Egemonia senza cultura

ASERI, as part of the ASERIncontra review , is pleased to present the volume:

Egemonia senza cultura
Storia sentimentale di un’ossessione italiana

by Andrea Minuz
Silvio Berlusconi Publisher

Tuesday 27 October 2026, 5.30 p.m.
in ASERI, Via San Vittore 18, Milan

there is no live streaming

Introduces:

Damiano Palano, ASERI Director

Speakers:

Andrea Minuz, Professor of History of Cinema, the University of Rome La Sapienza

Barbara Carnevali, Full Professor of Philosophy, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris

Marco Santoro, Full Professor of Sociology, University of Bologna

What are we talking about when we talk about cultural hegemony? A century after Gramsci, this concept reappears in the public debate, demonstrating a grip on reality that is independent of the political season in which the country finds itself: "every government evokes it, every electoral defeat claims it, every side denounces the monopoly of others, even if no one knows what it is anymore". Once an obsession embodied by the figure of the party intellectual, put back at the center of the scene with the Second Republic, it returns today, on the left, as recrimination for an intellectual supremacy that has now vanished, and on the right, as a showdown, revenge, a change of pace in the narrative of the country.

In this book, Andrea Minuz proposes an itinerary through dogmas and clichés to highlight the reasons for his surprising hold: an ironic and light-hearted journey through cultural salons and talk shows, festivals and Rai fiction, to establish what really remains hegemonic in cultural hegemony.

Smoky and malleable, the expression betrays nostalgia for a time when culture was an untouchable institution, charged with building a shared horizon. An era in which you didn't have to look far to know what to read, what to look at, what to think. Now, however, the narratives are multiplying, exasperated by the polarization of opinions imposed by social algorithms. While politics is slaughtering itself to get its hands on cultural institutions, real culture – the anarchic, chaotic one, made up of TV series, memes and pop consumption – has already gone somewhere else, mocking those who would still like to educate the masses. In the end, the verdict is clear: the ghost of hegemony betrays above all bewilderment, confusion and lack of categories that still have some grip on the present.

Participation is free upon registration:

For info: info.aseri@unicatt.it