Theory’s power lies in its accumulated common sense

Evidence

What is at issue here, even more than in the previous chapters, is nor any particular text of literary rheory bur the kind of ‘common sense’ which so much of contemporary theory has gathered to itself. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 73

Categorization

• DEFINE: Ahmad shifts the object of critique from individual texts to an institutionalized ‘common sense’ — a key methodological frame for the reader comparing this to how strategic essentialism functions.
• XREF: Parallels Gramsci’s hegemony and Bourdieu’s doxa on how discourse congeals into unexamined settlement.