Your article (‘The time of monsters’: everyone is quoting Gramsci – but what did he actually say, 14 February) rightly points to Antonio Gramsci’s actual thoughts on the morbid symptoms that appear as one world order disappears. But we also need to promote his other famous saying about “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will”: the need to acknowledge the dire situation we face, while never losing hope that resistance can overcome evil.
This is all the more important since the mainstream media overload us with reporting on “bad” news that creates a sense of hopelessness, while reporting very little on the resistance to it – resistance that is far more widespread than most people get to know, and which would generate a sense of hope. One of my hopes is that the Guardian does more to report the latter.
Prof Helen Colley
Manchester
