This paper reconstructs Alberto Asor Rosa’s relationship with Antonio Gramsci’s thought between 1958 and 1977, highlighting how the author of Scrittori e popolo progressively developed a strategic and selective use of Gramscian categories, oscillating between radical critique and functional re-appropriation. The analysis moves on two levels: the biographical-intellectual one and the philological-interpretive one. The essay thus traces the evolution of Asor Rosa’s relationship with Gramsci: from an initial destructive and critical use, functional to the construction of an autonomous workerist framework, to a selective and instrumental re-elaboration culminating in his organic integration into the PCI and its official political culture. This trajectory reveals both the complexity of Gramscian interpretations in Italy and the capacity of Gramsci’s thought to serve as a contested terrain for renegotiation between different political traditions