@Joshs@Leontiskos@frank@Tom Storm

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 — Number2018

Obviously the criteria for judging the credibility of a witness can come off at first glance as…. vague, inconclusive; but, if we think about it, there are actual things that are important to us in (correctly, doing a good job of) judging whether someone is believable, and that they are not, say, just making a show of emotion. We can decide someone is faking it (an emotion, a ruse), We can judge whether someone is playing for sympathy. We might realize we were being charmed and that, in the cold light of day, they were trying to pull a fast one, etc. (thus feeling “betrayed” when someone does get away with it; the amazement at having a “poker” face).

I take you to be claiming that someone being upset shouldn’t convince us of anything; sure, granted. But being upset is not always just an expression of emotion, as if detached from someone, their larger situation, the result of a history, evidence of important concerns.

Only attributing “power” to expressions of emotion denies the intelligibility of a person for whom they would be a serious matter (even our duty to imagine it). We judge whether a witness is sincere and believable in order to decide whether to trust their word, not just treat it like another opinion.

To be clear, I do not question the sincerity of Dr. Ford’s account or the possible significance of her experience. — Number2018

I would offer that the powerful thing for people was not that she was upset, but that testimony (from, as you concede, an otherwise credible witness) of an assault was not going to seem to matter in confirming someone to the Supreme Court.

Consequently, efforts to critically assess or scrutinize Ford’s claims were often interpreted as acts of misogyny or trauma denial. — Number2018

Well we have practices for impeaching a witness, attacking their credibility, say, providing evidence contradicting their testimony, but sometimes this is (done poorly) just slander. Some will say that the desire for abstract reason is a form of violence (Heidegger? someone French?). I would merely say it is not everywhere appropriate.

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. — Tom Storm

My law firm does work for large corporations, and one application seeking that work required a very detailed break down of the number of each gender (as chosen), race, ethnicity, sexual preference, and the percentage equity each had in the company. That was the most extreme, but they all had these sorts of things to various degrees.

As if I were going to ask each employee their sexual preference.

In this environment, the entirety of one's business structure has to be modified to remain competitive, and many were hired and not hired based upon this structure.

That is an example of "wokism" dictating, displaying its full force of having become politically successful.

The anti-DEI pushback has been refreshing and feels like proper comeuppance honestly.

wokeness is not purely ideological-it is affective. It is about the desire to feel seen, safe, included, or conversely, excluded. — Number2018

The ideological / affective distinction is really good to note.

Wokism turns legitimate individual rights concerns of safety, recognition and unjust exclusion, into transitory identity-based ideological fabrications less concerned with individuals than they are with groups and generalizations, and emotional effects.

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? — Leontiskos

I agree with that. The legitimate concerns underlying the urges of woke political correctness will need to be addressed if any real cultural progress is to become of these urges, but the manner by which the proponents of wokeness have been trying to cause progress has allowed their passions and emotions to over-power rational assessments and discussions. Certain groups are not allowed to challenge other groups about anything, and certain other groups are not allowed to be challenged by anyone when it comes to their own group - this is rationally untenable and will not hold up in time (without a dictator and force, which never seem to hold up in time either).

The internet allows groups to build a solid bubble world that effectively shuns outsiders and creates a flourishing online community of like-minded people. But it’s more like-feeling people and less minded.

We all give group identity too much influence in our arguments and our thinking. Any one single individual has more reality and force to them than any notion of the group we might temporarily assign that individual too for sake of some argument. Individual people are always more than examples of some generalization. People who argue for and against rights for some newly defined group never seem to mind overlooking the particulars of individual human beings that would resist whatever identity political arguments so crassly limit people to.

There are no two conservatives or liberals or gay men or immigrants or Chinese people, alike. We all know this. We give up sound reasoning when we ignore this fact. We need to resist the urge to think individual people fit neatly into the boxes we create for them to make our arguments. Wokism seems to focus more on the boxes, the identities of groups, than it does the individual people in those boxes.

very detailed break down of the number of each gender (as chosen), race, ethnicity, sexual preference, and the percentage equity each had in the company. — Hanover

And it is self-defeating on at least two levels. First, it is incoherent to say that all people are equal (equity inclusion) and then say we need less of this race and more of that gender (diversity) - if all are equal, then it will not matter what race or gender or sexual preference sits and does not sit on the board and owns the company. Period. Second, the company that seeks DEI compliance will inevitably be faced with the decision - do I do what I see is best for the company and hire this particular best candidate, or do I do what is best for DEI goals and not hire the person I think is most competent? Ideal candidates can come from any DEI category, but on your particular list of candidates, the ideal may only be one of them and those DEI categories must be damned if thinking of what is best for the company. The appearance of diversity is shallow and will always be - and those people who look for the appearances first, having a shallow sense of what a good appearance looks like, will be led into bad business decisions over and over.

