There is no "anti-wokeism", just normal peope wanting the insanity to stop. And Trump is a political outsider, not really part of the political class as I understand it.

You can’t reject what you don’t know exists — praxis

Is that a way of saying you can be woke, but I wouldn’t know it?

Just like I can be anti-woke and not even know what that means?

You could just talk to me like I’m talking to you, saying what you think yourself about the value of wokism and the situation with bud light.

Another non-conversation underway.

You have no idea if maybe “wokeness” is a type of sleep. Do you? I mean, how could you, right?

I am unaware to the extent you haven’t said what you think. That’s for sure.

Here, I’ll give you one more opportunity to tell me what you think - I’ll show you how speaking your own mind is done. I hear Cisgender versus transgender bud light drinkers? And I think that is not as meaningful as what Kid Rock said with a gun and a case of beer - which had more to do with people not wanting to make every single thing a political statement. Maybe CRT is misguided, fetishizing the political too much.

Everything does not have to be that deep - have a few beers once in a while and you might wake up to what Kid Rock was saying to all you serious politicians who know what is best to to be aware of.

If you know better, I want to wake up.

You can still be the bigger man here. I’m not that hard to talk to. All you need to do is extend half amount of thought on the issue than I’ve shared. You said the response to a transgender bud representative was unconscious reaction to a power challenge. You said a few other things. Is that it?

Is there anything at all that if made into a political issue would annoy you? Is there anything positive at all one such as yourself might draw from opposition to Bud’s ad campaign? Maybe this opposition might have less to do with cisgender normativity, and more to do with being forced to learn the meaning of “cisgender normativity” from a beer ad? Are you getting the other side at all, or must we talk about what you want to talk about only, after the beer ad plays.

You are making @AmadeusD point about how hard it is to talk to proponents of wokism (which Instill have to assume you are one, because you won’t just talk to me and tell me what I asked.)

The repudiatory nature of wokeness is inconsistent with the metaphor of waking from slumber. — Leontiskos

Again, without having any actual knowledge of what “woke” is, couldn’t our current culture—our interests in the judgments we share, what matters, even what is rational—be asleep, as in unaware, of the world as it is, the overlooked importance of others’ interests, say, other’s pain, as with Wittgenstein’s recognizing an aspect of something (or not, being blind to it; in one way, because we want them to meet our criteria, to “know” their pain, PI p. 223).

Descartes will ask if we can be aware that we are dreaming in much the same way we recognize others as not automatons (in just seeing hats and coats moving past a window). “We judge that they are [people].” 1st Med. p. 8 (my emphasis). It takes an effort to see someone as a person, as someone different than me, perhaps with competing interests, different measures of importance. In being asleep, perhaps we are not making that effort, perhaps in only looking for, or considering as valid criteria, hats and coats.

Or maybe we are lulled into sleep, staring at Plato’s shadows, trapped in Rousseau’s chains, not seeing Thoreau’s dawn because it is midday. If we are to wake, or judge that we are awake, we would have to become aware of what we had overlooked, say, that black people were being killed by police for reasons claimed to be unexamined, not yet deemed to matter. We may need to reconsider our criteria for judgment, say, of how we value (evaluate) people (though I’m sure someone else could come up with better examples).

Philosophically this first looks like turning back, reflecting on our current criteria that have been unexamined, fallen into presumption; to “remember” them Plato says; draw them out explicitly, their assumptions, implications, etc. I would think it’s not hard to accept that, at times, we have not, and need to, question our culture, our slumbering conformity to it, to give it life and incorporate new situations, overlooked concerns, say, the interests of “strange people” as Wittgenstein says, which I discussed is possible here and here.

@Number2018 @NOS4A2

So if the wokist is an activist, then their activity is not aimed at rational persuasion. What follows is that to try to agree or disagree with an activist is a category error. — Leontiskos

I knew this was going to get sticky. I am not arguing for activism as a means of persuasion, nor am I even arguing that activists deserve a discussion; only that, despite all that, we can make their interests intelligible (before agreeing/disagreeing to them), even if only by imagining them (as, analogously, we can read people)—as we might with someone blowing up beer cans. To claim we cannot—to judge the other as “irrational” or otherwise dismiss intelligibility—is, categorically, a decision we make, rather than an impossibility (as with lions, which I get into here).

