in the organization of the social fabric. Moreover, in this historical moment in which we live, to better understand how, despite the inconsistency of thought and reflexive and critical concatenation with concrete reality, certain subjects came to power, it seems more than opportune to delve into this category of intellectuals. This manuscript will discuss the Gramscian conceptualization of intellectual and its different strains to embrace the breadth of this formulation and the place intellectuals take in political and social struggle inherent in the organization of human life.

The breadth of Gramscian conceptualization of intellectuals, centered fundamentally on the function of organizing influence on the social fabric, allows us to translate these categories to our time.

It is also important to recall the meaning and extent of the conceptualization of intellectuals in Antonio Gramsci’s thought to establish another explanatory category that would help us shed more light on what made the rise of Bolsonarism to power possible. This is a fundamental premise in the debate about how to think and build effective ways to overcome it.

INFLUENCES IN THE DELINEATION OF GRAMSCIAN INTELLECTUAL MEANING AND THE NEXUS WITH HEGEMONY

Gramsci understands the importance of intellectuals as protagonists, as links of mediation between social groups, as key elements of the interchange between classes, of ideological, political, and practical intervention in the masses in forming a shared political will. Gramsci understood the importance of intellectuals as protagonists, as mediating links between social groups, key elements in the exchange between classes, of ideological, political, and practical intervention in the masses in forming a shared political will. They organize the organic link between the ideological and economic spheres that make up and organize the social fabric. For this reason, the theory of hegemony is closely related to Gramsci’s theory of intellectuals. Not by chance, the author cites the term “intellectual” 1724 times throughout the 29 Prison Notebooks.

The ambitious project of studying the history of intellectuals announced by Gramsci already in the letter of March 19, 1927, sent to his sister-in-law Tatiana before he was even allowed to write in prison, became a pulsating vein of the Prison Notebooks. We can attribute a range of formulations, such as the development of the concept of the Integral State and the notebook on Americanism and Fordism, to the maturing of Gramscian reflections driven by this proposition. Expression of the extensive relevance that the organizational capacity of intellectuals imprints on society, and Gramsci skillfully grasped this during his analytical efforts while imprisoned in a fascist prison.

The entire historical context lived and clamorous at that moment, after Lenin’s death, and the growing conflicts that harmed the alliance between workers and peasants and triggered the rupture in the Russian ruling group corroborated Gramsci’s suspicions to grow concerning how the political game was being conducted in the USSR, jeopardizing the establishment of socialism (^{GRAMSCI, 1964}; ^{VACCA, 2008}). The concrete historical situations of Western capitalist societies with their complex civil society demanded another struggle and political conduct.

However, it is impossible to say that Gramsci completely rejected the Jacobin idea and preached that hegemony comprised only the democratic political struggle. He only distinguished the strategies of power struggles in different social and historical times/circumstances while developing an enriched reading of Jacobinism, expanding the vision of strategic possibility with the same goal (^{FROSINI, 2014}).

The organizational function in a given social group delineates the subject’s role as an intellectual in that milieu. In line with the proposition of the 11th thesis on Feuerbach, “philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; it is a matter of transforming it” (^{MARX; ENGELS, 2002}, p. 103). Gramsci stated that intellectuals are more than interpreted; they are active agents of civil society, privileged terrain of circulation of ideologies and practices and, therefore, of relations that culminate in the hegemony of a particular conception, direction, and organization of society. In Gramscian understanding, the function of the intellectual is as complex as it is essential for social life.

In the excerpt from Notebook 12, Gramsci addressed the topic of intellectuals by indicating that the place occupied by them in modern society was defined by the historical development of the State and its enlargement:

The relation between intellectuals and the world of production is not immediate, as in the case of the fundamental social groups, but is mediated to varying degrees by the whole social fabric, by the whole of the superstructures, of which intellectuals are precisely the “employees.” (^{GRAMSCI, 2007}, Q12 §1, p. 1518-1519).

