If I address you with the wrong pronoun and you respond with pained moral outrage, it is because your feelings are expressing your assessment that I am culpable for my slight, even if I insist that it was inadvertent. There are no accidents or innocent mistakes when concepts like while privileged and implicit bias judge us guilty in advance. It is this assumed culpability by association, birth and ingrained use of language that is at the bottom of the hyper-moralism attributed to wokism, not a blind reliance on the authority of affect. — Joshs

I've wondered about this process myself. Simple question: do you think wokism is a significant and growing issue in society?

I've wondered about this myself. Simple question: do you think wokism is a significant and growing issue in society? — Tom Storm

Well, ssu pointed out that wokism tends to be used by those hostile to practices they associate it with, so right from the start the term defines behaviors deemed problematic. But I think what makes them problematic is fascinating. If you introduce a new way of thinking about social and political interactions which has not had time to be absorbed into the general culture, and then you proceed to demand that everyone whose behavior doesn’t conform to its standards be cancelled, you will be vilified as a tyrant (or as privileging irrational affect over logic).. It’s not the demand for conformity by itself that produces the hostility, it’s that what it is in service of is incoherent to most people, so your efforts will be explained as a desire for power and control. We already live in a society controlled by strict norms of conduct, but there is a general consensus of understanding about the nature of those norms and standards. My own critique of wokism is that it keeps too much from traditional societal norms (righteous moralism).

Yes that makes sense. I'm trying to understand how "wokeism" when seen as problematic has any significant impact beyond rhetorical ‘grandstanding’ by various people making different kinds of claims. So far, this just sounds like the usual complaints people have about forms of identity politics.

I'm not saying there aren't issues, but what I’m looking for are concrete, institutionalised examples, something with real substance, that's meaningfully different from, say, right-wing identity politics where people view all of life through the lens of gun ownership, MAGA, or Christian nationalism, where ridicule and debate are also used to silence dissent. We know this group censors libraries, for instance. Everyone wants to control the narrative, if not the world.

I'm not saying there aren't issues, but what I’m looking for are concrete, institutionalised examples, something with real substance, that's meaningfully different from, say, right-wing identity politics where people view all of life through the lens of gun ownership, MAGA, or Christian nationalism, where ridicule and debate are also used to silence dissent. We know this group censors libraries, for instance. — Tom Storm

You mean examples where people got hurt , had careers ended, etc, because they were on the wrong end of wokist politics?

Yes. I note career’s have often been ended if people failed to support a particular line. It’s standard in organisations like universities and schools.

About 10 years ago the U.S. news media was filled with stories about how the me-too movement ruined the careers of celebrities like Senator Al Franken and tv journalist Charlie Rose. In academia, professors were fired over the innocent use of words like ‘spook’. It seemed as though administrators were letting a small group of students dictate policy based on arbitrary grievances and the policing of language. Invited speakers were uninvited or prevented from speaking based on their conservative views. Meanwhile, trigger warnings and safe spaces protected students from even the suggestion of uncomfortable ideas, or ‘micro aggressions’.

What was new about wokism was that a huge domain of speech suddenly became the equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded theater.

I’ve had academic friends lose positions for failing to agree with the department they work in. It was never about woke ideology or sleeze. The examples sound like a mixed bag. I would think Rose and Franken may well have had this coming. But aren’t universities always full of odd radicalism and party lines? I guess you’re saying what’s new is the extent of it. I’d be curious to learn how significant it really is.

It really didn’t seem to last very long. There was a backlash, university administrators took control and protected free speech, due process became a thing again. I think what has happened is that what started as an active policing of speech has morphed into peer pressure. If one cares about and identifies with the perspectives of those who are active within a ‘woke’ community, then one will find oneself making an effort to be conscious of such things as the use of pronouns. Ultimately, it’s positive persuasion rather than threats which cause a movement to spread. Acceptance of gays by mainstream culture resulted from the discovery made by people around the world that their own parent, child or co -worker was gay, not by lecturing from liberals.

I wasn't working when the woke shit hit the fan. It is certainly the case that there are 'party lines' which employees are expect to follow. Or else. Nothing new there.

A number of incidents that were reported in the press had in common a small, loud, aggressive, vanguard group that bullied everyone that got in their way. There's nothing new in that either, but it seemed to work especially well in good-mannered academic settings.