It takes an effort to see someone as a person, as someone different than me, perhaps with competing interests, different measures of importance. In being asleep, perhaps we are not making that effort, perhaps in only looking for, or considering as valid criteria, hats and coats. — Antony Nickles

I agree with you fully about persons. Each of us are worth the effort to be seen and taken as unique and individual persons. Period.

I also think we don’t have a country without a border and we don’t have a border without telling the world to honor our rules at the border, and we are not honorable if we don’t seek to lawfully enforce those rules fairly, with no regard to race or religion or gender.

How is all of that unaware and asleep, at least how is that any more unaware than thewoke” person who thinks America will always be here for the immigrants of the world seeking to better their lives.

That is just one issue to put some minimal flesh on a bigger complex conversation. But one step at a time.

Am I deplorable and not even worth talking to? That has been the first question for the past 15 years or so before engaging any anti-woke argument. Did Trump make it all worse for those who never wanted to argue anyway, or is there anything the woke need to learn that they do not seem to be aware of?

Woke is a classic vehicle to keep people divided and bickering amongst each other. That's why conversation is impossible - it is explicitly against the purpose of the movement.

People's resentment and inner conflicts are cultivated and projected on a scapegoat.

It's an opium for the people - rather than facing and taking responsibly for one's struggles, one gets to absolve themselves, claim a moral high ground, and blame everyone else. One then gets to act out and destroy with good conscience - another addictive, psychological delicacy.

The harder people keep doubling down on this rejection of personal responsibility and using it for a sense of moral superiority, the harder it will be to reverse course. The resulting cognitive dissonance forces people to get even more radical, resentful, etc.

Like I said, classic stuff.

How is all of that unaware and asleep, at least how is that any more unaware than thewoke” person who thinks America will always be here for the immigrants of the world seeking to better their lives. — Fire Ologist

But this is different in that we have a known issue, a clear view of the interests, and are just debating what to do. And yes, we do need to also conduct such a discussion ethically as I have suggested, but I don’t take the description to be about your reasoning, as if you are unaware as in uninformed. I think it is just a different kind of moral issue when our culture is overlooking something, like we wouldn’t recognize it (not even have the opportunity to be interested in it) analogous to when we don’t have the words (nobody in California cares whether rain is spitting, misting, pouring, sheeting, dumping, etc.—just: it’s raining! as in, not a drought).

. I think it is just a different kind of moral issue when our culture is overlooking something — Antony Nickles

Do you think of support for trans youths as something that was previously overlooked? Many (both right and progressive) now see it as a problem created by woke culture.

I'm certainly not committed to the idea that all philosophy is good, and that all philosophical "progress" is necessarily part of some sort of providential unfolding. It seems to me that some philosophies are bad, having a largely negative impact on philosophy itself and culture in various epochs. That is, the good is sown alongside the bad in history, and the history of philosophy has been no different. So, prima facie, I'm not necessarily looking for some sort of theodicy of reason whereby all ideologies will necessarily lead towards a better future (except as perhaps an example of which paths not to follow). Hence, a properly broad view doesn't need to find a silver lining in every cloud.

That said, I do have a hard time thinking of influential philosophies that are wholly without merit. As respects individual thinkers though, and on the balance—I'm not sure if Ayn Rand or "Bronze Age Pervert" represent any sort of teleological advance, let alone Richard Spencer. If they result in "progress" it will be accidently.

Much of the critique Ive read so far ranges from ad hominem attack on character flaws in the activists ( status seeking) to historical regressiveness ( it’s a return to fascist thinking or a twisted variant of Romanticism.

Appeals to status seeking can be merely descriptive as well. It doesn't seem they are prima facie wrong. If they were categorically off-base, then it would also be the case that segregationists and white nationalists cannot be acting to defend their own status and interests. Yet that is, quite explicitly, what they claim and understand themselves to be doing. In their newer forms, they just claim that everyone else is also doing the same thing, covertly or not, and that they're at least honest about it. However, earlier defenders of segregation were much more covert about their ends, and yet I hardly think we can avoid the conclusion that these too were also partly motivated by defending their status and control over resources.