Intellectuals are key subjects in maintaining or fighting ideologies. In the excerpt taken from Notebook 4, Gramsci reinforced his interpretation of the position of intellectuals in civil society due to the relevance they have in achieving consensus and building hegemony:

Intellectuals have a function in the “hegemony” that the dominant group exercises throughout society and in the “domination” over it that is embodied in the State, and this function is precisely “organizing” or connective: intellectuals have the function of organizing the social hegemony of a group and its state domination, that is, the consensus given by the prestige of the function in the productive world and the apparatus of coercion for those groups that do not “consent” either actively or passively or for those moments of crisis of command and direction in which spontaneous consent undergoes a crisis. This analysis results in a very large extension of the concept of intellectuals, but only in this way does it seem possible to arrive at a concrete approximation of reality (^{GRAMSCI, 2007}, Q4, §49, p. 476).

The author stresses the broadening that the conceptualization of intellectuals acquires in the study and from the analysis he undertakes. He also does so in correspondence to Tatiana, written in Turi on September 7, 1931:

My study on intellectuals is very broad as a scheme, and I don’t think there are any books in Italy on this subject. There is, to be sure, much scholarly material, but scattered in an infinite number of journals and local historical archives. On the other hand, I greatly expand the notion of intellectual, not limiting myself to the current notion that refers to the great intellectuals. This study also leads to certain determinations of the concept of the State, which is commonly understood as a political Society (or dictatorship, or coercive apparatus to mold the popular mass to the type of production and economy of a given moment) and not as a balance of political society and civil society (or hegemony of a social group over the entire national society, exercised through so-called private organizations, such as the church, unions, schools etc.). It is precisely in civil society in particular that intellectuals operate (Benedetto Croce, for example, is a kind of lay pope and a very efficient instrument of hegemony, even if, from time to time, he is in disagreement with this or that government etc.) (^{GRAMSCI, 2013}, p. 456-457).

The correlation between the deepening of the concept of the intellectual and the concept of the State can be observed. The perceptions of how power is conceived and how hegemony is achieved allow a better reflection on the configuration of the State and the influence of intellectuals in spreading or combating the conceptions of the world.

As Gramsci reiterates:

Critical self-awareness means, historically and politically, the creation of an elite of intellectuals: a human mass is not “distinguished” and does not become independent “for itself” without organizing (in a broad sense), and there is no organization without intellectuals, that is, without organizers and leaders, without the theoretical aspect of theory-practice nexus being concretely distinguished in a stratum of persons “specialized” in conceptual and philosophical elaboration (2007, Q11, §12, p. 1386).

Every social group is based on its intellectual corpus, which is ideological and practical, an indispensable condition for hegemonic support. Concerning the construction of the hegemony of the subordinate classes, a process in which the intellectual elevation of the masses is a prerequisite for the creation of a new consciousness, of a new society, the formation and performance of intellectuals for an effective intellectual and moral reform are of vital strategic relevance.

Awareness of the contradictions experienced in society is the first condition for social mobilization. This again reinforces the importance of the formative issue and the intellectual’s role in confronting deep-rooted conceptions of the world. As questioners and mediators, the intellectuals in formative and organized action potentiate the necessary antagonism for an operative collective will.

Intellectuality is an intrinsically human capacity; what differs, therefore, is that not all human beings exercise this function of intellectuals in society. Not all assume this position, and not all have had an education that would enable them to act in an influential and organized way. However, this does not prevent them from obtaining it in the future, which, again, highlights the educational and pedagogical role of every relation of hegemony.

This is why Gramsci advocated a mass intellectual progress; he thought the construction of new subjectivities and a new historical personality was fundamental. Hence, he gives education such an important place. He is concerned with the education of the masses, not with a formation for private life; he advocates a formation for collectivity, for public spirit, so that people can build collectively more organized and structured forms of struggle for human emancipation. Not surprisingly, Gramsci’s maxim was the defense of a unitary school of general humanistic culture, full of historicity and concrete notions, which addressed notions of rights and duties from the most elementary education and explored the balance of the ability to work manually and intellectually, aiming at the integral formation of the subjects, making them capable of “thinking, studying, directing, or controlling who oversee [these schools]” (^{GRAMSCI, 2007}, Q12, §2, p. 1457).

