this diary has made me wish - for the first time - that i hadn't successfully eluded all courses on domination and resistance, and hegemony while i was in school

Well put. I think of hegemony as "domination that sells." I also love the bit where Gramsci says that everyone is a philosopher. I definitely am, though I only claim amateur status. I am a practicing axiologist (and practice makes perfect!) and I have a general working hypothesis that domination (the absence of freedom) is the same thing as evil (the absence of value), aka the "DIE" hypothesis. I know, contested definitions, but you gotta start somewhere!

I remember reading somewhere once that an Italian Fascist, maybe Mussolini, said regarding Gramsci, that, "we must stop this mind from thinking" or some such.