In the short run, woke gang tactics are successful, but in the long run, not so much. Administrators resent being bullied. Most people resent it. The vanguard group goes to extremes, making absurd claims and demanding unreasonable solutions. Later on, after the vanguard group has graduated, found different jobs, moved away, died, or gone crazy, the long-term bed rock institution reasserts itself.

Woke-gang crap doesn't fly in corporate settings. A group of disgruntled employees trying to bully the boss are likely to find themselves on the sidewalk without jobs, and persona non grata.

Woke-gang crap doesn't fly in corporate settings. A group of disgruntled employees trying to bully the boss are likely to find themselves on the sidewalk without jobs, and persona non grata. — BC

:(

I, for one, would rather it worked and didn't result in homelessness.

I'm in favor of fanning the flames of discontent at oppressive workplaces, but IF rebels are going to do battle with the boss, they should be prepared to get fired -- whether its just or not. Sometimes the rebels win, and get what they want and need. Lots of times they don't.

Getting fired isn't the end of the world (usually).

:up: I appreciate these replies. Thank you.

I realized that you actually have done some work in coming up with some theories about what is important in judging these claims (whatever they actually are). Wittgenstein found that the criteria we use to judge a thing, reflect our interests in it. So all we have to do is look at the criteria you are telling us are used, to get at what you think their interests are.

There is an epistemic shift in the grounds of justification, so that the conventional norms of rational discourse yield to the immediacy of subjective experience. — Number2018

irreversible transformation of the autonomous, rational subject of liberalism into a digitized, emotive, and aestheticized form of subjectivity. — Number2018

But this seems to fall into very, very old frameworks of reason vs. emotion, or abstract vs individual, which are as old as philosophy. We demand rationality and view anything else as personal, but our requirement to only allow abstract reason is what blinds us from seeing any other criteria as rational at all, including that some claims require consideration of individuals, their pain. Setting that aside, there are still some attempts to guess at the desire of this claim.

So, emotional authenticity has been elevated to the status of epistemic foundation of identity politics and online discourse. — Number2018

Isn’t this just to acknowledge that how someone feels is important in these kinds of claims, but then dismiss it out of hand before understanding why? You add “authenticity” but I think you mean the demonstrative, performative display (or outrage on behalf of others), but I would point out again that the possibility of playing up our emotions does not get at how they matter here.

struggle between oppressing and oppressed groups — Number2018

Taking a smaller step than this very tidy number of generalizations, I would think we could agree that one concern is suffering. I take you to postulate that the claim is for retribution against those that caused the suffering, and I’m sure there is that. I think, however, the more fundamental claim is the desire to be seen as, treated as, an ordinary person** (otherwise like anyone else) whose pain has so far gone unnoticed (and, yes, perhaps dismissed, undervalued, etc.) With this, it is now easier to see that: just “being seen”, in the sense of popular, is simply the superficial version of that larger claim.

**the marking of the just and unjust is a matter of moralizing, as is any demand powerless to make you accept any part of these claims (after actually getting to the real need here). You would, as it were, have to see this for yourself for it to have any weight.

prioritizing a collective identity over personal freedom. — Number2018

I do think that part of this is about having power, and that there is a corrupted version of that as well, but, again, I take it there is a more serious claim to accept, which may be: there is no power to avoid the pain, or that it should not have to be a matter of power. Thus I think the circumstances are important to this kind of claim, in that we are being asked to look closer, specifically, for something we have been missing, which we would miss in generalizing the grounds, evidence, situations, etc. This makes me think we are perhaps skipping forward to assume ends, goals, enemies, etc., when the claim stops before all that.

I'm not sure how wokeness is different from an agenda of conserving grudges, as if we lost the momentum and are now losing all the gains from the Civil Rights Movement. We've landed back in the 1960s and the only way forward is to demand corporate virtue signaling. I'm detecting a lack of underlying meaning.

I'm not sure how wokeness is different from an agenda of conserving grudges, as if we lost the momentum and are now losing all the gains from the Civil Rights Movement. We've landed back in the 1960s and the only way forward is to demand corporate virtue signaling. I'm detecting a lack of underlying meaning. — frank

What the Civil Rights Movement in the US fought for or labour laws in my view isn't anything to do with woke or wokeism. Just as isn't the shortly lived protests against Israel's actions in Gaza. The proponents of DEI surely might see them as the continuation or those that continue to further these past political struggles, but in fact they are not.

