Textbook dogmatism is impossible for doctrines still in development

Evidence

Is it possible to write an elementary book, a handbook, a “Popular Manual”, on a doctrine that is still at the stage of discussion, polemic and elaboration? A popular manual cannot be conceived other than as a formally dogmatic, stylistically poised and scientifically balanced exposition of a particular subject. It can only be an introduction to scientific study, and not an exposition of original scientific researches, since it is written for young people or for a public which, from the point of view of scientific discipline, is in a condition like that of youth and therefore has an immediate need for “certainties”, for opinions which, at least on a formal level, appear as reliably true and indisputable. If the doctrine in question has not yet reached this “classical” phase of its development, any attempt to “manualise” it is bound to fail, its logical ordering will be purely apparent and illusory, and one will get, as with the “Popular Manual”, just a mechanical juxtaposition of disparate elements which remain inexorably disconnected and disjointed in spite of the unitary varnish provided by the literary presentation. … Why not therefore pose the question in its correct theoretical and historical terms and rest content with a book in which each of the essential problems of the doctrine receives separate monographic treatment? This would be more serious and more “scientific”. But the vulgar contention is that science must absolutely mean “system”, and consequently systems of all sorts are built up which have only the mechanical exteriority of a system and not its necessary inherent coherence. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1544

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Gramsci’s broader distinction between organic intellectuals’ lived philosophy and scholastic systematization — useful grounding for how ‘common sense’ resists codification into manuals. Also resonates with the reader’s scaffolding-theory toolkit: dogmatic popularization contrasts with hegemony’s fluid, negotiated common sense.
• SEED: An essay angle: how Islamophobia discourse manuals/textbooks reproduce the ‘mechanical juxtaposition of disparate elements’ Gramsci describes — field-defining anthologies that varnish internal disagreement with literary unity.