Following a dissident “line of conduct”. Socialisation and vocation in an Italian heterodox Marxist group-journal (1950s-1960s)

Using the case of an Italian heterodox marxist review from the 1960s, the article looks at the figure of the “intellectual activist” as the result of a commitment shaped by peers on the model of a vocation. While the sociabilities studied would usually be described as informal, it seeks to identify the mechanisms that encouraged political and intellectual activities, professional choices and leisure activities to follow the same logic of intellectualising revolutionary militancy. The first part describes the different “interaction frameworks” set up by the ritualisation of collective theory-making activities. The second part seeks to explain the dispositional conditions of conformance to these frameworks, by highlighting, at the level of the sub-group that continues to animate the collective despite a split, the decisive role of a certain socialisation preceding commitment to the review.