Carrol wrote:
>Maureen Therese Anderson wrote:
>
>> Sahlins said Ob. provides no
>> theoretical principle for distinguishing when one or the other of
>> disposition ever comes into play--and which (again Sahlins) becomes de
>> facto bourgeois "common sense."
>
>Is "common sense" Sahlins's term here. I'd be interested in hearing
>more -- in part because just recently I have decided that I myself
>wish to eliminate "ideology" from my vocabulary and replace it
>with the term "common sense" -- on the assumption that common
>sense (under any definition more or less) is always either trivial or
>viciously wrong. "Ideology" carries so many different meanigns --
>all uncontestable unless one wishes to fight the language, which
>I don't -- that it has pretty much become useless without elaborate
>ad hoc explanations.
One hell of a messy issue.
Well for Sahlins, common sense in the above sense is bad, because it "objectively" attributes to human nature notions issuing from bourgeois society's particular form of social knolwedge.
But on a broader plain MS's point is precisely that all societies have systems of meanings and signifying practices. So they all have their local "common sense." (BTW, MS doesn't mean that different perspectives don't exist within that "common" sense. People have different perspectives and motivations, which in turn have system-transforming consequences. But like Saussurean signs, the differences exist within sets of common meanings, else people wouldn't even be able to communicate with each other muchless disagree.)
...But back to your new strategy. I go back and forth on this. On one hand there are the against-the-grain reasons you mention, to try to show the jagged edge of common-sense. (Though I suppose all those eighties Gramscians would disagree with you about common sense always being either trivial or viciously wrong. For them it's the murky level in-between these two ends of the spectrum where all the interesting things happen. ...Where have all the Gramscians gone?)
But if you use common sense to refer to (false) ideology or triviality, then don't you need some other term to replace the good and useful aspects of the term? For instance non-elites often refer to their own "common sense" to draw out the mystifications surrounding "professional" knowledge. And within the left, too, the term can be used in good anti-vanguardist ways. So how would we hold on to these positive usages of common sense?
Maureen