The anti-DEI pushback has been refreshing and feels like proper comeuppance honestly — Hanover

Prejudice and racism have always been wrong, wasteful of time, and bad for business. Political correction needed to happen to open markets up, but DEI, the new prejudice and racism, has always been doomed by its own incoherence and internal contradiction.

The Left and the Right are little more than objective morals for people who build identity through externalized values. A puppet tied to strings."Woke and Antiwoke" are expressions of these impoverished mentalities of "Left and Right."

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. — Number2018

You mentioned Ray Brassier as one interpreter you read Deleuze through. His treatment of Deleuze has been described as realist, rationalist, and deflationary, and he appears to embrace an eliminative scientific realism beyond human experience (He was considered one of the founders of speculative realism, although he disavows this movement now). Do you think this is a fair assessment of Brassier, and would you say that you are in general agreement concerning his reading of Deleuze, and his philosophical outlook in general? I ask this because it would help clarify for me where you’re coming from with respect not only to Deleuze but to Foucault, especially concerning the possibility and sense of a critique of affect. As you know, there are anti-realist, or if you prefer, ‘radically relativist’ postmodern readings of Deleuze and Foucault which strongly disagree with Brassier’s take on Deleuze.

In principle, you are correct. However, the 2018 Kavanaugh hearing is a paradigmatic example of a triumphant woke spectacle. — Number2018

A succesful woke spectacle but triumphant? Due process prevailed over woke mob justice. And I think it could be argued that the long-term backlash resulted in strengthening the perception that social justice activism had become censorious, reckless, and morally absolutist.

Good points, and I think that if we want to look at the foundations of what is happening with wokeness we will find that it stems from a morally robust culture combined with increased leisure. Or in other words, you have a morally conscious population of busybodies.

Whenever a group of people find more leisure time, they tend to become more involved in cultural and political issues. They wish to extend their influence into these areas. When such people are morally charged, and morally charged in the particular direction of identity politics, you get wokeness.

I think the increasing leisure is going to produce all sorts of similar phenomena going forward, even though the particular determination of wokeness will not be the inevitable outcome.

Good points, and I think that if we want to look at the foundations of what is happening with wokeness we will find that it stems from a morally robust culture combined with increased leisure. Or in other words, you have a morally conscious population of busybodies.

Whenever a group of people find more leisure time, they tend to become more involved in cultural and political issues. They wish to extend their influence into these areas. When such people are morally charged, and morally charged in the particular direction of identity politics, you get wokeness.

I think the increasing leisure is going to produce all sorts of similar phenomena going forward, even though the particular determination of wokeness will not be the inevitable outcome.

I think the phrase “luxury beliefs” coined by commentator Rob Henderson encapsulates some of the psychology and dynamics. These are beliefs and activities that seek to confer a certain status and halo upon those that express them, while damaging those who they claim to support.

The “defund the police” phenomenon a few years back is a prime example. It was largely expressed by the affluent and well-educated, who were insulated from the consequences of that movement, but their activities negatively affected the lower classes who were then subject to more crime in their areas. And, like luxury apparel, it eventually became unfashionable. They could easily dispense with that belief while the less-affluent were left to live in their consequences.

When such people are morally charged, and morally charged in the particular direction of identity politics, you get... — Leontiskos

I wouldn't suggest that support for their grievances is unwarranted.

These are beliefs and activities that seek to confer a certain status and halo upon those that express them, while damaging those who they claim to support — NOS4A2

You’ll never get anywhere in understanding the origin or purpose of these beliefs by dismissing them as personality defects (status-seeking on the part of the economically privileged). If I introduced you to non-affluent woke activists who have sacrificed personally for the sake of their social justice aims would you try to poke holes in their sincerity, or make an effort to accept their ethical intent and try to understand why they think their approach is superior to more conservative politics?

Your OP is as much sociological as it is philosophical. I will then riff on it sociologically instead of philosophically, though the two are very close.
It is an interesting hypothesis you posit @Number2018, that the woke movement is predicated on the same "forces that shape identity and visibility in public life" as those that celebrate success. The implication is that both movements, the celebration of the marginalized, the victimized, is dependent on the same subjectifying forces that have characterized the postmodern age, social media, pop culture on steroids. I think that is true, but I think it is dependent on some other force too, the disenchantment with progress.

Understood in aesthetic terms, woke culture is the opposite of the aestheticization of violence and conquest. The violent aesthetic goes back to time immemorial. The jousting matches of old were little more than the aestheticization of violence. The Olympic Games of old and maybe sports in general is nothing but the aestheticization of violence. It is the celebration of activity, of subjugation and conquest. In this aesthetic, the victim had no place. The victims were always the masses, they had no face. They were like the nobodies in the wrestling matches of the 80's. The woke movement arose out of an identification with the marginalized, be it women, people of color or the environment. People in the thread here have explained it as a kind of celebration of victimhood and I think they are right in a sense. It is an aesthetic of identification with the victim.

