Popular common sense is sedimented class struggle that can be actively reworked

Evidence

Althusser sometimes tends to represent ideology as rather too functionally secured to the rule of the dominant classes: as if all ideology is, by definition, operative within the horizon of the “dominance ideas” of the ruling class. For Gramsci, ideologies are thought of in a more contradictory way—really, as sites and stakes in the class struggle. What interests Gramsci is how the existing ideologies—the “common sense” of the fundamental classes—which are themselves the complex result of previous moments and resolutions in the ideological class struggle, can be actively worked upon so as to transform them into the basis of a more conscious struggle, and form of intervention in the historical process. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 628

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes Gramsci’s contradictory, contested view of ideology from Althusser’s more functional conception.
• DEEPTHINKING: The idea that everyday common sense is itself a palimpsest of past ideological victories—and therefore the key terrain of political transformation—is dense and rich enough to reward re-reading.
• SEED: Essay angle: how the ‘common sense’ of political commonplaces (e.g., about immigration, markets, or crime) is sedimented earlier class struggle, and can be re-mined by movements.
• XREF: Directly feeds Hall’s concept of ‘authoritarian populism’ and how Thatcherism worked on existing common-sense themes; connects to the reader’s goal of understanding Hall’s economic-political intervention. — connects to: Pedagogical reinvention begins by questioning the status quo and re-experiencing the ordinary. — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 49