The everyday is everywhere in recent work in the humanities, but to what end? It is hailed as an escape route from the rarified realm of abstract ideas and esoteric knowledge, but it may ensconce us ever more firmly in that same realm. It beckons to us with the beguiling allure of the "really real," and yet discussions of everyday life are indelibly marked by the peculiar anxieties and obsessions of intellectuals. Such discussions are guided, or claim to be, by a democratic impulse; yet behind the tributes to vernacular wisdom and to the élan vital of the people, one often hears the wistful murmurings of a recurring refrain: why can't they be more like us?
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Rita Felski (2002) studied this question.
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