As such it harkens to an undercurrent that has always had appeal. We find an aesthetic of the victim, potentially very powerful, in the figure of Jesus Christ. The aesthetic of the victim personified. However, this aesthetic was never dominant. The cross quickly turned into a symbol of dominance itself. In its name crusades were fought, witches were burnt, and churches were erected. All of these were never in the spirit of the victim, but always of the victor. Churches were erected on the burial grounds of the vanquished, trials were inquisitive, treating the suspect as an object and the crusades were little more than an excuse to plunder. Nietzsche wrote about the herd mentality cultivated by Christianity, but this herd was only a herd because it had a leader. The herd never led itself but always embraced the principle of the strong man. In short, the aesthetic of victory always dominated. So, for 2000 years we have lived with an aesthetic of violence, conquest, and growth.

The question is, in such an atmosphere of superiority of the aesthetic of victory, how could another aesthetic ever come to rival it? My answer would be the onset of the age of risk. We learned after the Second World War that our scientific progress and our conquering abilities could be self-defeating. The most destructive weapon of conquest ever conceived could wipe the entire human race out altogether. Insights of the science of ecology taught us that by vanquishing species, we might end up eradicating ourselves. Overpopulation, that biblical exhortation of conquest, could lead to ecological collapse and a miserable struggle for survival, doomed by resource depletion.

Two lines then converged here: the increased aestheticization of everyday life through social media and the critique of the aesthetics of victory and conquest. This created room for another aesthetic to play a more dominant role, the aesthetic of the victim, the aesthetic of marginalization. This aesthetic draws on a different register than that of growth. It draws on the notions of compassion, on the cry for justice, on leaving each other in peace. The aesthetic of 'small is beautiful', an aesthetic of innocence, an aesthetic of the loser as the one treated unfairly.

This aesthetic that was already gaining in strength from the 70s onwars, allows another perspective to seriously rival the growth paradigm of 'creative destruction', and that is a paradigm of harmony. This paradigm is described in the sociological work of Aaron Wildavsky, but was considered impotent by him. However, in an age in which we have seen and experienced the dark side of progress in the atom bomb, in the gruesome pictures of My Lai, in acid rain and in Covid19, harmony might be considered a serious alternative to progress. 'Woke' then, is nothing but a backlash against the symbols of the growth paradigm, denunciation of colonialism, of racism, of the market economy, of the state and of education, now conceived of as inculcating 'traditional' values. It is no wonder that it targets the aesthetic symbols of the old order, the statues of the heroes of old, the language of the old order, its role models of classic literature and cinema.

What happened next is what always happens when a new challenger emerges, the challenger faces the wrath of the old order. What to make of the recent backlash against 'woke'? To me it is no coincidence that the right aims its arrows against all symbols of harmony, the acceptance of refugees, recognition of climate change and recognition of institutional racism. Its mantras are closing the border, or better, conquering more land, 'drill baby drill' and that woke is an enemy of freedom. In sociological terms, it is nothing but the mobilization and banding together of the forces that see their hegemony threatened. When there was no alternative to industrial capitalism, in the 1990s, they could afford to show nothing but a benevolent face. However, now they face opposition from a worldview that is gaining momentum. That is I think what @Joshs means when he says that in 50 years the ideas now espoused by 'woke' will be mainstream. I think he is right to intuit that its perspective chimes with the tide, but I doubt his prediction will come true. It depends on the political power of the backlash. I think that the resources at the disposal of the traditional order currently far outweigh the resources that 'woke' may mobilize.

To me, it seems rather far-fetched to see woke as more powerful and more authoritarian than the backlash against it, if only because it can marshal far fewer resources of power, for now at least. Being too vocally anti-woke might get you vilified and cancelled in certain circles, but it will not get you expelled from the country. Being too woke nowadays might. The point is that I am not sure if philosophy matters a great deal in this struggle. It is political more than philosophical, and a matter of mobilization and counter-mobilization of resources of power. On the side of woke, we may find academia and a plethora of NGOs. That might be highly troubling for academics who feel more inclined towards a growth perspective, but in society at large, institutions that see woke as an enemy far outnumber academia and NGOs. Nationalist and populist parties win; they are not losing, nowhere in the world, actually. Yet, the old order, dominant for now and for a long time to come, will run up against its limits. We are in an 'unstoppable force' meets 'unmovable object' kind of situation. This clash will release a lot of societal energy.

You mentioned Ray Brassier as one interpreter you read Deleuze through. His treatment of Deleuze has been described as realist, rationalist, and deflationary, and he appears to embrace an eliminative scientific realism beyond human experience (He was considered one of the founders of speculative realism, although he disavows this movement now). Do you think this is a fair assessment of Brassier, and would you say that you are in general agreement concerning his reading of Deleuze, and his philosophical outlook in general? I ask this because it would help clarify for me where you’re coming from with respect not only to Deleuze but to Foucault, especially concerning the possibility and sense of a critique of affect. As you know, there are anti-realist, or if you prefer, ‘radically relativist’ postmodern readings of Deleuze and Foucault which strongly disagree with Brassier’s take on Deleuze — Joshs

I’ve read only one work by Brassier on Deleuze, in ‘A Thousand Plateaus and Philosophy’, so I’m not familiar with his overall perspective on Deleuze. However, I read a few works by Brian Massumi, who is an affect theorist. I think your questions about the relationship between affect and wokeness are interesting and important. I’ll try to respond by applying Massumi’s theory of affect as well as Deleuze and Guattari's 'Anti-Oedipus' framework. It may take a few days.