Second, I think I'm the only one who mentioned fascism and the idea (Milbank's, although the seeds can arguably be found in Dostoevsky) is that the logical conclusion of the ontologies of violence is fascism. That is, when there is no transcendent order of peace, goodness, or truth, instead only contingent systems of power, difference, and conflict—when truth, law, and morality are not a participation in Logos, but are rather constructed through acts of force (e.g., discourse, statecraft, capital, language games)—then violence is original, and there can be no counter-violence which truly transcends violence. There is only ever assertion over and against counter-assertion, will to power against will to power (plus or minus some post hoc rationalization, which is itself merely another assertion of value). This is precisely the spiritual logic of fascism.

Now, against this, I suppose are the "natural selection meets whig history and Hegel" accounts of the superiority of liberalism, where liberalism is superior because it is more stable, wins wars (through the promotion of technological and economic innovation and growth), and is better at both non-violent (physical violence) coercion and positive conversion, and kinetic struggles in the long run. But even if this were true (and the growth/power trajectories of China and the US versus say, Northern Europe, suggest it isn't) this isn't a normative justification of liberalism, but just an endorsement of it as a strategy of power. Plus, if liberalism entails democracy and liberalism cannot be electorally successful, that's an internal contradiction in the strategy. It might be that liberalism simply represents a bundle of "self-replicating, persistent strategies" that could be even better assembled under a fascist technocracy (e.g., "neo-feudalism.")


The other point is that the philosophies of critique can only tear down, often due to an obsession with ideological purity and negative liberty (Hegel's charge against French radicals). So, they themselves don't pivot towards fascism. Instead, they tear down existing norms, narratives, and institutions, but lack the wherewithal to replace them with anything viable. This opens of an ideological power vacuum where more robust discourses of violence can flourish, which is, I would argue, precisely what we have seen. If the left continues to meet political failures, which I think is very likely due to technological and economic changes, even if they have some merely electoral successes, I wouldn't be surprised if more explicitly ideologies of power rise to the top there as well, as characterized by the "ironically unironic" embrace of neo-Stalinism in far left online spaces, where Kulak memes might prove to be what "ironic" Nazism was to right wing spaces a bit over a decade ago.

As for Woke becoming the dominant ideology the way Neoliberalism has been in 50 years, in 50 years China and India will be the world's largest economies. The EU in particular is on a growth trajectory to become increasingly irrelevant, and the war in Ukraine has shown that it seems likely to continue to underperform its economic standing in both hard and soft power. It would take a radical sea change for these ideologies to be allowed to get anywhere in China, even if they were popular there (whereas they are popularly ridiculed on Chinese social media). I don't think India will prove exceptionally fertile ground either. Whereas sub-Saharan Africa will be to that epoch what Southeast Asia was to the 90s-2020s, the main target for new investment and consumer markets, and there are a lot of reasons to suspect Woke would need to be radically transformed to have an appeal there too. I'm just not sure that it will make sense in these settings, and a look at how Woke analogs have developed in Japan and Korea might be a good indicator here. In particular, the Sexual Revolution seems key to Woke, and yet this is probably the number one area where thought indigenous to the developing world has said: "no thanks," and "please stop trying to force this on us."

I think that is not as meaningful as what Kid Rock said with a gun and a case of beer - which had more to do with people not wanting to make every single thing a political statement. — Fire Ologist

It was hard to decide on a product. This was the funniest:



And I mean no disrespect by not engaging more. I don’t want to trash the topic further with useless bickering.

And I mean no disrespect by not engaging more. — praxis

I appreciate the recognition that I could feel disrespected. A gesture of respect would have worked too, but telling me what you don’t mean by your disrespectful posts says maybe there is hope in the future for an actual conversation.

I don’t want to trash the topic further with useless bickering. — praxis

But you just did.

You could have cleaned it up by offering something of substance.

Enjoy yourself and your woke jokes!