The US has a real political crisis with Trump's actions and is on the road for an fiscal, monetary and economic crisis ....sooner or later.

What the Civil Rights Movement in the US fought for or labour laws in my view isn't anything to do with woke or wokeism. Just as isn't the shortly lived protests against Israel's actions in Gaza. The proponents of DEI surely might see them as the continuation or those that continue to further these past political struggles, but in fact they are not.

The US has a real political crisis with Trump's actions and is on the road for an fiscal, monetary and economic crisis ....sooner or later. — ssu

Wokeism, as it's related to identity politics, is specifically not about addressing economic instability. It's about uncovering sources of social injustice.

There is nothing amoral about the classical economic notion of selfishness, which is why al Gharbi’s thesis is so compatible with it, and in fact depends on the same Enlightenment-era notions of the autonomously willing subject.

In its original development, maybe not, although key figures there tended towards a view of morality as mere sentiment (although sometimes divinely authored mere sentiment!). However, it developed towards the idea that people behave mechanistically, at least in the aggregate. People are "rational agents" only in the sense of utilizing data computationally to achieve their ends; however, morality is excluded from this (wholly instrumental) "rationality" and rolled into the black box of utility instead (i.e., essentially marking it under "tastes"). Morality, to the extent it shows up, comes into play in the ultimately irrational preferences agents rationally attempt to fulfill. Anything more substantive is bracketed out to a special "normative" sphere, outside the purview of positive economics.

Hence, work in political economy can speak of supply and demand curves for terrorism, fatalities, or suicide bombings. Campaigns of gang rape can be reduced to "costly signaling" and "hand tying" as a sort of rational, game theoretic maneuvering exercise to maximize utility payouts. Man, as described in reality, functions amorally. Morality, when it shows up again in normative political economy, is superadded onto a presumably complete description (obviously, there is a sort of presumption here, in that it must be assumed that the part, economic and political life, can be properly described without reference to a whole that presumably includes morality and value).

Nietzsche's descendents are far from the only ones who think they have ascended above good and and evil. There is also certainly a strong view that clear-eyed analysis looks at efficiency and optimization, and that when one steps into the realm of explicit values one has in a sense stepped downwards, into "doing politics" and not "political science." Consider the opinions of some "effective altruists" towards "morality" versus efficiency.

But, it seems to me that in all these cases the very claim that it is better to have risen "above" morality is:

A. Itself a moral claim; and
B. Self-delusion.

One can place oneself above the intellectual plebeians who still think in moral terms—in terms of righteousness (as the some partisans of the positive over the normative often do)—but this ends up being itself a value-laden dismissal. To turn against moral judgement is already to have made one—against what is seen as simple-mindedness, absolutism, false universality, etc. Such a move is not actually free of values, but rather simply committed to different values, such as irony, distance, subversion, or procedural neutrality.

Yet, we might just as well argue that man is a moral creature and indeed that this is precisely what elevates him above the brutes or the status of a mere machine. Indeed, perhaps we ought to hold such a view. That is, to try to erase value from one's considerations of politics and the world is not to "rise above" good and evil, but simply to become evil. It is a sort of intellectual and moral degeneracy that is then locked in place by an overweening pride in one's own superiority and capacities. It's the result of the distinctly modern pathologies of a straitjacket intellectualism that makes the current limits of man's systems and language the limits of being (and the possibility of union with being) and a volanturism that makes the will curve in on itself and becomes its own object, the Augustinian curvatus in se, which reaches a limit in a sort of black hole-like event horizon of total self-absorption—Dostoevsky's Underground Man and Nietzsche's unstable late work being prime case studies here.

I am not even sure if Nietzsche would agree with his post-modern descendents here. Almost no philosopher spends more time blaming other philosophers or hurling value-laden invective.

Nor do I think the progenitors and partisans of Woke necessarily misunderstand their sources. Since we have no dyed in the wool Wokelati here, let's consider what their response might be to the criticisms in this thread:

They would probably say something similar, that the claim that their ideology/movement is flawed because it focuses too much on "moralizing," is itself a value judgement in line with cis white male normativity. Indeed, your list of names turned into adjectives proves their point; these are all cis white men of a past epoch who have failed to fully transcend their privilege. They are most useful in terms of the inspiration they gave to later feminist, indigenous, etc. thinkers, not in themselves.

