The pince-nez of Gramsci

«The term "catharsis" can be employed to indicate the passage from the purely economic (or egoistic-passional) to the ethico­ political moment, that is the superior elaboration of the structure into superstructure in the minds of men. This also means the passage from "objective to subjective" and from "necessity to freedom". Structure ceases to be an external force which crushes man, assimilates him to itself and makes him passive; and is transformed into a means of freedom, an instrument to create a new ethico-political form and a source of new initiatives. To establish the "cathartic" moment becomes therefore, it seems to me, the starting-point for all the philosophy of praxis, and the cathartic process coincides with the chain of syntheses which have resulted from the evolution of the dialectic».

Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison notebooks 6-11 (1930-1933)

Antonio Gramsci (1891 –1937) is considered to be one of the most important Marxist thinkers of the twentieth century, in particular as a key thinker in the development of Western Marxism. He wrote more than 30 notebooks (known as Prison Notebooks) and 3000 pages of history and analysis during his imprisonment.