Page 271 - Culture Media Language Working Papers in Cultural Studies

260 ENGLISH STUDIES

Gramsci calls common sense the philosophy of the non-philosophers. It is not
a single, unique conception, identical in time and space. It is the folklore of
philosophy and, like folklore, it takes countless different forms. The personality
formed within common sense is

strangely composite: it contains stone age elements and principles of a
more advanced science, prejudices from all past phases of history at a local
level and intuitions of a future philosophy which will be that of a human
race united the world over. 96

This fragmentary, proverbial view of the world is the inheritance of the
subordinate classes; it has been formed in a long history of struggle for
domination and can be seen as the negotiated terms of consent which we give to
our continuing subordination. It is partly because common sense has been
formed over a very long period that it presents itself as timeless knowledge.
Ideologies of previous historical moments, at one time generated and enshrined
in institutions, have become embedded in a set of assumptions about ‘the way
things are’. The explanations of subordination may be contradictory, containing
both pragmatism and fatalism: ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ Gramsci
suggests that at moments of heightened struggle common sense crystallizes into
a more critical, coherent and oppositional ‘good sense’.
It was initially certain striking similarities between the romances and thrillers
we were reading and Gramsci’s characterization of common sense which
suggested that the two might fruitfully be thought together. First, popular female
romances are characteristically formed from an amalgam of modern and pre-
capitalist elements. The simplified characterization, the withdrawal from society
on the part of reader and romance heroine, the happy ending, the strongly
enforced code of conduct are all continuing formal elements of romance as a
genre which predate capitalist society. Second, Gramsci points to an analysis of
language as part of an analysis of ‘spontaneous philosophy’, language
determined by, and carrying the signs of, culture and ‘not just words
grammatically devoid of content’. The simple, didactic, clichéd language of
Cartland’s novels does share the proverbial ‘written on stone’ quality of common
sense. Third, the persistent moralizing of popular fiction suggests a relation to
the content of common sense—for example, true love never runs smoothly,
money can’t buy you happiness (but it helps). Last, and most tentatively, there
may be a similarity between Gramsci’s definition of popular religion as a more
systematic fragment of common sense providing ‘a unity of faith between a
conception of the world and corresponding norm of conduct’ and the work of
narrative form in popular fiction. The narrative organizes a plot, produces
coherence, leads the reader from confusion and disarray to a happy ending and
links the happy ending with the triumphs of one common-sense conception over
others. It is the tendency of popular fiction to be linked with the production of
moral norms which suggests the analogy with popular religion. The similarity