Gramsci s Concept of Common Sense-Towards a Theory of Subaltern Consciousness in Hegemony Processes

This paper is largely a reconstruction cfGramsci's attempts towards an understanding of subaltern consciousness in hegemony processes. In Section I, views on common sense for 'ordinary' folk's sense-perceptions) as viewed in bourgeois traditions are briefly presented. Section II is about Gramsci's treatment of certain cases of the infiltration of these bourgeois accounts into the Marxist camp by way of his critique of Croce's and Bukharin's schemes, In Section III, Gramsci's own scheme on 'common sense' and its elements are proposed. Finally, in Sections IV and V, relationships between the hegemony process and the 'common sense' of subalterns, on the one hand, and relations between certain counter-hegemony systems and subaltern consciousness, on the other, are delineated.