They have not "failed to understand" by engaging in moralizing, they have simply rejected a cis white patriarchal normativity that pretends to oppose itself to value while also privileging its own hegemonic values. They would reject claims about spectral evidence or any "error of moralizing." Consider the language of anti-colonial revolutionaries or of figures like Malcom X and Martin Luther King. These are loaded with value. It has been this discourse that has helped liberate the oppressed. That fields dominated by white men find it to be, in a sense, "distasteful" or a "misunderstanding," is only due to their own biases. Understanding is constitutive, and identity is constitutive in the very possibility of understanding.

Hence, they are not misunderstanding the way knowledge and truth claims are constituted. Rather, their claims to epistemic priority on issues related to marginalized groups are based precisely on this understanding. It is why they have a privileged epistemic perspective. Intelligibility only exists within systems of discursive discourse. The idea that they are dealing primarily in emotion or "spectral evidence," or that they are engaged in inappropriate "moralizing" would itself be an attempt to privilege a white and male view that is uncomfortable with the assertiveness of values in feminine, indigenous, etc. terms.

Second, the claims in this thread that they are going "too far," or are guilty of alienation also itself privileges entrenched cis, white, patriarchal systems of dominance. The person facing systematic racism, systematic sexism, aggressions, etc. is being asked to simply accept that they suffer them longer, even after a lifetime of having suffered them, so as to not offend the sensibilities of the dominant group. The very focus on "productivity" in calling their methods "counterproductive" is white and male biased. Critics are also "on the wrong side of history," their criticism being akin to demands that Civil Rights Era activists or those struggling to overthrow colonialism "settle down" and "wait patiently." S


Since intelligibility is inherently bound up in community membership, those outside a community should practice good allyship by listening and being receptive. Certainly, they cannot point to a standard of "proper understanding" as set by a list of "canonical" old, cis, white, men, all from philosophy, a discourse totally dominated by whiteness and patriarchy, while calling extensions of those thinkers in much more diverse fields a sort of "error." This would be to miss that intelligibility only exists within those discourses and identities that lie external to their standards, which is a tyrannical attempt to absolutize their own normative standards (even if these are claimed to be "non-moralizing.")

Or, in summary, critics need to: Check. Their. Privilege. :clap: :clap: :clap:






Well, it isn't wrong about some things. But a problem here is that "experts on fascism" have been ringing the tocsin about immanent fascism for decade after decade. The Tea Party was immanent fascism, W. Bush was a fascist, the Clinton pivot to the center, Reagan, Nixon, 1950s consumerism and consensus, all a step from fascism. So, that takes some of the wind out of it. At the same time, the "Long March Through the Institutions" was in some sense a stunning success, but in other ways it was a failure in that it simply collapsed faith in/support for key institutions, particularly the justice system, media, and academy (in part because the ideology suggested just this sort of outcome).

It's certainly true that every Presidency now seems to involve unprecedented new acquisitions of power by the executive branch, and to a lesser extent the judiciary. This is because the legislative branch has become an extremely dysfunctional, and in many ways hated, institution. This is a phenomenon that goes beyond the particularities of US politics. Trump's second term might be exceptional in this regard, but it follows a long pattern. The centralization of power and lawlessness are longer term trends, but the video puts all the emphasis on Trump. I don't think that's necessarily off base. There are many issues more specific to Trump. But it's worth recalling that Marius, Sulla, etc. had to trample institutions and norms before there could be a Caesar or an Augustus. The "left" and "right" took turns destroying the Republic, and who ended up in control when all of the illusions finally broke down was largely an accident of history. The late Roman Republic strikes me as the right analogy here for a host of reasons.

What the Civil Rights Movement in the US fought for or labour laws in my view isn't anything to do with woke or wokeism. Just as isn't the shortly lived protests against Israel's actions in Gaza. The proponents of DEI surely might see them as the continuation or those that continue to further these past political struggles, but in fact they are not — ssu

Certainly Marxism and post-colonialism were elements of 60’s activism, but It tends to be the psycho-social aspects of wokism that some surviving participants of 1960’s activism object to. The focus on the power of language and material structural aspects of social practices to create and sustain implicit bias derives from Critical theoretic and poststructuralist sources. Critical theorist Herbert Marcuse was the intellectual darling of the 60’s Berkeley intelllectual scene, but didnt have an influence on the theoretical wing of the civil rights movement. Writers like Foucault were writing in the 1960’s but their work didn’t make its way into the playbook U.S. political activists until at least the 1980’s. While 60’s figures like Angela Davis and Noam Chomsky are avid supporters of the pro-Palestinian cause, the anti-zionism associated with it is anathema to some 60’s social justice veterans, and I suggest this may be due to the ‘wokist’ belief that even if one is a well-meaning zionist who espouses equal rights for all citizens of Israel, nonetheless one comes up against one’s own ineradicable implicit bias owing to the religious or cultural nationalism zionism enacts.