DIFFERENT CATEGORIES OF INTELLECTUALS

GRAMSCIAN CONCEPTION OF INTELLECTUAL AS A PRISM TO THINK ABOUT BOLSONARISM

The presentation of the Gramscian concept of intellectual developed so far, with its broad spectrum and modes of action (which can be translated to our time, especially the wide dissemination of the internet and social networks), but with a fundamental influential and organizational impact, shows itself as a relevant resource in understanding the current order of the Brazilian social political fabric, which enabled the rise of Jair Bolsonaro to power and, despite all the crisis experienced, still sustains a significant percentage of supporters. The importance of creating new analytical models to understand this political scenario is highlighted by Avelar:

Bolsonaro’s rise represents, above all, the complete breakdown of the model by which a discipline, political science, tried to understand Brazilian reality from a concept of coalition presidentialism. It is consistent with its history that Brazilian political science predicted and expected that the political field would recompose itself in 2018 and the second round would be contested again by two coalitions led by PT and PSDB, or at least by two coalitions situated between the center-left and the center-right. The Brazilian election of 2018 is the story of the spectacular failure of this expectation. Having directed its attention for two decades to the parliamentary-executive game of negotiations and bloc formations, crystallized in the concept of coalition presidentialism, political science found itself ill-equipped to understand the Bolsonarist earthquake.(^{AVELAR, 2021}, p. 231).

Bolsonaro’s rise to power results from the convergence between forces constituting the right and extreme right in Brazil, as highlighted by Araújo and Carvalho:

Strictly speaking, Bolsonarism is beyond the figure of Jair Bolsonaro. However, this grotesque and bizarre figure has sociopolitical meanings, bringing up historical marks of the Brazilian social formation and our own political culture, materialized in conservatism, machismo, racism, misogyny, and discrimination of multiple natures. Bolsonaro seems to embody the colonialist perspective of submission, elitism, and violence, traversing the country’s history and reintroducing itself into the political-cultural reactionary agenda of present-day Brazil. (^{ARAÚJO; CARVALHO, 2021}, p. 151).

In this sense, even taking into account authoritarian periods present in the history of Brazil, such as the Estado Novo of Getúlio Vargas (1937-1945) and the Military Dictatorship (1984-1985), the authoritarianism present in Bolsonarism presents new configurations that must be considered and which are highlighted by Chauí:

We are used to identifying fascism with the presence of the mass leader as an autocrat. It is true that today, although the rulers do not reach the figure of the autocrat, they operate with one of the characteristic instruments of the fascist leader, that is, the direct relationship with “the people,” without institutional mediations and even against them. Also, today, other elements proper of fascism are present: the discourse of hatred of the other — racism, homophobia, misogyny; the use of information technologies that take to unthinkable levels the practices of surveillance, control, and censorship; and cynicism or the refusal of the distinction between truth and lies as a canonical form of the art of governing. (^{CHAUÍ, 2019}, p. 1).

In perspective presented by the author, the rulers, who begin to have their performance approaching the manager present in private companies, create the image of being the legitimate representatives of the real people, with whom they maintain a direct relationship through social networks, without the need for institutional mediation, and casting doubt on the legitimacy of the institutions linked to the legislative and judicial branches.

Nevertheless, one caveat is relevant: specific concrete circumstances made the fascist regime successful in Italy. It “was the neuralgic point of the postwar crisis of European civilization, and it was, therefore, no accident that fascism was born there” (^{FRESU, 2019}, p. 18). Moreover, to not fall into the mistake of simply transposing the designation of fascism to other reactionary and authoritarian regimes, it is necessary to differentiate it as a conception of the world and a regime of government.

The root that makes fascism viable is the same strand that created irrational race theories, dividing humanity into biologically based superior and inferior races. I have assumed here, therefore, the use of the term fascism no longer as a social-political phenomenon circumscribed to its strict form of government but as a possible category of analysis of human contradictions — while its concrete realization is also the politically organized expression of racial hatred, through the perception of the different as an adversary to be eliminated. In this way, the perception of the different as an adversary to be eliminated enables one to capture the sense of politics as violence, conjugated, therefore, in a fundamental ferment for the diffusion of fascism in the social terrain.