Very much enjoying most comments here.

The only thing I'd say is that it seems to me we're still in the middle of all this. We're not really past, or prior to 'peak' anything. Things are just moving as they always have, in hte face of both the increase in technology (this could mean reporting, live-streaming, accessibility issues, presentation issues, networking issues, misinformation... anything technologically-driven that relates to our topic) and in turn, the increase in leisure (as mentioned earlier in the thread).

These both lead to people capable of doing things out of boredom and becoming convinced it's meaningful. This, it seems, hasn't peaked.

I definitely agree. It's also worth thinking about the way in which "morality from on high" is doomed from the start. For example, suppose the beliefs and activities of the affluent helped rather than hurt the lower classes. That's the best case scenario, but it is also quite limited given the way in which it inevitably becomes class patronization.

To be very concise, morality cannot be coerced, and this is what the woke movement seems to most misunderstand. If you coerce rather than persuade someone to act "good" you end up subjugating them in a way that will be inimical to truly moral outcomes. Furthermore, the people who are aided by the coercion inevitably feel inadequate and patronized, such as those who are haunted by the possibility that DEI quotas are the only reason they have their job. As an example, Martin Luther King Jr. was remarkably prescient in understanding that coercion and enmity are dead ends if the goal is the long-term improvement of race relations.

I’ve read only one work by Brassier on Deleuze, in ‘A Thousand Plateaus and Philosophy’, so I’m not familiar with his overall perspective on Deleuze. However, I read a few works by Brian Massumi, who is an affect theorist — Number2018

Have you read John Protevi’s work on political affect?

Protevi, J.: and Christian Helge Peters. (2017). Affective Ideology and Trump's Popularity. http://www.protevi.com/john/TrumpAffect

intersubjective norms of rational discourse yield to the immediacy of subjective experience — Number2018

If we are going to call these both means of discourse, they are not competing, opposing methods, as if, for power, or at the expense of the other. They are categorically different, with their own ways they work, separate, specific criteria, and different contexts. Norms and practices form our lines of judgment, terms of valuation. They set the criteria we are familiar with including what is right and wrong. I understand the philosophical objections to “subjective experience”, but I think this is a straw man misconstruing our necessary part in the moral area where we are all at a loss what to do, how to decide what is right—when our norms and practices no longer apply (say, to a novel situation; maybe something until now unseen). Then we move forward based on what we (each, all) are willing to stand for (be responsible for, inteligible to), we further or change our practices, we modify our criteria to reflect our new interests in an unknown landscape. This is not something we feel (or believe), but the actual extending or pushing back against conformity to our standing society. I can understand objecting to specific claims (and of course tactics), but to deny individual moral authority at all, to argue it is without legitimacy or rationality, is either a philosophical misunderstanding or maybe the rationalization of a fear of how democracy actually works.

Morality can be rational, but there is absolutely no non-telelogical way to make it 'legitimate'. I think this is the majority of the problem people are having - substituting something rational for something irrational in order to legitimize moral behaviours (in this case, obviously we're going to be referring rationally immoral behaviour, say violently attacking ICE agents who are, at the time, doing nothing). The irrational substrate of the supporting framework for such behaviour is what's driving much of 'woke' moral discourse. This is irrational. If you then say "lived experience is the only true source of information one can rely on" we get a corner in which irrational behaviour is hte only justifiable behaviour (this is rather simplified, to be sure).

That said, I'm not standing behind that - it just explains, I think, what's being unseen in the exchange above this.

This said, i think the most intuitive problem is that, generally, the 'woke' claim that morality is rational, but relative. If so, they have absolutely no place to make moral commands of others, even in their own culture. That is to say: one ought not throw stones once one denounces stone-throwing.

Morality can be rational, but there is absolutely no non-telelogical way to make it 'legitimate' — AmadeusD

What I meant was that an individual can make a moral claim that is legitimate, in the sense of intelligible, able to be defended, worthy of being taken seriously as a claim on us, not in the sense of legitimized, as if justified, simply by them making it.

I think you may be using “irrational” as in something like unpredictable, but also claim reasons are “irrational” when maybe they are just not understood.

If you then say "lived experience is the only true source of information one can rely on" — AmadeusD

I think we might be able to do better in drawing out the interests of relying on someone having lived through something. Perhaps part of it is like carpentry, which you can’t just tell someone how to do (well, sorry DIYers), so it is learned through apprenticeship. And it may have something to do with only certain types of situations (it couldn’t always help), such as constructing policies that would change things that affect how people live, as it were, not deciding abstracted from all the aspects of a life. As I said above “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.” Analogously, everyone can have an opinion, but there are actual reasons we prioritize their value.