. The focus on the power of language and material structural aspects of social practices to create and sustain implicit bias derives from Critical theoretic and poststructuralist sources. — Joshs

I wouldn't knock their contribution, but slogans like I am somebody come from the experience of the oppressed with the devasting effects of a negative identity. This was a theme from at least the 1940s onward. I don't think there's any reason to try to locate the wisdom in it to one set of actors.

And no doubt there are some zealous left-wing activists who go too far, — Tom Storm

Well I would say once the term woke is used then it has gone too far. In this sense I would not say there is a 'healthy' form of wokeness. :) I would say the term itself is always pejorative. Like for instance there is not a healthy form of crazy.

There are healthy Leftist views and social justice advocates but I would not call them woke.

It is funny when I hear that word because I seem to recall waaaay back in around 2006-8 or so it used to mean the conspiracy theorists. I mean when conspiracy theories were kind of intriguing to people and before the age of debunking that came after. So from what I remember woke just meant someone who looks into those kinds of things and somehow remember Jo Rogan using it in this context when his podcast was still in its infancy and niche. Have I remembered it right?

It is like the Pepe frog thing, which started as something totally innocent and got co-opted by the alt-right.

Žižek’s post-Marxist critique of wokeness is compelling in many respects. However, he falls short of fully disclosing the nature of wokeness or accounting for its emotional appeal and social power. His framework remains confined to traditional ideological critique and thus may overlook a crucial dimension: wokeness is not purely ideological—it is affective. It is about the desire to feel seen, safe, included, or conversely, excluded. Through wokeness, underlying structures of power can engage with and regulate deeply human emotions of shame, guilt, pride, vulnerability, and anger. It operates without the mediation of ideology, class struggle, or systems of political representation. — Number2018

Instead, I attempt to diagnose a shift in discursive practices, particularly in the domains of identity politics and online activism, where affective expressions of marginalization have begun to function as sufficient sources of epistemic and moral authority. My argument is not a metaphysical claim about truth; it is rather a phenomenological observation about a shift in rhetorical argumentation in public discourse. You rightly point out that for thinkers like Foucault, Deleuze, and Heidegger, knowledge is always situated in structures of power, affect, or ontological attunement. However, those thinkers are engaged in an epistemic inquiry, rather than describing contemporary discursive practices. What we are witnessing today is not the philosophical deconstruction of rationalism, but a normative inversion in the public sphere. Thus, emotional experience and perceived marginality are not retained within rigorous ontological framing. Instead, they assert themselves as affective self-reference of truth and moral authority, becoming resistant to questioning, nuance, or deliberate reflection. Therefore, one needs to differentiate the rigorous epistemic critiques of the mentioned thinkers from the description of today’s affective politics of visibility and recognition.. — Number2018

Great posts and thoughts. What would you say to the objection which says that wokeness is a transitory phenomenon? That given its affective character it will never be more than a bridge between more stable and rational cultural epochs?

On the one hand I do not think it will go away quickly. On the other hand I do not think it has the wherewithal that is traditionally needed for durable staying power. I suppose the question is then whether the new social media technologies have altered the landscape to such an extent that affective movements will become more permanent.

The analyses of Focault and Deleuze are not critiques of affect per se, but of how affect is disciplined and made legible—subsumed into power/knowledge formations. Critique is aimed at sedimentation, normalization, and instrumentalization—not at affect’s foundational role. Deleuze’s entire philosophical project (especially with Guattari) can be read as a critique of how desire/affect is captured by molar systems—Oedipal structures, the State, Capitalism, Signifiance, etc. Not a critique of affect as such—but of affect when it gets captured by stratifying assemblages that block lines of flight — Joshs

