Abstract: Since the 20^th century, the Western Marxism underwent an important discourse transformation from the emphasis on economic foundation and the material structure to the superstructure and cultural ideology, from class politics to cultural politics, and ultimately established the discourse paradigm of cultural politics. The theory and practice of cultural politics come from Gramsci, whose dialectical thinking on the economic basis and superstructure, as well as interpretation of culture, politics, ideology and hegemony, directly affected cultural politics of western Marxism and promoted the Gramsci shift of cultural studies in the post-Gramsci era. Based on the analysis of Gramsci's cultural and political theory, the paper further explores the Gramsci shift of the western cultural studies from three aspects of cultural politics: semantic connotation, theory and method, and value.

Key words: cultural politics, cultural studies, hegemony, the Gramsci shift