Do you think of support for trans youths as something that was previously overlooked? — frank

I’m not sure anyone imagined trans as anything but a funny preference adult men had (Bossom Buddies?), and that it had something to do with wearing women’s clothes and padding a bra, so I’d say no, the interests and needs of young trans wasn’t in the cultural awareness

I’m not sure anyone imagined trans as anything but a preference adults had, and that it had something to do with wearing women’s clothes and padding a bra, so I’d say no, the interests and needs of young trans wasn’t in the cultural awareness. — Antony Nickles

I think the problem is that the interests and needs of young trans people was created by woke culture. We now know that gender dyphoria is not a sign that a child needs puberty blockers and surgery. That both the UK and the US tripped over themselves providing that kind of "therapy", without research, was a result of the power that wokism had for a minute. That minute has now passed, I think. This is not a backlash from the right. It's just a recognition that we screwed up.

The question is: was this catastrophe just the cost of progress? Or is it a sign of something gravely wrong under the hood of wokism?

I think the problem is that the interests and needs of young trans people was created by woke culture. — frank

And then what are the interests of trans youth? What are our parental interests in them? Support appears to be a need; what that is to look like may be, as you say, a matter of knowledge (which is a different debate than an investigation of the judgments society historically made and what interests they overlooked).

I don’t have answers to your questions, but I would agree that cultural reassessment comes with costs, as does the time before it.

I don’t have answers to your questions, but I would agree that cultural reassessment comes with costs, as does the time before it. — Antony Nickles

It comes with a cost if it's joined to aggressive social engineering. The cost is unnecessary pain and suffering as we learn from our mistakes and try to back up. I think the tide is turning against wokism because much of it was never tested for reasonableness before it was established as the bar we all need to be reaching for.

But this is different in that we have a known issue, a clear view of the interests, and are just debating competing criteria for a decision about what to do. And yes, we do need to also conduct such a discussion ethically as I have suggested, but I don’t take the description to be about your reasoning, as if you are unaware as in uninformed — Antony Nickles

I offered it as an example of how I reason. Maybe you personally don’t take it as a sign of me being asleep and unaware, but generally, people who talk like me are seen to be driven by unconscious fears. We are unaware of the real and whole persons affected by my policies. I dehumanize humans, by default. I am therefore a sub-human class of sorts - just deplorable. This is all packed into someone who reasons “we need stronger borders and to deport illegal immigrants.” This is packed into statements like “DEI doesn’t work.”

What I am saying is, part of the woke methodology of reasoning seems to be avoiding anything on its face that appears anti-woke, and instead analyzing for sub-text, the dog-whistle, looking for virtue signaling or lack thereof. Maga types and conservatives and tradition-lovers, are objects of incredulity, whose behavior and speech can only be examined from the outside, not engaged with directly, (as we are engaged here so you are the exception).

See my conversation with Praxis - that is how it typically goes.

Woke doesn’t clarify what their virtues are. Not to anyone perceived as anti-woke.
Woke doesn’t address what a border is and why it exists.
It doesn’t believe that the race and nationality of an illegal immigrant has zero to do with the issue. Such notions are lies and cover.

The woke person knows immigration policy is about white nationalism, racism and oppression - it’s about winning political campaigns. No need to say “border” at all.

This is one example to demonstrate what I (and others here) see as a pattern, a way of woke argumentation and thinking.

Maybe, over time, and with much more discussion, it will help Mexico and Mexican people if we secure the border. That is an insane and insensitive statement to a woke person, a lie to hide hatred and fear, a careless indifference to the suffering of human beings. End of discussion. Before any discussion starts.

I am willing to debate and be educated, but such debate almost never, in good faith, happens. My opinion is discounted by the woke from the start. That has been the case all of my adult life (since the 80s). Trump and Trumpism hasn’t fixed any of this - he’s just shown the world how there has been no conversation at all before so many changes, wanted by a few, have been forced upon everyone. And to show that, he’s forced changes on everyone - using a bludgeon, like Kid rock used gun, to restart the conversations.

Let’s pretend we are all reasonable human beings who want what is good for all human beings. Even Trump. Even Maga. (Imagine that!!). Wokism, generally, wouldn’t allow any discussion on such grounds. By definition, if I don’t already agree with what is woke, I am asleep and unable to have a reasonable conversation.

That is the problem with wokeism to me - its inability and unwillingness to debate and address reasonable challenge. (That’s what praxis said about me, as he shut down the discussion.)

