Abstract: This essay focuses on the role that discursive structures such as "neoliberalism" play in political theory, and on how these heroic discourses inhibit theoretical projects seeking to generate solutions to damaging political projects. In response to a discourse-focused trend within political theory, this work elaborates an 'activist political theory' intended to be both theoretically rigorous and tactically enriching for the embattled groups from whose lives political theory often springs. As one example of an activist political theory, this essay explores political theorist Paul Apostolidis's work with the 'ordinary politics' of a group of immigrant workers in Washington state, and the Gramscian ideologies undergirding his theoretical approach.