before I finish: thanks to Marv for the answer. no time to respond right now, but much appreciated.
as for this issue:
yeah, but my studies were not indebted to gramsci at all (i just had to look up WTF robert meant by PSI!). I think somewhere in my formal studies I was supposed to have read Gramsci but I never did and only browsed him when people in grad school used to like to trot me out and claim I was an "organic intellectual" (long story, that!)
my studies were decidedly more in the analytic school of philosophy but also influenced by friere and a lot of the humanist marxism influential in the 50s/60s. It definitely arcane! But, I studied under two people who had been survivors of Nazi Germany and so decidedly interested in questions of the relationship between theory and practice. One was one of the few commies active in the resistance movement, the other a young child who escaped with his Jewish family, immigrated to the u.s., and learned English watching movies on the telly.
Most influential for me: Gavin Kitching (Kitching won some big grant award and decided to use it by showing up at a lowly state college in my home town), Marx and the Philosophy of Praxis, Alison Jagger, Feminist Politics and Human Nature, Brian Fay's two books, Social theory and POlitical Practice and Critical Social Science.
As for the question: sure it makes sense. I mean, in the above set of thinkers, they all see theory and practice as related, but Fay, for example, makes this really compelling argument that social theory logically demands a certain approach to political practice. Logically - not accidentally, not because you think you should do something, but dictated by a logical relationship. Which is a whole 'nother kettle of fish, I think, than the work, say, of Paulo Friere.
But, I guess what I'm getting at is: just because Gramsci or Marx or whatever dead white guy you care to think of says theory and practice are related, it appears to me that people have lots of different understandings of exactly how the relationship works. but most interesting is that, to me, there this huge variety in what people mean by theory.
At any rate, I must skeeeeeeedaddle. I have a copy of Shut Up Little Man that I want to see!
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