This book is an intervention into cultural studies' theoretical and methodological foundations. It addresses a crisis in conjunctural analysis: that there is no theorized method for conjunctural analysis as it pertains to recognizing a conjunctural shift or the emergence of an organic crisis. This crisis is connected to the belief that the definition of the conjuncture is ambiguous in Gramsci’s work, but using a broader range of primary, secondary, and also untranslated sources on the conjuncture, Carley demonstrates that Gramsci has decisively settled that ambiguity. Through a philological approach to Gramsci’s original texts, this book alters the debate around conjunctural analysis and offers means to reinterpret cultural studies and its relationship to its founding thinkers.

Robert F. Carley is Associate Professor of International Studies at Texas A&M University, College Station.