Preface  ix

Abbreviations  xv

Part I. Subalternity, Intellectuals, and Common Sense

1. Subalternity  3

2. Intellectuals  18

3. Common Sense  43

4. What Subalterns Know  59

Part II. Case Studies

5. Adam Smith: A Bourgeois, Organic Intellectual?  81

6. The Common Sense of the Tea Party  118

7. Common Sense, Good Sense, and Occupy  146

Conclusion. Reading Gramsci in the Twenty-First Century  184

Bibliography  199

Index  207

"Kate Crehan’s new book on Antonio Gramsci’s work is an astute and accessible text that attempts to connect his ideas to current events in the United States. Staying true to the Gramscian spirit, Crehan spends the first four chapters contextualizing both his life and his work in order to show how his ideas evolved. Crehan then spends several chapters showing why these ideas remain useful in today’s world; as Gramsci would have wanted, knowledge should be used for social change, not for the sake of knowing alone. What is most striking about the book is the lucid and engaging way in which Crehan writes." — Sara Salem, Antipode

"[Crehan] offers a clear path for thinking about political world views on the American Left and Right that seem at odds with each other and with rational expectations. . . . Though providing a detailed interrogation of the historiography of Marxism and culture is not Crehan's main goal, her book is an excellent pathway into this rich scholarly tradition that brings into focus the intellectual underpinnings of the modern US 'moment of danger.' Recommended." — K. Killian, Choice

"Crehan has produced a felicitous and profound intervention that could inform our understanding of both intellectual and political change. In 2016, as a new senso comune begins to develop in an age of ‘post-truth’ politics, Gramsci’s ideas are more timely than ever." — Marcos González Hernando, LSE US Centre Blog

"Gramsci’s Common Sense: Inequality and Its Narratives, through its analysis of class, subalternity and intellectuals, extensively engages with the Prison Notebooks, offering new ways to describe the different practices that structural inequality can assume through race, gender, sexual orientation and religion in our globalised-capitalist society." — Mauro Di Lullo, Marx and Philosophy

"It is because Crehan’s book is that good: that prescient, that well written, and that strong of an interpretation of Gramsci’s relevance for our times that it should be read across disciplines, by activists, politically engaged artists, filmmakers, and any cultural worker, critic, or analyst who finds themselves feeling cut off from the world at this point in our current conjuncture." — Robert Carley, Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association

"An elegantly written and accessible examination of the meaning of concepts within Gramsci's notebooks." — Max Shock, Political Studies Review

"Kate Crehan’s new book on Antonio Gramsci’s work is an astute and accessible text that attempts to connect his ideas to current events in the United States. Staying true to the Gramscian spirit, Crehan spends the first four chapters contextualizing both his life and his work in order to show how his ideas evolved. Crehan then spends several chapters showing why these ideas remain useful in today’s world; as Gramsci would have wanted, knowledge should be used for social change, not for the sake of knowing alone. What is most striking about the book is the lucid and engaging way in which Crehan writes." —Sara Salem, Antipode

"[Crehan] offers a clear path for thinking about political world views on the American Left and Right that seem at odds with each other and with rational expectations. . . . Though providing a detailed interrogation of the historiography of Marxism and culture is not Crehan's main goal, her book is an excellent pathway into this rich scholarly tradition that brings into focus the intellectual underpinnings of the modern US 'moment of danger.' Recommended." —K. Killian, Choice

"Crehan has produced a felicitous and profound intervention that could inform our understanding of both intellectual and political change. In 2016, as a new senso comune begins to develop in an age of ‘post-truth’ politics, Gramsci’s ideas are more timely than ever." —Marcos González Hernando, LSE US Centre Blog

"Gramsci’s Common Sense: Inequality and Its Narratives, through its analysis of class, subalternity and intellectuals, extensively engages with the Prison Notebooks, offering new ways to describe the different practices that structural inequality can assume through race, gender, sexual orientation and religion in our globalised-capitalist society." —Mauro Di Lullo, Marx and Philosophy

"It is because Crehan’s book is that good: that prescient, that well written, and that strong of an interpretation of Gramsci’s relevance for our times that it should be read across disciplines, by activists, politically engaged artists, filmmakers, and any cultural worker, critic, or analyst who finds themselves feeling cut off from the world at this point in our current conjuncture." —Robert Carley, Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association

"An elegantly written and accessible examination of the meaning of concepts within Gramsci's notebooks." —Max Shock, Political Studies Review

"Kate Crehan brings into bold relief the 'rich and nuanced approach to inequality' Antonio Gramsci developed in his Prison Notebooks. This, in turn, permits her to provide new and powerful insights into popular movements such as the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street and to demonstrate how and why inequality is much more than an economic phenomenon. Scholars have often turned to Gramsci to better understand mechanisms of power; Crehan now turns to Gramsci to illuminate how the dynamics of popular opinion and the movements they spawn may pose a threat to the established political order." — Joseph A. Buttigieg, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English, University of Notre Dame

"With conceptual precision and sophistication, Kate Crehan's examination of subalternity, intellectuals, and common sense brings into focus the complex ways in which class inequality manifests itself in social life and everyday practices. An essential text in Gramscian studies, Gramsci's Common Sense will generate transdisciplinary interest across the humanities and social sciences and is of particular interest to Gramsci specialists across the globe." — Marcus E. Green, editor of, Rethinking Gramsci

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