In this context, ^{Chauí (2019}) points out that the forms and expressions of critical thought become the target of persecution since a division of society is forged between “the good people,” who support them, and “the diabolical,” who contest them. The present discourse is one of hatred of the different represented in minority groups such as immigrants, migrants, refugees, LGBTQIA+, and others. Political opponents are referred to as “the corrupt,” even if corruption is the primary practice adopted within the government. The justification is always based on a communist conspiracy theory led by leftist intellectuals and artists.

Given this exercise of a general characterization of Bolsonarism, the conception of intellectual developed by Gramsci is elucidative to the understanding of this political configuration present in Brazil. The first example is related to the abyssal distinction between an alleged nationalism, preached by the current Bolsonaro government and its supporters, and what would be a national-popular character, which would effectively consider the history, the problems, the needs, and the desires of the people.

The concepts of “Brescianism” and “Lorianism” developed by Gramsci are present in the construction of the discourse and the logic of Bolsonarism. The creation of a caricatured image of reality is associated with a discourse of change, in which measures present in the ideology of neoliberalism are adopted as a solution to the economic crisis, along with a narrative based on religious fundamentalism of neopentecostal churches, committed to combating a supposed communist threat, which defends values contrary to the preservation of the “traditional family” and their respective moral values.

The simplistic Brescian and Lorian arguments adhere to and become sedimented in common sense, shaping convictions and operating on practical life. In the Gramscian sense, ideas and conceptions are lived in the masses as conviction, as it is well shown: “in the masses as such, philosophy cannot but be lived as a faith” (^{GRAMSCI, 2007}, Q11, §12, p. 1390). Therefore, the conviction that guides conduct constitutes a political, material, and social force. Hence, popular belief is a social and political force expressing expresses the historical effectiveness of a conception of the world. In this way, the Brescians and Lorians, with their superficial approaches, contribute to the passivity of the masses, hindering critical readings of reality that address the complexity and contradictions surrounding the social fabric. Thus, they confuse and brake the organization of the subalterns, corroborating and feeding reactionary responses to crises.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

The extension that the concept of intellectual acquires in Gramscian thought corresponds to its importance in the social fabric, correlating to the deepening of the concept of the State. In Gramscian conception, all human beings are intellectuals because no human activity can do without some intellectual dimension. The differentiation that Gramsci establishes among intellectuals according to the genesis, function, and character of their activity (organic, traditional, cosmopolitan, national-popular, Brescian, and Lorian) clarifies the scope of his conceptualization of intellectuals and the weight that intellectuals carry for any political and social order. Moreover, these categories can be translated to the present time, above all, insofar as they express the organizational and connective, therefore political, function that the influence of how certain subjects think and act exerts on society. The essentiality of the organicity between the intellectuals and the subaltern classes for realizing an emancipatory revolutionary project is thus ratified in the delineation of his action strategy.

Intellectuals play an essential role in the political struggle because they are the foremost interpreters of civil society, the connective elements between the ideological and the economic fields, disseminators of ideologies, active agents of the combat or the maintenance of a particular conception of the world and, precisely for this reason, promoters of the collective will, of the functional performance of the masses and the consensus necessary for the hegemony of a social group. For this reason, they are fundamental, both for the group that is in power to obtain consensus and for subordinate groups that need to unify e to assume a coherent and critical conception of the world that can be socially disseminated in the postulation of the hegemonic position.

Because of his historicist position, Gramsci cannot agree with the vision of an impartial universalist intellectual. In his view, a nonpartisan intellectual performance is inconceivable because he does not understand the possibility of neutrality and non-partisanship in any human sphere. For this reason, he defends the formation of intellectuals who understand and act on the needs of the masses without segregating themselves from the world. Organic and national-popular intellectuals who are committed to the struggle of the subalterns for having felt it as they feel it and for having translated it into the necessary elaboration to idealize a conception of the world to be disseminated. There is an indispensable link between the action of intellectuals (and, therefore, of education and culture) and the Gramscian proposition of political struggle.