Have you read John Protevi’s work on political affect?

Protevi, J.: and Christian Helge Peters. (2017). Affective Ideology and Trump's Popularity. http://www.protevi.com/john/TrumpAffect — Joshs

Thank you for sharing this article. It looks interesting and relevant, and I’ll definitely read it. As far as I know, none of the known contemporary scholars in political philosophy (such as Butler, Brown, or Massumi) have directly engaged with the phenomenon of wokeness. Is that correct?

the most intuitive problem is that, generally, the 'woke' claim that morality is rational, but relative. If so, they have absolutely no place to make moral commands of others, even in their own culture. That is to say: one ought not throw stones once one denounces stone-throwing. — AmadeusD

I agree. The relativity that would support valuing diversity, undermines the absolutivity necessary to support equity. To be diverse, inequality must be valued; to be equal, uniformity (not diversity) must be valued.

Wokeness and political correctness have always been full of contradiction.

There are nuances and perspectival particulars that allow one to value both diversity and equity, but to make those arguments you have to defeat relativity. And you can’t value diversity and equality equally. “All things being equal” is an ideal, and a political criteria, not a physical condition. We have to fight all physics to uphold “equal due process” for instance. Diversity is a physical condition, that requires much more humility and respect to value - we can’t force the opinion that all diverse cultures are good and equal.

At root, it is the misunderstanding and misapplication of “equity” that seems to be the problem to me.

It is easy to to understand we should value diversity and inclusion of the diverse. It is hard to do this while recognizing there is an essential human nature that all humans equally must have (essence/ideal), and that equity is only something that comes to bear in relation to the government. All get one vote; all are equally subject to the law and constitution; “all” is adult irrespective of race - these are where equality as an ideal is fought for. There is no equal opportunity or equal productivity or equal pay - these are specific particular, diverse conditions that will never be equalized, and it is to the detriment of all of us to pretend otherwise.

we're still in the middle of all this — AmadeusD

Started around the year 1776 in America.
“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Life - equity - most natural of natural rights, same thing for all living people, most ideal, most absolute;
Liberty - diversity - the particular individual is now the ideal;
Pursuit of happiness - inclusion - all free living people are playing the same game and must play together;

That is all a stretch but yes, we are in the middle of some swell and wave called “what is woke” on the larger ocean of history.

You’ll never get anywhere in understanding the origin or purpose of these beliefs by dismissing them as personality defects (status-seeking on the part of the economically privileged). If I introduced you to non-affluent woke activists who have sacrificed personally for the sake of their social justice aims would you try to poke holes in their sincerity, or make an effort to accept their ethical intent and try to understand why they think their approach is superior to more conservative politics?

I would never dismiss anyone’s beliefs and concerns so long as he was talking about them. But activism is not conversation. It is anti-social, ill mannered, and unethical behavior, in my view, no matter the intent, no matter the politics. I would likely dismiss it and ignore it.

At any rate, the phrase “luxury beliefs” is narrow enough to exclude the marginalized.

To be very concise, morality cannot be coerced, and this is what the woke movement seems to most misunderstand. If you coerce rather than persuade someone to act "good" you end up subjugating them in a way that will be inimical to truly moral outcomes. — Leontiskos

Elaborating on this a bit, the coercion engaged by woke culture and the left in general has to do with manipulation of the Overton window. The natural effects of the natural Overton window are not properly called coercion (and neither are, for example, laws which are democratically recognized). An example of coercion proper is the manipulation of the Overton window, or the claim that someone's view is outside the Overton window when in fact it is not (and then the astroturfing of consternation on top of that).

These coercive and tyrannical tactics have largely backfired. The common people have rebuffed the woke attempt to forcibly shrink the Overton window and impose a highly idiosyncratic morality on the entire population. This is the manner in which the woke version of "morality from on high" has failed in our sociologically-inclined culture.

Well, al-Gharbi traces it back plausibly to early 19th century American politics, particularly in the context of abolitionism (which was also a quite religious context, although that's true for most American politics in that century, but it's even more true for abolitionism). Back then though it was being "wide awake." "Woke" in its current format seems to date to 1970s African American activism. It wouldn't surprise me if it was being used, somewhat ironically, for more outlandish conspiracies in that period.

On a related note, there is a broad irony here in "intellectual histories of Woke"—those created by both critics and allies alike—largely or wholly consisting of "dead white men." Whereas the various waves of feminism (predating post-modernism), abolitionism (from whence it gets its name), liberation theology, or, particularly in the European context, the blend of Pan-Arabism to Islamic feminist, to even Salafist thought that flavors their version, etc., all seem to play larger inspirational roles. I don't think it would be unfair to say that Woke has been more Dworkin, less Derrida, or more Huey Newton, less Nietzsche, and more Malcom X, and less Marcuse.

