In this lecture, Sara Ahmed – one of our most vital political thinkers and the 2026 Hope Street Writer in Residence at the University of Liverpool – considers some of the early critiques of common sense as ideology in cultural studies.
In her political history of common sense, Sophia Rosenfeld notes that ‘common sense generally only comes out of the shadows and draws attention to itself at moments of perceived crisis’.
Common sense has been defined against many others, from idealists to sceptics. Those who threaten common sense by questioning certainties of sex and race are now questioned by critics to mock identity politics as political correctness. In this lecture, one of our most vital political thinkers asks: can we retell the story of common sense from the point of view of its others?
Presented by the Centre for New and International Writing, University of Liverpool, in collaboration with Tate Liverpool.
Sara Ahmed is an independent feminist scholar. Her work is concerned with how power is experienced and challenged in everyday life and institutional cultures. Her new book, Common Sense and Its Others, is forthcoming with Duke University Press. Her most recent books are No Is Not a Lonely Utterance: The Art and Activism of Complaining (2025) and The Feminist Killjoy Handbook (2023), both published by Allen Lane. Previous books include Complaint! (2021), What's The Use? On the Uses of Use (2019), Living a Feminist Life(2017), Willful Subjects (2014), On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (2012), The Promise of Happiness (2010) and Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (2006), all published by Duke University Press.