Overview
- Systematically addresses issues arising from a Marxist theory of history
- Uniquely combines theoretical reflection and concrete historiographical analyses
- Investigates how theory gets modified over time in relation to the practice of doing historiography
Part of the book series: Marx, Engels, and Marxisms (MAENMA)
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Table of contents (9 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
Eminent Italian historian Giovanni Levi once notably remarked that “no one is a Marxist anymore,” pointing to a paradox in Italian cultural history. While what is called "Marxism" was supposedly hegemonic over Italian culture, and especially history writing, for decades in the postwar period, it then seems to have suddenly disappeared.
This study questions such a vision of a monolithic and hegemonic Marxism. It starts from the most effective anecdote to all ideologising narratives—that is, research into the texts themselves. It sees the Marxist historiography of the post-1945 period as a "history in the making," in which references to Marxian theory were a fundamental factor driving historiographical innovation. This allows the book to bring to light a highly original experience in the development of historiography, based on the long Italian tradition of reflection on historical knowledge.
Reviews
“This book revisits the relations between history and Marxism since the aftermath of World War II, taking an original approach within the current intellectual panorama.”
– Marco Di Maggio, Researcher in Contemporary History, La Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, for Cahiers d’histoire
“Without doubt, Paolo Favilli's book has the value of being a ‘stone sending ripples through the pond’, both because of the problems it poses and even more so because of those that it understandably leaves open.”
– Gianpasquale Santomassimo, Professor of History, University of Siena, Italy, for Passato e Presente
“Our judgement on this latest work by Paolo Favilli can only be a positive one. Its historiographical analysis, its philosophical problematisation, and its well-documented references make up the principal ingredients of this important study on Italian Marxism.”
– Carlo Scognamiglio, Institute for Social Economic Research, Italy, for Giornale di filosofia
“Favilli's book is a rich seam of cues and threads to follow. Not least among its merits is its constant emphasis on the centrality of the properly historical dimension — this, in a period in which this latter tends to be erased from studies and within universities.”
– Riccardo Bellofiore, Professor of Political Economy, Bergamo University, Italy, for Società e Storia
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Paolo Favilli is retired Professor of Contemporary History and the Theory of Historical Research at Genoa University, Italy, where he is also former Director of the Department of Humanistic Studies. His main research focus is the history of Marxism, to which he has devoted numerous essays and volumes, including Il socialismo italiano e la teoria economica di Marx (1892-1902) (1980), Herausgabe und Verbreitung del Werke von Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels in Italien (1988), Storia del marxismo italiano. Dalle origini alla grande guerra (1996), Marxismo e storia. Saggio sull'innovazione storiografica in Italia (2006), and Il marxismo e le sue storie (2016). His latest study, A proposito de «Il capitale»..., Il lungo presente e I miei studenti. Corso di storia contemporanea will be released in 2021.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Marxism and Historiography
Book Subtitle: Contesting Theory and Remaking History in Twentieth-Century Italy
Authors: Paolo Favilli
Translated by: David Broder
Series Title: Marx, Engels, and Marxisms
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83605-4
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-83604-7Published: 23 October 2021
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-83607-8Published: 24 October 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-83605-4Published: 22 October 2021
Series ISSN: 2524-7123
Series E-ISSN: 2524-7131
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIV, 357
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Political Theory, Political Philosophy, Political Sociology, Political History