Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the dissonances, and the linkages between the thought of Gramsci and Foucault to uncover new tools for socio-political and critical analysis for the twenty-first century. Jane Kenway makes the same assertion, suggesting a ‘poststructuralist reading of Gramsci’ makes a good adjunct to Foucault’s work, and that the two writers’ oeuvres should be considered complementary, although she makes no attempt to combine them. The noted neo-Gramscian Stephen Gill has drawn substantially on Foucauldian notions of panopticism to develop his new concepts of disciplinary neo-liberalism. Gramsci gives us a suggestion of what kinds of the laws to look for, and indeed combining things in this way might even improve Gramsci’s thought, using Foucault and the poststructuralist turn to escape the essentialism for which he is rightly criticized.