Massimo Modonesi

Massimo Modonesi is a full professor at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. He is the author of more than twenty books on political and social movements in Latin America, as well as on questions of the theory of collective action and social mobilization.

The project

Title: The Concept of Experience in Debates of Western Marxism in the 1950s and 1960s (France, Italy, England)

"This research project builds on previous work carried out by Massimo Modonesi on Marxist concepts and categories used to understand processes of political subjectivation, as well as phenomena of collective action and social mobilization (Modonesi 2010, 2016, 2024). It is part of a broader project devoted to examining the concept of ‘experience’ within the Western Marxist tradition in the 1950s and 1960s. This concept, which initially appeared before being largely erased from debates–except for references in the social history of E. P. Thompson–nonetheless points to a central issue in Marxist thought, as a counterpart to the analysis of class condition and class consciousness. Moreover, this question has re-emerged strongly in debates in the humanities and social sciences through what has been called the 'affective turn'. In connection with this notion of 'experience', reconstructing the trajectories of such key authors as Claude Lefort, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Cornelius Castoriadis, as well as the contexts that mobilized and shaped this concept within the Marxist theoretical corpus, helps to frame this discussion in an original way, both at the level of intellectual history and at the sociological level."

Hosting institution: Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Politique, EHESS

Selective Bibliography

• Coordinador con Maristella Svampa y Breno Bringel, Luchar en el interregno. Los movimientos sociales latinoamericanos ante los progresismos y los nuevas derechas, Siglo XXI-Clacso, México, 2026.
• Coordinador (con César Enrique Pineda y Sergio Tamayo), Luchas sociales y participación política en el sexenio obradorista (2018-2024), UNAM, 2025.
• Autor, Gramsci y el sujeto político. Subalternidad, autonomía y hegemonía, Akal, México-Madrid-Buenos Aires, 2023. Edición en italiano, Gramsci e il soggetto politico. Subalternitá, autonomia, egemonia, Bordeaux Edizioni, Roma, 2024.
• Coordinador (con Diana Fuentes), La hegemonía y la 4T. Un debate gramsciano, UAM-Ítaca, México, 2023.
• Co-autor (con Jaime Ortega), Gramsci y Berlinguer en México. Vínculos entre comunistas mexicanos e italianos en los años 70, UAM-Terracota, México, 2023.
• Co-autor (con César Enrique Pineda), El despertar de una generación. Del #YoSoy132 a Ayotzinapa, CLACSO, México, 2022.