The prophetic and evangelical language comes in because Woke springs from movements (fairly recently and sometimes still) grounded in Christianity and Islam. Sometimes this gets traced back only as far as Marxism, but the whole idea of the Marxist "conversion" is a self-conscious adaptation of the Christian frame it emerged in (early early-modern communists having been Christian radicals whose main inspiration was the Book of Acts). The heavy focus on embodiment is also arguably more a legacy of this other tradition that has made it into broadly post-modern academia, and not vice versa.

That's also why I don't think some of the behavior is going anywhere. It has a 2,000 year legacy in the West. And some of the issues related to demographic tensions are only likely to get more acute in coming decades. Yet the philosophical underpinnings are not unimportant. They helped to unmoor the evangelical and prophetic approach from any philosophy of proper authority and from values themselves. In this, the prophets become their own standard, whereas the tradition of prophetic critique is that the standards the prophets appeal to lies beyond them. This is what allows for a witches' brew where Salafi clerics from groups with members who speak openly about beheading gays and driving "Jewish filth" from the Middle East can be invited to speak under pride banners.



As noted above, I don't disagree with the relationship here between the prophetic tradition and Woke, although I am not sure about Woke somehow being a more authentic and successful transcendence of the pagan celebration of force (which was itself always contained by a fatalism and sense of piety that modern forms of neo-paganism tend to lack). I'd argue that Woke is largely different from the earlier social justice movements that it takes as its main sources of inspiration precisely because it has shifted to a philosophical underpinning that embraces the post-modern "ontologies of violence," and notions of difference as inextricably bound up in warfare.

I don't think this point isn't ancillary. It seems to make it impossible to articulate why Woke should be embraced above any other ideology. If all ideologies are historically situated power grabs, why support one over the other? Any appeal to standards and values here will itself simply be just another attempt to hold one set of values above all the others, a move of domination.

As such it harkens to an undercurrent that has always had appeal. We find an aesthetic of the victim, potentially very powerful, in the figure of Jesus Christ. The aesthetic of the victim personified. However, this aesthetic was never dominant. The cross quickly turned into a symbol of dominance itself. In its name crusades were fought, witches were burnt, and churches were erected. All of these were never in the spirit of the victim, but always of the victor. Churches were erected on the burial grounds of the vanquished, trials were inquisitive, treating the suspect as an object and the crusades were little more than an excuse to plunder. Nietzsche wrote about the herd mentality cultivated by Christianity, but this herd was only a herd because it had a leader. The herd never led itself but always embraced the principle of the strong man. In short, the aesthetic of victory always dominated. So, for 2000 years we have lived with an aesthetic of violence, conquest, and growth.

This brings to mind the responses of John Milbank, David Bentley Hart, and others. Their claim is that it is only through an aggressive misreading and highly selective account of Christianity and Christian history that post-modern critics are able to support their genealogical narrative of Christianity as "just another face of power," their point being that, if this narrative is itself merely "one more interpretation," then the ontologies of violence don't end up being unavoidable. Rather, they themselves simply represent another possible choice in interpretation, one among many open to us.

In line with that, I'd take qualms with the word "quickly." Christianity only stopped being an (at times quite aggressively) persecuted minority and became a legal religion over three centuries after it began. Compared against the history of the United States, with 1776 as our starting point, today we'd still be more than half century from Christianity even becoming legal (and still by no means hegemonic, Julian the Apostate would lie in the future). Indeed, we would be lined up with a particularly brutal persecution, an attempt to exterminate the faith. The First Crusade is almost 1,100 years after Christ's ministry. It is closer to our time than to Christ's or Saint Peter's.

The cross no doubt became a "symbol of dominance," but that is not all it has been. Rather, it functioned according to Maritain's best law of history, drawn from the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:24-30), that the good is sewn with the bad, and that the two grow up alongside one another. Each historical phenomenon, be it the industrial revolution or Christianity, has had positive and negative effects. That's how Christ chose to describe the fruits of his own mission. But against the view that reduces this to something like the Will to Power, I'd recommend something like Solovyov's view of history as the threshing floor on which falsity is paired away from truth. In history, we come to know ideals by their fruit.

To be very concise, morality cannot be coerced, and this is what the woke movement seems to most misunderstand. — Leontiskos

These coercive and tyrannical tactics have largely backfired. The common people have rebuffed the woke attempt to forcibly shrink the Overton window and impose a highly idiosyncratic morality on the entire population. — Leontiskos

Yes. Although I think @AmadeusD was right to say we are somewhere in the middle of this struggle. Despite the current rebuke of wokeness, all kinds of tyranny still loom (either from the right, or from the boomerang when the right loses power again).

Meaning, the current rebuke against wokeness shows fairly well what NOT to do (I think), but the anti-woke crowds’ arguments in favor of what TO DO were the reason wokeness arose in the first place - so we are destined to continue further struggle.

If we are seeing the end of wokeness, without something truly new to replace it, we are likely (at least to many) simply back to a place that gave rise to wokeness. Where is the Hegelian synthesis?