I knew this was going to get sticky. I am not arguing for activism as a means of persuasion, nor am I even arguing that activists deserve a discussion; only that, despite all that, we can make their interests intelligible... — Antony Nickles

Yes, of course, and I don't think anyone has claimed otherwise. The question is not whether we can but whether we should:

The question arises: Should we attempt to understand and sympathize with activists? — Leontiskos

The repudiatory nature of wokeness is inconsistent with the metaphor of waking from slumber. — Leontiskos

Again, without having any actual knowledge of what “woke” is, couldn’t our current culture—our interests in the judgments we share, what matters, even what is rational—be asleep, as in unaware, of the world as it is... — Antony Nickles

Sure, but do you generally repudiate people who are sleeping or who are unaware? Negligence and sleep can go together, but they generally do not. So if someone is committed to repudiating others, then they should probably call them "negligent" rather than "asleep" or "unaware." In that case there would be less linguistic "violence" involved. It also explains why Buddhists don't go around repudiating everyone who is not awakened.

reform of wokist excesses can take place within the bounds of these philosophical ground
— Joshs

They can't, it appears. Theory isn't particularly of any moment here — AmadeusD

What if that theory appreciates, as Antony appears to, that ‘rationality’ can’t be separated from what’s being dichotomously treated as merely “feeling -based’ and emotional? Let’s say one articulates what arises incipiently in the guise of an intuitive feeling into a system of logically coherent assertions amenable in principle to empirical test. How far does that articulatory effort go toward alleviating the need to do what Antony is prescribing, making oneself responsible for stepping outside of one’s system of rationality in order to have the chance of glimpsing another’s affective-rational system from their own perspective? Or should one only be responsible for anchoring discourse to some overarching meta-rational facts of the matter?

critical theory moves away from Cartesianism by showing the subject to be formed through structures of bodily, material and social interactions. Postmodernists like Derrida and Foucault go much further, making the subject nothing but an effect of these worldly interactions.
— Joshs

I just wonder why this process which sounds like it should be neutral as to outcome always yields the same political conclusions. Liberal wokism is the only result of postmodernism - how is such uniformity of outcome possible given such undefined unformed clay as “bodily, material and social interactions.” Why is there no legitimate facist dictator, but there can be a legitimate woke pontificator? — Fire Ologist

As I mentioned earlier, wokism, to the extent that it can be connected with Critical theory, is realist in outlook. So it shouldn’t be surprising that it is not neutral concerning what is real and true with respect to material or political structures. The situation is quite different for post-realist postmodern writers such as Foucault and Derrida. Unlike wokists, they do not point moralistic fingers at those who fail to take the ‘right’ course, and do not articulate social and political change via a legitimate/illegitimate binary.

There’s a lot that needs to be absorbed in order to situate the various positions within and after wokism. For instance, among Critical theorists, why does Habermas reject Adorno’s negative dialectical realism in favor of a positive hermeneutic model of communicative action? Why does Rorty believe that Habermas’s reliance on Kantian categorical norms of rationality is too metaphysical? Why does Deleuze attack Rorty’s pragmatism as platonic dogmatism? Which of these positions is most or least compatible with the moralistic blamefulness of wokism?

Enjoy yourself and your woke jokes! — Fire Ologist

Credit where credit is due–that's a real product. I photoshoped this however:



It illustrates a protest against political messages appearing on commercial products. Shoot'n up half woke and half anti-woke equally. Powerful message, right?

Anyway, another CT insight is that even resistance (wokeness or anti-wokeness) can be turned into a commodity in late stage capitalism.

Deconstruction shows what continues to bind together groups on either side of an oppositional divide, so one can never simply overcome what one opposes.
— Joshs

Now apply that to your post, because you transgress this principle multiple times. You say, for example, that Derrida was critical of Marxism and therefore Marxism cannot be used to explain his thought. On the contrary, a critic of Marxism is by that very fact informed by Marxism - especially one who holds that one can never simply overcome what one opposes. — Leontiskos

Congratulations. You have just summarized a a central feature of deconstructive reading. it can one be ‘informed by’ and at the same time move in a wholly other direction? Derrida say yes. Even repetition of the identical meaning
returns the same sense differently. Absolutely other but at the same time informed by what it differs from.

even resistance (wokeness) can be turned into a commodity — praxis

I wouldn’t say “even wokeness” - I would say clearly wokeness is a money maker. It is highly funded, lobbied, commercialized, packaged, tee-shirted, gas-masked, etc etc….

