Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Acknowledged as one of the classics of twentieth-century Marxism, Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks contains a rich and nuanced theorization of class that provides insights that extend far beyond economic inequality. In Gramsci's Common Sense Kate Crehan offers new ways to understand the many forms that structural inequality can take, including in regards to race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion. Presupposing no previous knowledge of Gramsci on the part of the reader, she introduces the Prison Notebooks and provides an overview of Gramsci's notions of subalternity, intellectuals, and common sense, putting them in relation to the work of thinkers such as Bourdieu, Arendt, Spivak, and Said. In the case studies of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements, Crehan theorizes the complex relationships between the experience of inequality, exploitation, and oppression, as well as the construction of political narratives. Gramsci's Common Sense is an accessible and concise introduction to a key Marxist thinker whose works illuminate the increasing inequality in the twenty-first century.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

In attempting to understand how modern Americans reproduce forms of knowledge and certainty, Crehan (emer., College of Staten Island) 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. She calls on Gramsci's notion of how disjointed collective ideas about reality can form political movements when that "common sense" is elaborated and systematized by intellectuals produced organically by those collectives. By calling on another Gramscian notion, the subaltern, she charts a pathway by which subcultures can transition to positions of hegemony. Crehan draws this idea into the modern US context by showing how new technology and changing social relations have altered the interplay between intellectuals and movements. In doing so, she expands the idea of what it means to be an intellectual in the 21st century. 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." Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Kyle Killian, Florida State University