We don’t know how to train ourselves to respect (and love) diversity while simultaneously building common ideals that call us all to change.

Wokeness told us that (except for white men) we are all good enough, and all should accept me and my truth. This led to a tyranny - a tyranny of the majority, a headless group-think bubble. But with this rebuked, the bubble burst, must we all think we are all the original sinners, almost hopeless without some leader to carry us to the promised land? Is a rebuke of the relativistic commune of DEI, an automatic promotion of the fascistic absolutism that begs for a king? Are those opposed to DEI really saying they need a Trump-type Hitler-type, Putin-type, Khomeni-type ideal maker, agenda setter, aspiration definer?

I think in a way, the right is more willing to follow a strong leader, but the more rational of these folks realize there is a smaller pool of such leaders to choose from. Nevertheless, wokeness will never cure anything.

Humility needs to be the overlap. That means white supremacists need to be taught to love black people, and lesbian Jews need to love white male patriarchs. Sorry folks. I must humbly accept and include and tolerate those who are just different than me, despite apparent failings and weaknesses, because ultimately, who am I with my own weaknesses to judge anyone else’s failures before my own?; and I must humbly accept that I can do better and must change myself first if I am to build and emulate a truly good ideal for me and for the community. I must seek help forming my ideal. So must we all.

And forgiveness before correction. Seeking mercy before justice.

So in humility, we all respect the others despite their shortcomings while accepting we ourselves are not good enough either, so we can help each other reach some new ideal together. And in humility, we find there is much to love about the differences as well, which we are slowly coming to learn in America (despite what the politicians build power saying, and what the media makes money selling.)

DEI helped some avoid the reality, which is, we all need to promote respect, and humility, and all need to resist identity politics and ideology over actual humanity. And ultimately we need to learn how to love. Respect, humility and love. Imagine trying to have a Chief People Officer teach those. Need a RHL initiative, that has nothing to do with business or the work place, but has to do with opening our mouths to talk to anyone ever.

We need humble leadership.

worthy of being taken seriously — Antony Nickles

It's this part that I think falters. For the person who rejects your moral position, you wont be taken seriously. There are plenty of 'woke' 'commands' (land acknowledgements, pronoun use etc..) which are routinely not taken seriously on expressly moral grounds. Again, i'm not saying anything moral about the two possible outcomes, but I'm trying to show that most 'moral' positions cannot be made to be sensible to others who don't intuitively get the point of the moral claim being made.

I think you may be using “irrational” as in something like unpredictable, but also claim reasons are “irrational” when maybe they are just not understood. — Antony Nickles

I see that this is something I've not accounted for, but I wasn't using it that way. When i say 'irrational' I mean not something "the right-thinking person" would actually engage in (vigilante justice is a good example here, where there's good self-interest and perhaps even community interest, but it is irrational to put one in the position of potentially facing life in prison for front-footing the law). Rationality would be something where you've assessed your goal and made a good faith deliberation about what might get you to your goal. This speaks, again, to the inability to legitimize one's moral positions to others. Some would say vigilante justice is 100% rational and its worth a life in prison to, say, remove ten child predators from the world. I can't understand that, but I don't call it irrational, once I know the person's position. I have no place to judge it that way, unless their actions expressly forego achieving their goal.

Analogously, everyone can have an opinion, but there are actual reasons we prioritize their value. — Antony Nickles

I agree, but our reasons are incoherent (when read acorss several avenues of application). We do not accept that 'lived experience' is a good metric for an accurate appraisal of anything, until it comes to how one has been victimized. But this may be the most skew-able reactionary device in the human mind. Over-reacting, post-hoc rationalization among other things seem to make this type of data-crunching immune to being helpful.

I pause here to make a carve-out for what's called Epistemic Injustice. In those cases, the lived experience and the reportage thereof is all we could possibly use to move ourselves forward in the sense wanted by the one reporting. This isn't the same as taking D'3'Vyon (de-tray-vee-on) at his word when he claims he found a noose on his school desk and that's why he robbed a store and punched a pregnant woman (or whatever - many such stories) and requires much more of, I think, what you're getting at. The former concept (i.e policy considerations, or instantiating social norms) doesn't seem to accept this type of assessment without falling into totally irrational nonsense in fairly short-order.

The final thought there, is that "valuing" opinions is insane, on a policy level, unless we're talking expertise. Life Experience is not expertise, in any sense, to my mind. Maybe there's a disconnect there.

There is no equal opportunity or equal productivity or equal pay - these are specific particular, diverse conditions that will never be equalized, and it is to the detriment of all of us to pretend otherwise. — Fire Ologist

This is the nail being struck, I think. The wishful thinking about wanting to remove disparities has been, and I think will continue to be, wholly destructive. People do different shit. Grow up.

You've done much more which I commend in the post below this one (not all, but I don't want this reply to go on and on).