Is that a CT insight? Or just an insight? Or even just a disinterested observation?

Interesting you said wokeness is resistance. Can you elaborate - is resistance essential, like awareness is?

Imagine that we decide to become woke about the issue of vaccines. There is controversy. It's being said that we've slept long enough, allowing these substances to be injected, even though we all knew big pharma was raking in the profits from it. We'll take that as a sign that we need to reassess this.

How would you want to start this reassessment?

among Critical theorists, why does Habermas reject Adorno’s negative dialectical realism in favor of a positive hermeneutic model of communicative action? Why does Rorty believe that Habermas’s reliance on Kantian categorical norms of rationality is to metaphysical? Why does Deleuze attack Rorty’s pragmatism as plaronist dogmatism? — Joshs

Do you think there is something internal to Critical Theory that would adjudicate between these many divergent views? Can CT tell us whether Rorty or Adorno or Habermas is the better way? Or is indeterminacy inherent to CT, and we will always need to wait for something even better, and/or always return to something left unfinished?

As someone who began studying for his doctorate in Paris in 1989, Barron knows a fair bit about figures like Foucault and Derrida. — Leontiskos

Based on the video, I would say he knows next to nothing about them, but in order to demonstrate this, I would have to locate a more extended text of his on the subject and compare through it line for line with actual quotes from the authora.

As someone who began studying for his doctorate in Paris in 1989, Barron knows a fair bit about figures like Foucault and Derrida. — Leontiskos

Based on the video, I would say he knows next to nothing about them, but in order to demonstrate this, I would have to locate a more extended text of his on the subject and compare through it line for line with actual quotes from the authora.

Critical theorists and realists are distinct groups, but there is overlap between some critical approaches and a philosophical position known as critical realism. In general, most critical theorists are not realists in the traditional philosophical sense—especially within the Frankfurt School tradition and related approaches, which often critique the very idea of objective reality and emphasize the role of social constructions and power in shaping what counts as "truth"...
— Perplexity AI

So my intimation that your claim is highly inaccurate is now stronger. Note too that the folks on TPF who gravitate towards Critical theory generally do not consider themselves realists. — Leontiskos

Run Adorno through Perplexity. I ran him through ChatGPT and found this:

“Postmodern relativism (as seen in thinkers like Lyotard or some interpretations of Foucault) often claims that truth, meaning, and values are socially constructed, contingent, and plural, with no overarching meta-narratives or objective standpoint. Adorno rejects this kind of relativism. He believes that there is an objective world and that truth matters, but that our conceptual frameworks and societal structures distort our access to it.

Habermas, a member of the Frankfurt school born a generation later than the original group, endorsed a hermeneutic approach influenced by American Pragmatism. According to ChatGPT:

“Habermas does not endorse naïve or metaphysical realism (the idea that we have direct access to objective truths independent of any interpretive framework). Like many post-Kantian thinkers, he acknowledges the linguistic and intersubjective mediation of knowledge and meaning. In this sense, Habermas shares some insights with postmodern and pragmatist thinkers: all understanding is mediated, contingent, and historically situated. Despite this, Habermas explicitly and repeatedly rejected postmodern relativism, particularly as found in the works of Lyotard, Derrida, and Foucault (at least in his earlier interpretations of them).He argued that postmodernism undermines the possibility of rational critique, normativity, and consensus, leading to epistemic and moral relativism—which he viewed as self-defeating and politically dangerous.”

The points I’m trying to make concerning Crrical theory are twofold. First, that regardless of how unconventional their realism was, they should not be in danger of being accused of an ‘anything goes’ relativism. Instead , they beleive that material and social formations are grounded i. truth , and truth is grounded in metaphysical certainties. Rorty had endless debates with his friend Habermas ( one of which I attended) over the latter’s insistence on Kantian rational norms. My second point is that, to the extent that wokists draw form critical theory, their moral absolutism gets its justification from theblatter’s realist stance.