Thank you for your responses. Btw, I’ll respond to your second point about the role of affect in the context of wokism later. However, I disagree with your claim that Foucault and Deleuze do not offer a full-scale critique of affect. Your statement that “the analyses of Foucault and Deleuze are not critiques of affect per se, but of how affect is disciplined and made legible—subsumed into power/knowledge formations” is only partially accurate. While insightful, it risks downplaying the ontological commitments both thinkers make toward affect and desire.Foucault, for instance, interrogates the bodily, emotional, and relational dimensions of power. Power, in his view, does not merely repress; it incites, induces, and seduces. His concept of the microphysics of power within disciplinary regimes becomes a theory of affective modulation. His method reveals how affect is produced, channeled, and governed. In this sense, his theory of power becomes a philosophy of affect, in the sense that is thoroughly conditioned by and entangled with power relations.Regarding your point about Deleuze and Guattari, you’re right that desire- affect is always embedded within social, historical, and material strata. Yet, desire is fundamentally affective. Despite their insistence that desire only exists in relation to molar structures and historical plateaus, it remains affective at its core. It is non-psychological, impersonal, composed of flows, intensities, and blockages. Desire, in their framework, does not stem from lack; it produces and generates reality through bodily and collective flows and assemblages. Their conception of desire-affect is ontological—it constitutes the very fabric of social, psychic, and material life. Ultimately, their work is grounded on affect in the Spinozan sense: the capacity to affect and be affected.

Is the extent of your OP that there are legitimate objections to these methods? That rational discourse has become lost? This is of course a serious issue (deeper and more wide-spread than even these concerns I would think). But do your objections to these methods include (and wish to refute) the underlying interests? — Antony Nickles

In an attempt to provide an example of that kind of inquiry/discussion: If we look past the demonstrations we take as (somehow completely) reflecting “woke” “culture”, can we brainstorm what might be the circumstances involved, the necessity of the claim, even the need to make it in a fashion we might misinterpret or not know how to make intelligible? Don’t these claims have a history? Here I am not enough of a social critic to know the answers, but, if we are to be “woke”, what is it we were asleep to? — Antony Nickles

@Leontiskos

I realized that you actually have done some work in coming up with some theories about what is important in judging these claims (whatever they actually are). — Antony Nickles

why you are unable to generalize the grounds, evidence, situations, etc. This makes me thinks we are perhaps skipping forward to assume ends, goals, enemies, etc., when the claim stops before all that. — Antony Nickles

Thank you for your posts and for sharing your reflections on my OP and other posts in this thread. I’d like to clarify a few of my personal moral beliefs and intentions to address the concerns you raised. I do not believe that our contemporary circumstances negate our moral responsibilities or undermine our capacity for moral judgment. Nor do I reject the rights of minorities or subjugated groups. Also, I do not see what I’ve written here as a comprehensive theory or a set of universal claims. It seems your critique may have misrepresented the scope and intent of my argument. I just want to raise a few concerns, and I remain open to modifying my views. In this thread, I’ve noticed that many contributors either misunderstand what wokeness entails or dismiss it as a marginal and negligible phenomenon. To illustrate why I believe this is a mistake, I want to bring a widely recognized and deeply resonant public event of the 2018 Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh. The confirmation process was significantly impacted by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony. I cannot and do not claim to know whether her allegations were factually accurate. However, it is likely that her testimony derived its power from the emotional credibility and perceived sincerity with which it was delivered. Despite the absence of physical evidence or eyewitness corroboration, her visible fear, trembling voice, and hesitant speech were interpreted by many as signs of epistemic and moral authority. To be clear, I do not question the sincerity of Dr. Ford’s account or the possible significance of her experience. Rather, I wish to draw attention to the discursive conditions under which her narrative was received. It was not primarily treated as a legal or evidentiary claim, but as a form of emotional sincerity, gaining credibility through affective resonance and social identity. Her testimony was framed and understood within broader narratives of gendered violence, which in turn shaped the public’s moral response. Consequently, efforts to critically assess or scrutinize Ford’s claims were often interpreted as acts of misogyny or trauma denial. Again, my intent is not to diminish Dr. Ford’s pain, marginalization, or trauma, but to highlight the discursive and affective patterns that underpinned the public reception of the case.
Likely, the Kavanaugh hearings exemplify the extent to which public life is structured by affective discursive formations of contemporary woke culture.

What would you say to the objection which says that wokeness is a transitory phenomenon? That given its affective character it will never be more than a bridge between more stable and rational cultural epochs?