Meaning, the current rebuke against wokeness shows fairly well what NOT to do (I think), but the anti-woke crowds’ arguments in favor of what TO DO were the reason wokeness arose in the first place - so we are destined to continue further struggle.

If we are seeing the end of wokeness, without something truly new to replace it, we are likely (at least to many) simply back to a place that gave rise to wokeness. Where is the Hegelian synthesis? — Fire Ologist

Well, there was no "anti-woke crowd" before wokeness, and wokeness ironically created much of the sentiment that it claimed to oppose, such as racism. I actually think wokeness is largely self-generated. I think it has to do with a "civil rights warrior" mindset that had largely run out of issues to champion, and so it had to start conjuring them in the form of "micro aggressions" and whatnot. Since at least World War II we have created a sort of internal righteousness monster that needs to be fed. If there are no obvious injustices then injustices must be conjured up or else minor issues must be magnified, even at the cost of great collateral damage.

Well, there was no "anti-woke crowd" before wokeness, and wokeness ironically created much of the sentiment that it claimed to oppose, such as racism. — Leontiskos

I agree with that. I don’t know how best to characterize the anti-woke. It’s like a tradition-first crowd. It’s not that they are pro-badness conducted in the past, but pro-the goodness that got us to the present.

Wokeness sees the dirty bath water and wants to throw out the dirty water while overlooking the baby.
Traditionalists want to preserve the baby, but overlook the dirty water and would rather keep it all.

Wokeness is worse, which is what I hope the current moment in history teaches us.

But the bath water is still dirty..

The wishful thinking about wanting to remove disparities has been, and I think will continue to be, wholly destructive. People do different shit. Grow up. — AmadeusD

Yup.

Well, there was no "anti-woke crowd" before wokeness, and wokeness ironically created much of the sentiment that it claimed to oppose, such as racism. I actually think wokeness is largely self-generated. I think it has to do with a "civil rights warrior" mindset that had largely run out of issues to champion, and so it had to start conjuring them in the form of "micro aggressions" and whatnot. Since at least World War II we have created a sort of internal righteousness monster that needs to be fed. If there are no obvious injustices then injustices must be conjured up or else minor issues must be magnified, even at the cost of great collateral damage.

Absolutely. I wrote an article a while back that World War II has become the "founding mythos" of modern liberalism. In doing this, it has made (generally manichean) conflict and struggle a bedrock part of identity formation in a way that is unhelpful.

But then there is also the disparagement of custom that is so obvious in thinkers like J.S. Mill, which has become almost a heroic virtue in contemporary society. It's a sort of trope of modern hero narratives that the heroic protagonist has no time for custom and "paves their own way." This can be seen all over the Marvel movies, or in hit shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc. The antagonist, by contrast, often represents a sort of stereotyped, medieval, authoritarian archetype.

It's made for plenty of great media, but the problem comes when transgression is valued for transgression's sake. That's how you get caustic, counter-productive, purely performative activism. I'd also argue that it's how we got a real resurgence in unapologetic fascism and neo-Nazism. Hitler became the face of evil, the ultimate taboo, and so of course those who value transgression cannot keep themselves away from Hitler, even if only ironically at first (e.g., the Sex Pistols used to parade around in swastika shirts). But the "taboo appeal" of Hitler and fascism seems to have actually transformed into a potent recruiting tool for unironic Nazis. I'd argue that at least some of the continued appeal of the Confederate flag has similar roots.

I don't think I'd say that we necessarily ran out of issues to champion. I'd say the larger issue is that every issue tended to take on the urgency and Manichean dimensions of the Civil Rights Movement. For instance, migration has obviously often been reframed as simply a continuation of the Civil Right Movement, where opposition to a maximalist immigration policy becomes a sort of explicit racism in the way Jim Crow was. Or Ta-Nehisi Coates (among plenty of others) looks at the Arab-Israeli conflict, and sees the Civil Rights Movement as the obvious analog. Some environmental issues disproportionately impact some minority populations, and so it becomes a Civil Rights-style issue, etc.

Wokeness sees the dirty bath water and wants to throw out the dirty water while overlooking the baby.
Traditionalists want to preserve the baby, but overlook the dirty water and would rather keep it all. — Fire Ologist

Right. :up:
I tried to delve into this sort of issue in fdrake's thread.

I'm not really convinced an overly rational account of what wokeism is reacting to is possible, because I think @Number2018 is correct that the movement is more affective than rational. But I think wokeness is correctly construed as wanting to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Fdrake's posts in that thread are perhaps the best attempt I know of to characterize the issue from the woke(-ish) perspective.

Edit: I say "woke(-ish)" because steelmanning wokeism runs a severe risk of transforming wokeism into something it is not.

...it is also worth noting that wokeness is not inherently reactionary, at least in one particular sense. The name conveys this, "woke." "Awake." It is styled as a project to awaken the slumbering, not to chastise the aberrant. Obviously that didn't last long, but it does point to the idea that the genesis of the movement was not a reaction to something like the "anti-woke."