@Number2018 @Fire Ologist @frank @Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure, but do you generally repudiate people who are sleeping or who are unaware? — Leontiskos

First, denial and refusal are obviously not the first steps I am advocating for. But, as I say above (hopefully better) there is a part of a moral claim that is structurally about acceptance or denial; if we have a person in pain, we don’t reach a point we “know” their pain, but we look past judging their pain to see them as having serious needs and concerns (or reject them). Wittgenstein calls this seeing an aspect, accepting them as a person in pain (or we ignore it—are asleep to those deeper concerns).

This is going to sound strange, as I’ve just said we need to see someone “as a person” in developing their terms of importance, but I also don’t think this is about judging individuals, just accepting or rejecting them. What I am talking about is humanizing (as in respecting)the claim as if it is made by a serious person. So that is confusing, but really what we are talking about are the integrated terms and judgments of our culture, as the criteria we have for our practices codify our society’s interests. This is why judging someone as a racist is to philosophically misunderstand that we share a language and culture; are complicit in its interests and judgments (comprised of it and so compromised by it), and, yes, in that way, responsible for it, but this is structural, not personal, perhaps the point of seeing it as “institutionalized”.

Do you think there is something internal to Critical Theory that would adjudicate between these many divergent views? Can CT tell us whether Rorty or Adorno or Habermas is the better way? Or is indeterminacy inherent to CT, and we will always need to wait for something even better, and/or always return to something left unfinished? — Fire Ologist

My belief is that to critique CT from the vantage of Rorty, Deleuze or Derrida one must step outside of it in the direction of an alternative stance. Their questioning won’t make sense from within the confines of Frankfurt school CT. But I do think there is reason to hope that the most noxious totalitarian tendencies of wokism can be moderated or even eliminated as more activists discover Habermas’s hermeneutical, communicative brand of CT and begin to leave behind the violently oppositional language of folks like Adorno, Fanon and Gramsci.

I wouldn’t say “even wokeness” - I would say clearly wokeness is a money maker. It is highly funded, lobbied, commercialized, packaged, tee-shirted, gas-masked, etc etc…. — Fire Ologist

I forgot to include anti-woke, which is also quite influential.

Interesting you said wokeness is resistance. Can you elaborate - is resistance essential, like awareness is? — Fire Ologist

If Bud Light’s gesture didn’t feel like a push there wouldn’t have been pushback.

Awareness is essential when navigating from a weak position. I understand the origins of “woke” was from an old song with a cautionary theme.

I’m not sure how to answer if resistance is essential. I think awareness is essential because it can be a matter of life or death, or some form of ruination, for those in a weak position.

If the Bud Light gesture is a form of resistance, is it essential to push back?

(or we ignore it—are asleep to those deeper concerns) — Antony Nickles

Continuing the point of my assessment of the sleeping metaphor, isn't it simply an equivocation to say that ignoring X and being asleep to X are the same thing? It is these untruths that are creating the problems. If ignoring X and being asleep to X were the same thing then my argument would fall to pieces, but they are not the same thing. The wokists can't decide whether the problem is lethargy or ignoring, and although it would help their case if we claimed that lethargy and ignoring are the same thing, they aren't the same thing.

What I am talking about is humanizing (as in respecting)the claim as if it is made by a serious person. So that is confusing — Antony Nickles

Isn't it confusing precisely because it involves lying to ourselves? Because it involves treating someone who we believe to be unserious as if they were serious? Ergo:

We can of course treat the activist as if they are not an activist, or ignore the activism that they are currently engaged in, but it is eminently reasonable to treat the activist as an activist... — Leontiskos

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So that is confusing, but really what we are talking about are the integrated terms and judgments of our culture, as the criteria we have for our practices codify our society’s interests. This is why judging someone as a racist is to philosophically misunderstand that we share a language and culture; are complicit in its interests and judgments (comprised of it and so compromised by it), and, yes, in that way, responsible for it, but this is structural, not personal, perhaps the point of seeing it as “institutionalized”. — Antony Nickles

I think that if you try to develop these ideas you will find that they break down rather quickly. Specifically, you think that to judge someone to be a racist is to misunderstand, failing to recognize that one is complicit in the systemic structures that caused their racism. That looks to be deeply mistaken, and again, if one attempted to develop or defend it I believe it would break down. Like anything else, if one does not attempt to develop, defend, or assess it then it can of course be maintained.