Abstract

This article aims to reconstruct the development of the category of ‘ideology’ in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks between June 1929 and November 1930. In this survey, I will consider not only the occurrences of “ideology” but also the broader “conceptual cluster” ideology is part of. That includes categories such as “superstructure”, “philosophy”, “conception of the world”, “religion”, “common sense”, “folklore” For Gramsci, ideology is first of all a superstructure. As any other Marxist of his time, Gramsci uses initially the term ideology both in a negative sense, both in a neutral, descriptive sense. By passing through provisional formulations such as “material structure of the superstructure” and “ideological structure”, he gradually expands the semantic spectrum of the concept of ideology, by developing a multi-layered theory of knowledge that combine together different aspects of his reflection on ideological superstructures.