On the one hand I do not think it will go away quickly. On the other hand I do not think it has the wherewithal that is traditionally needed for durable staying power. I suppose the question is then whether the new social media technologies have altered the landscape to such an extent that affective movements will become more permanent. — Leontiskos

I agree with you that wokeness is not a transitory phenomenon, and it is not about traditionally understood durable power. What matters more are the underlying structures of power, which show a remarkable ability to rebrand and adapt their affective grip. As we become increasingly conditioned by digital infrastructures, our dependence on affective patterns within society only deepens.

Certainly, the Kavanaugh hearings exemplify the extent to which public life often is structured by affective discursive formations of contemporary woke culture. — Number2018

Sure, and that seems uncontroversial. But is that which is structured by affective realities durable? Are affectively grounded systems ever more than transitory? I want to say that in the past they have not been, and that movements which do not rise above the affective tend to implode or simply lose momentum with time. So based on such precedent I would expect wokeness to go by the same road. If this is right then in 7-12 years it will have transformed into something rather unrecognizable. In a lot of the responses I am seeing this same idea, namely the idea that wokeness is a kind of tremor that is primarily a symptom of deeper tectonic shifts. So I don't mean to make light of it, but I guess I am wondering how it is best situated among other cultural movements, some of which have been very long-lasting.

Of course the caveat is that our age of social media may be different, and may be capable of sustaining affective phenomena far beyond what would have been possible in the past.

As we become increasingly conditioned by digital infrastructures, our dependence on affective patterns within society only deepens. — Number2018

Okay, good. That is the sort of claim I was wondering about, and it relates to my "caveat" above. I can definitely see merit in such a claim, and if this is right then I would surmise that wokeness is but one possible determination of a culture which is becoming increasingly dependent on affective patterns.

Scrub

@Joshs @Leontiskos @Tom Storm @frank

I do not attempt to re-inscribe a metaphysical binary between reason and emotion — Number2018

You may be wishing to qualify your argument with the above somehow (it’s not “emotion” but power), but a variation of this is happening on multiple levels. I would offer that it avoids making the actual interests, or does not allow them to be, intelligible on their terms. Case in point:

emotional experience and perceived marginality are not retained within rigorous ontological framing. — Number2018

What we are witnessing today is not the philosophical deconstruction of rationalism, but a normative inversion in the public sphere. — Number2018

I take this as guessing that these claims do not attack rationality on its terms, but rather pull the ground out from under it, which I would again argue is only to understand rationality a certain (impersonal) way, assuming that those claims are not expressions of any serious interests. You have judged certain methods to be illegitimate, but I am suggesting we set that determination aside to first understand the concerns themselves (as reflected in the desired criteria). I take one interest to be the acknowledgement that (among other things) our shared terms of judgment make us unaware of certain (various) concerns, and thus unaware of what the unexamined conditions, criteria, consequences, and recourses are currently in place surrounding and affecting those concerns.

escape the dominant power formations. — Number2018

this doctrine of knowledge that literally pushed [Foucault] towards the discovery of a new domain, which would become that of power. — Number2018

The characterization of a claim only as a desire for power again overlooks any underlying interests. Characterizing the claim as “escaping” to a “new domain” is denying the possibility of making those interests intelligible to us, relegating power (or persuasion) as the only option (giving up on actually getting to the bottom of them). And having an interest in adding to, or changing, the “dominant formations” of our practices, our judgments, does not necessitate that the only means are power (unless violence is the only avenue allowed).

I take the claim that “identity” be elevated to an important consideration, is to want the valuation of the human (but not just an individual, or an accounting of its exclusion, to be a necessary part of this type of claim, not just an abstract argument about what should be the case. I would think the initial interest in “power” would merely be to have what is important in these situations be made explicit and accepted; to be allowed to make claims and provide evidence in a discussion of a situation where and when no one has more authority to know or decide what is right.

legitimacy, moral authority, and social control now flow through different channels. — Number2018

It seems like what these are should under consideration. I have suggested that perhaps these claims and those making them have been historically not considered “legitimate” (that we were asleep to them as to people with important concerns), that we have not given them the opportunity to matter to us, not given these issues the importance, say, to impact our society, our practices, our judgments.

practice is subordinated to representation — Number2018

reconfiguration of power through identity — Number2018

expressions of marginalization have begun to function as sufficient sources of epistemic and moral authority. — Number2018

So it appears you are claiming that representation, identity, and marginalization are the interests that are being asked to be criteria for our judgments about… what exactly? (I would venture maybe what we should reconsider of our current practices, the assumptions, what is being ignored, how we attribute value, the basis for response, etc.) Apart from even having that correct, the question is whether these are the most generous, accurate descriptions of the interests taken as seriously as possible.

