7Berkeh – Raheleh Bahador: In moments of collective trauma, the most contested gesture is often the simplest one: the decision to continue living. What appears from a distance as “normalization” may in fact be something more complex and politically charged. What Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), the Italian Marxist philosopher, theorized as a possible political transformation through “good sense” and “war of position” is a kind of resistance we maintain through journalistic activity -in a local framework- in the face of the severe conditions of Iran, after the massive unrests on January 8th and 9th 2026, in which thousands of people were killed and left people traumatized afterwards.
Journalism as Far as Possible
Mohammad Khajehpoor, the manager of 7Berkeh new agency, wrote in an editorial [the Persian version here]: “living in our homeland, Iran, gets more demanding every day. Writing and saying, which are not only our profession but also a part of our lives, demand a superhuman capacity that we do not find in ourselves sometimes. Writing amid social gaps, destruction of hope in the future and massive nonstop economic and political pressures are like walking in a minefield. Every word can paralyze the journalist for days, or make him/her find himself/herself among social gaps, where even ordinary journalistic activity can be interpreted variously; from criticizing the present critical condition to normalizing it. We are aware that in the present condition, each act can be abnormal and each decision can be wrong; however, can we close our eyes and sit passive?!
The fifteen-day blackout of the Internet and communication channels on social media in Iran during protest days, from 8th January up to early February, prevented us from fulfilling our duty to inform our audience.
Sometimes, our work is merely to record what happens, not even to reveal the truth and reality. But is not history the ultimate judged? We have often thought about how we could stay connected as much as possible in case communication routes are blocked again, and we have even made plans for it; to return to publishing forms like newsletter, for example. After all, do we have any other option for continuing than journalism “as much as possible”?!
Back to Life Armed with Good Sense
Drawing on Antonio Gramsci’s reflections in his book Prison Notebooks (1999), this article argues that everyday life as well as oppressed journalism in Iran is not external to struggle, but one of its primary terrains. In societies where direct confrontation is constrained, the decisive form of politics shifts to what Gramsci calls a “war of position” through “good sense” within civil society-within habits, relationships, language, and the textures of daily existence.
In his work Prison Notebooks (1999) Antonio Gramsci elaborates on the importance of everyday life along with its practice within cultural, social and economic fields as a political act which possess the opportunity of political transformation as well. He highlights the importance of challenging common sense as a way of possible political change in society and defines it as follows: “common sense is not something rigid and immobile, but is continually transforming itself,” (199). The point from which transformation and consciousness commence is “the starting-point of critical elaboration as the consciousness of what one really is” (165).
As he writes, “common sense is the folklore of philosophy,” (188); “folklore” is a fragmented accumulation of believes, habits, and inherited conceptions that shape everyday consciousness of people. The most important feature of common sense is that it is still neither critical nor “inherently emancipatory” (Patnaik, 9); to lead to “political action”; it is simply the way people live under hegemony.
The term “common sense” does not entirely carry positive connotations like its English concept, as it is hegemony apparatus people have to live with in its Gramscian definition. Steve Jones in Antonio Gramsci (2006) asserts: “for Gramsci, common sense is a confused formation, in part drawn from ‘official’ conceptions of the world circulated by the ruling bloc, in part formed out of people’s practical experiences of social life. Despite this unevenness, it offers a deeply held guide to life, directing people to act in certain ways and ruling out other modes of behavior as unthinkable” (9). It is clearly the hegemonic articulation of power over the people by the state. However, it serves as both a reflection of societal norms and a potential site for political struggle through “good sense” that is the outcome of common sense.
But what is “good sense”? it is the essence of living through common sense in society, practicing and resisting against hegemonic structures by people. According to Gramsci “in common sense there is a ‘healthy nucleus’ of good sense.” (198) This good sense does not descend from outside; it emerges immanently from lived experience as its critical and coherent potential. The task, therefore, is not to abandon common sense, but to work within it – to “determine and organize the reform of common sense” (ibid. 235). In contexts where direct political confrontation is constrained, this slow transformation of everyday consciousness becomes decisive, “serving as a foundation for social consciousness and political resistance” (Patnaik, 7).
What happens after experiencing a collective trauma is that a “transformed subject” returns into the society. The oppressed subject has extracted “good sense” through common sense which is now totally critical and is by and large a political action in itself.
To return to work, to write, to care, and to gather after collective loss is not necessarily to erase grief; it may instead be to carry it into the domain where hegemony is formed and contested. Under such conditions, the ordinary becomes a site of slow transformation, where common sense can be reworked and memory preserved.
War of Position; Resisting Ruling Narrations
The second aspect is that Gramsci draws a distinction between two other concepts; “war of position” and “war of maneuver”. He writes: “in advanced capitalist societies, the direct ‘war of maneuver’ against the state is impossible; the fundamental struggle must take the form of a ‘war of position’ within civil society, in which the intellectual and moral leadership of the masses is contested” (408).
Attained through common sense, the people who are hegemonized, practice and redefine and ultimately restructure ways of resistance. This is the replacement of war of maneuver which is a fast, direct and revolutionary way of political protest against the status quo, with a slow movement, “proceed via a war of position fought out over a long period in the super structure, in which meanings and values become the object of struggle” (Jones, 31); In other words, “peaceful struggle for hegemony is presented as a ‘war of position’, and Gramsci likens civil society to a trench system.” (ibid. 51)
The rearticulation of memory, grief, and meaning within daily practices can thus be understood as part of a prolonged “war of position”, in which good sense gradually emerges from within the contradictions of common sense and leads to social consciousness and remarkable political changes like what Iranian society is redefining after wide unrests on January 8th and 9th; for example, the way people hold burial ceremonies (death dancing and singing instead of reciting the holy book). The way of redefining concepts through collective crisis embedded into every day life is now obviously practiced by common people after reaching good sense through massive hegemonic political experience.
Over the past four decades, Iranians have gone through numerous experiences navigating social, political, and economic crises, always advancing the struggle for war of position individually, and this individual struggle has now transformed into a collective fight against the ruling hegemony. It can be said that what makes Iranian society still resistant against the ruling power is a collective memory, reached through collective crisis and experiences imposed by the state, and preserving the good sense; as it is seen these days in the overall condition of society, full of rage in a peaceful rhythm of life. We are redefining the ruling meanings, ruling interpretations of reality and still struggling over memory and narration through civil organizations such as media, education, culture, etc. Conducting an ordinary life in the severe political conditions is not solely returning to “normal” life, but a slow permanent confrontation with the hegemonic strata.
Now we return to the main question raised in the first paragraphs: Do we have any other option for continuing than doing journalistic activity “as much as possible”?
References:
Hoare. Q. Smith. G. N. (1999). Selections from Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. Elecbook: London.
Jones, S. (2006). Routledge Critical Thinkers Antonio Gramsci. Routledge: London & New York.
Arun K. Patnaik. (1988). Gramsci’s Concept of Common Sense: Towards a Theory of Subaltern Consciousness in Hegemony Processes. Economic and Political Weekly, 23(5), PE2–PE10. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4378042
