From hegemonic projects to historical initiatives: rethinking the political practice of hegemony

The aim of this paper is twofold. On the one hand it attempts to retrace the emergence of the notion of the hegemonic project, in various debates, beginning with the debate within British Marxism on Thatcherism as a hegemonic project, but also the use of the notion of the hegemonic project in critical International Relations Theory. On the other hand, by means of a return to Gramsci’s thinking on hegemony, it attempts to rethink the notion of the hegemonic project in contemporary political debates in the left and to suggest that we must attempt to think of hegemonic projects not as simple political projects or electoral strategies, but rather as historical initiatives of the subaltern. On this basis, the possibility of a subaltern hegemonic practice of politics is revisited. Gramsci; Hegemony; Hegemonic project; Marxism; Radical politics

Uses of Gramsci in the Contemporary Greek Context

This is the abstract of the article in English by Panagiotis Sotiris on the state of Gramsci work in Greece and on the Greek left’s relation to Gramscian notions. We give his own English-language presentation of the article here below as an extended Abstract. Presentation This presentation offers an overview and discussion of how the work of Antonio Gramsci, and notions and themes stemming from it, have been used in the context of political, strategic, and theoretical debates in Greece since the second half of the 2000s. What emerges is a situation where despite the widespread use of notions and themes coming from Gramsci, there is not extensive reference or dialogue with the more recent Gramsci research and scholarship, and nor has a more ‘native’ tradition of Gramsci Studies emerged. However, both political-strategic and theoretical debates could benefit from engagement with Gramsci in that direction, especially since the particular Greek conjuncture after 2010 points to the continuing pertinence of Gramscian notions as means to analyse social and political dynamics and exigencies, but also to deal with open theoretical questions in the field of the Social Sciences

Social movements as laboratories of dual power

Dual power has been associated with a historically specific conception of revolutionary strategy that for many is now outdated. In contrast I think that its strategic scope is broader and that it does not refer to just a specific ‘moment’ but rather to a dynamic that can emerge within prolonged struggles and confrontational social movements within conjunctures characterized by crisis of hegemony or at least elements of a hegemonic crisis. Consequently, movements need to be considered as ‘strategic instances’ in the elaboration of a social and political dynamic for social change

The Politics of the Fact to be Accomplished: Political Practice and Materialism of the Encounter in Althusser

The aim of this article is to revisit some of Louis Althusser’s texts from the 1970s and 1980s in order to examine the relation between Althusser’s conceptualization of a materialism of the encounter and his calls for a new practice of politics as part of a strategy for communism. In particular, I try to discuss Althusser’s reference to political practice and the organizational forms associated with it, at the same time attempting to stress the tensions and aporias running through these interventions

HiPart: Hierarchical Divisive Clustering Toolbox

This paper presents the HiPart package, an open-source native python library that provides efficient and interpret-able implementations of divisive hierarchical clustering algorithms. HiPart supports interactive visualizations for the manipulation of the execution steps allowing the direct intervention of the clustering outcome. This package is highly suited for Big Data applications as the focus has been given to the computational efficiency of the implemented clustering methodologies. The dependencies used are either Python build-in packages or highly maintained stable external packages. The software is provided under the MIT license. The package's source code and documentation can be found at https://github.com/panagiotisanagnostou/HiPart