Culture and common sense are a contested terrain for building popular hegemony

Evidence

By culture, here, I mean the actual, grounded terrain of practices, representations, languages, and customs of any specific historical society. I also mean the contradictory forms of “common sense” which have taken root in and helped to shape popular life. I would also include that whole distinctive range of questions which Gramsci lumped together under the title “the national-popular.” Gramsci understands that these constitute a crucial site for the construction of a popular hegemony. They are a key stake as objects of political and ideological struggle and practice. They constitute a national resource for change as well as a potential barrier to the development of a new collective will. For example, Gramsci perfectly well understood how popular Catholicism had constituted, under specific Italian conditions, a formidable alternative to the development of a secular and progressive “national-popular” culture, how in Italy it would have to be engaged, not simply wished aside. He likewise understood, as many others did not, the role which fascism played in Italy in “hegemonizing” the backward character of the national-popular culture in Italy and refashioning it into a reactionary national formation, with a genuine popular basis and support. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 141

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Defines Gramsci’s ‘national-popular’ and ‘common sense’ concepts as the cultural terrain of hegemony.
• XREF: Feeds directly into Islamophobia readings of how fascism and right-wing populism ‘hegemonize’ popular culture around national-racial formations.

Related

• Gramsci treats culture as the terrain where hegemony is won and contested (similarity 0.92)
• Hegemonic projects can refashion backward national-popular culture into reactionary formations (similarity 0.85)
• A national-popular bloc requires religious and intellectual cohesion between elite and masses (similarity 0.82)
• Popular beliefs are themselves material forces needing political education (similarity 0.82)
• The ‘popular’ marks subordinate culture’s resistance to being cast as low (similarity 0.81)
• The national-popular is a cultural historic bloc mediated by intellectuals, not populism (similarity 0.81)
• The national-popular is a cultural historic bloc between mass and national aspirations, not populism (similarity 0.80)
• Popular culture is defined by its tension with dominant culture (similarity 0.80)
• Popular common sense is sedimented class struggle that can be actively reworked (similarity 0.80)
• Popular culture is a contested site where meanings get struggled over (similarity 0.79)
• Gramsci links unconscious common sense to active ideologies that can organize masses. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Popular culture is defined by its tension with dominant culture #complicates (0.75)
• Capitalism requires continuous re-education of the popular classes through cultural struggle #complicates (0.72)