The importance of intellectuals justifies the party’s role in its widest sense. The collective intellectual is the theoretical and practical agent in structuring a hegemonic path since it is the first core of the collective will, the engine of the praxis of the masses. It has a clear political formative role in fostering consciousness and organizing individual and collective impulses. However, it must not place itself as superior to the class it represents. It is crucial that the party be part of the class and not an authoritarian governing body. After all, as an organism created by the subjects to help them confront problems in the search for answers and actions for other social relations capable of creating new possibilities of political and social arrangement, it must also learn from their experience and feelings. The party must act as “master” and “pupil” within society.

Gramsci points out the importance of the spontaneous movements of the subalterns but stresses that they should not be left to spontaneity. In order for them to acquire cohesion and strength to assert themselves and enter In order for them to acquire the cohesion and strength to assert themselves and to be in a position to win in the political game, they need conscious direction, which reiterates the role of intellectuals and educational, cultural, and political organizations. Cultural emancipation is the first step on the path to a new hegemony capable of overcoming the subalternity of the masses.

The place of intellectuals is irremediably circumscribed in the active human role in constructing the entire social, political, and economic fabric. Consciously or not, every conception of the world influences social practices, which, when ordered and congregated, gain political and driving force for organizing propositions in the social arena.

The distinction between intellectuals is not in nature, but in degree and field of action, in the extent of reflection, action, and influence on real issues or limited to more abstract elements, detached from national-popular problems.

It is not for nothing that the project of intellectual and moral reform is Gramscian’s greatest proposition. Furthermore, this is the arduous and indispensable task of building an intellectual and moral reform for an activist translation that mobilizes the masses and, consequently, makes a revolutionary human emancipatory project feasible.

The conceptualizations of “Brescianism and Lorianism” developed by Gramsci, more than an instrument of historical-literary classification, elevated to the status of an interpretative category, reach a substantial relevance for the development of more convincing readings and analyses of decisive phenomena for the weaving of our current political and social moment, e consequent reflections and critical actions that are indispensable for the collective construction of answers that contrast in content, but are similar in mass diffusion.

In our country, the disorganization of culture led to a mass movement that made Bolsonarism possible. Suppose we cannot attribute the responsibility for our current national political picture solely to the influence of mediocre subjects who assume the function of intellectuals in social organization. In that case, they certainly have a decisive weight in this composition. In this sense, the categories of Brescianism and Lorianism are very important for understanding our current historical bloc and, consequently, for the reflections we must undertake in the search for its overcoming.

We live in a time of increasing expansion of Lorians and Brescians. Let us think of the scope of the discourse of “Marxist cultural dictatorship,” the systematic attack on education àthe sciences as a whole, the attacks on democracy and national à national sovereignty. It makes perfect sense to think, as Gramsci points out, that “the intellectual groups that expressed Lorian questions, in reality, despised not only logic, but national life, politics, and everything else” (^{GRAMSCI, 2007}, Q28, §17, p. 2335).

Our value judgment on the intellectuality of certain subjects does not change the scope they acquire politically, nor the function they assume if they can communicate and combine that connection of heart and mind across broad strata.

Thinking about the moment in which we are living, under the regency of a government that we can also consider as the result of a new drapery of “Brescianism and Lorianism” in this digital age, with the transmutation of these fallacious formulations into memes of immediate mass reach, allied to widespread harassment of the school organization and culture. The challenge of building an intellectual and moral reform becomes urgent in the same measure of its complexity. It imposes this historical task on all who disagree with these absurdities and do not forge humanity, despite the monstrosities experienced daily.

What remains, in general terms, is that intellectuality matters the more it inevitably organizes, even the intellectuality. This is a nod to the unavoidable challenge of the collective struggle for mass education policies, for the right to education and culture, as a permanent track of political and social construction of hegemonic dispute and permanent struggle.

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Doi: https://preprints.scielo.org/index.php/scielo/preprint/view/4000