Common Sense and the Alien Form of the Will in Apple, Marx, and Gramsci

• In Event: Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: The Sense of Education: Reexamining Michael Apple’s Use of Gramscian Theory in Education Research

Abstract

This paper argues that Gramsci’s conceptualization of sense is crucial to his understanding of dialectical change, as well as his assessment for how hegemonic relations persevere in spite of clear ethical transgressions by dominant blocs. Marx argues in the German Ideology that “social power, i.e., multiplied productive force” arises from productive relations not voluntarily but “naturally”—independently of the will—as an “alien form” outside of conscious labor. Gramsci, in turn, addresses consciousness as the central question for fighting hegemony in the Prison Notebooks and posits that the reproduction of power is caused by the cumulative and posterior emergence of the will within the ensemble of relations, a term that refers to the multiplicity of political and cultural discourses within the public sphere. Apple (2006) has utilized Gramsci’s premises to advocate for influencing the ensemble of relations by engaging the sense surrounding cultural and political perceptions of educational policy and practices. However, I argue in this presentation, Apple has undertheorized the ways different forms of sense are reified or concealed.

Central to Gramsci’s work is the interrogation of how the dialectical current of history, which he defines as a becoming of social relations, is stifled and hidden from agents and discursive groups, creating reification. Concealment is engendered, according to Gramsci, by the way that the will calls upon previous social models, mores, and practices, and selects meanings for structural designation. An individual enters the world posterior to preceding histories, ways of life, and belief systems, and is consequently supplemented with a finite set of possible topics for deliberation, thought, and labor from which to choose. Yet, the ensemble of social relations constantly shifts, causing the will to form and reform, choose and rechoose, without being able to fully cognize the totality of available meanings. Further, individuals and groups navigate among accepted determinant meanings with various degrees of perceived embeddedness, which Gramsci calls common sense. The consolidation of an individual will, in concert with other wills, serves as a process that ultimately combines into a collective will as an amalgamation that perpetually selects from available meanings while simultaneously setting conditions for future ensembles of relations. Among the collective will, specific groups will vie for having the largest say in setting future conditions for which available meanings one’s will may engage. But at the same time every social and cultural group seems to have its own common sense, and the combination of multiple discourses in a geographic space often constitutes what becomes the ensemble, the constituency from which hegemonic beliefs and practices manifest. Hegemony can be thought about as an incomplete and changing yet pervasive grouping of productive forces available for internalization in consciousness and production, which Marx referred to as an alien form. But Gramsci further contributes the paradox that hegemony is tied to structural objectives while independent of the human will, and most significantly, though hegemony functions on multiple levels, one’s sense of hegemony can also be a tool to gauge and measure the effects of power upon human consciousness.

Author

• Josh Shepperd, University of Wisconsin - Madison