I’m not sure what these would look like as criteria, but assuming representation is someone being a representative of a certain group, that implies that the interest is that the response should not be decided outside of all the aspects of a life.

they assert themselves as affective self-reference of truth and moral authority, becoming resistant to questioning, nuance, or deliberate reflection. — Number2018

Valuing that someone is representative does mean that not every person’s evidence will carry the same weight as just anyone else. This is a hard pill to swallow for someone that believes one earmark of rationality is that it should be the same for all of us. Here, “questioning” perhaps becomes doubting the importance of their life as a practice; bringing up “nuance” and “reflection” is maybe to suggest we don’t trust that the foundation of their testimony is, ultimately, them (that at a point we become powerless; that rationality at times must cede to other criteria).

If we are interested in identity as an issue, I would think it would be the desire to have control over who I am (how I am to be defined). Marx, Emerson, Nietzsche, Rousseau, etc. would point out that we are already defined, by outside means or conformity to culture or the terms of society, and suggest ways we could assert ourselves. Now even if we don’t believe that we are someone, inherently, we might still appreciate that some of us are unfairly unable to assert ourselves at all. The desire not to be marginalized seems pretty clear; not to be systematically ignored, sidelined, not allowed a voice, or not shown respect, etc.

establishing a cultural norm where a testimony of harm received moral and epistemic authority… the status of the primary epistemic standard. — Number2018

My expression of pain is the best case for our knowing pain (to the extent pain is related to knowledge). Wittgenstein will point out that you can just as equally know my pain in the same way. But I am the only one able (with the authority) to “express” my pain (in that I own the responsibility for that), but the standard to judge its authenticity is just as much yours, thus the possibility to judge the “credibility” of a witness. The thing is that knowledge is not our only relation to pain; when I say “I know you are in pain”, the way it works is that I am accepting (or rejecting) you as a person in pain, the claim your pain makes on me—to take you seriously. Perhaps the interest here is to point out that some testimony is being dismissed because of the inability to see (or trust) the witness as a person, as in: one who it is important to listen to to begin with. Perhaps because we’d rather deny its authenticity than reconcile that amount of pain to a person, I don’t know.

moral claims based solely on feeling hurt or offended. — Number2018

Well this seems impossible to avoid now; the expression of pain (writhing on the ground), solely, by itself, makes a claim on us, to respond. Now, as part of how it works, we can ignore someone’s pain, ignore them, for any number of reasons. We can refuse it as a claim on me to do anything. Perhaps we are scared to, or resent being forced to, accept the claim someone else’s pain makes on us.

this phenomenon likely calls for a deeper philosophical framework to better understand the contemporary affective landscape. — Number2018

I take this as the fundamental misunderstanding, placing rationality as the sole resource. This is not a matter of understanding through philosophy, but (maybe even philosophically) realizing that the job is understanding people and their interests better.

All in all, the Kavanaugh hearings exemplify the extent to which public life is structured by affective discursive formations of contemporary woke culture. — Number2018

Curious that you only look at one side of the spectacle. The testimony of both Ford and Kavanaugh was emotional and lacked the explicit language or rhetorical style that typically marks woke or anti-woke discourse. Ford was adopted by the woke and Kavanaugh by the anti-woke, and the anti-woke won.

Curious that you only look at one side of the spectacle. The testimony of both Ford and Kavanaugh was emotional and lacked the explicit language or rhetorical style that typically marks woke or anti-woke discourse. Ford was adopted by the woke and Kavanaugh by the anti-woke, and the anti-woke won. — praxis

In principle, you are correct. However, the 2018 Kavanaugh hearing is a paradigmatic example of a triumphant woke spectacle. And it perfectly illustrates an epistemic shift in the grounds of justification so that the intersubjective norms of rational discourse yield to the immediacy of subjective experience. Only recently has anti-woke discourse begun to gain momentum and take the lead. Yet this turn also reveals how underlying structures of power can rebrand themselves and adapt their affective grip with remarkable resilience.