Not All Woke on the Left

[Kishkumen]

"Woke" was originally a term used almost exclusively among black Americans to refer to someone who was aware of racism by particular people in their lives.

The tendency has since been taken by corporate neoliberals who try to frame all social unfairness or inequality as the product of racism so that they don't have to give up their libertarian-inflected love of unrestricted capitalism. Blaming everything on racism lets exploitative universities and businesses avoid scrutiny for their immoral conduct.

The far right has seized upon this inherent conservative hypocrisy (Kyrsten Sinema is a conservative whereas people like Ron DeSantis are reactionaries) and tried to flip the script and attempt to gain some moral high ground after decades of shamelessly arguing for plutocratic Christofascism. The current hysteria over "woke" is literally the exact same verbiage they used for many decades about other contrived controversies, eg "political correctness," "secular humanism," "cultural Marxism," and "communism."

In reality, there never has been a strong far left in the United States. There are no Democrats pushing communism. And while there are a few upper-middle-class bureaucrats who are loud and annoying, they don't have anywhere near the power of the actual censors in American politics, people like DeSantis who are literally trying to criminalize teaching and reading. There are no left wing book bans.

Don't get tricked by this flagrantly cynical projection effort to distract from the actual censorship that is happening because of powerful Republicans.

DeSantis hired a guy named Christopher Rufo who had publicly talked about his desire to fire professors who don't conform to his theocratic viewpoints and to reject students who don't either.

Oh believe me, I have not been tricked. I am fully aware of the successful war against my profession in Florida. At this point the goose is almost fully cooked.

[Kishkumen]

This will probably sound familiar. I don't view what the right has done with the term "woke" to be a basis for political point scoring. It's a political tactic that has the unfortunate effect of taking perfectly good English terms and rendering them nearly useless when it comes to serious discussion. For that reason, I've been mostly ignoring discussions of the word "woke." DeSantis may very well use the term as you have defined it: critical race theory and race/gender education in schools. But, like "woke," critical race theory has been rendered pretty much a useless term for discussion, as it also received the Christopher Rufo treatment.

None of that changes the fact that there are serious issues under the topic of "identity politics" that merit attention. So, in my opinion, it would be a positive step to discard the word "woke" and focus on what those issues are and how they should be addressed. I think that puts us at pretty much the same destination, although perhaps by different routes. Fair?

Certainly it is fair for us to speak of identity politics instead of wokeness. At the same time, we should not forget that both sides are playing rhetorical games. The Right is, unfortunately, much more dangerous, granted. At the same time, if the solution ends up being an unproductive exercise in navel-gazing on the issue of identity politics, substantive economic relief will remain out of reach and those frustrated will look to whoever strikes out against the status quo, even turds like Trump and DeSantis.

[Res Ipsa]

This will probably sound familiar. I don't view what the right has done with the term "woke" to be a basis for political point scoring. It's a political tactic that has the unfortunate effect of taking perfectly good English terms and rendering them nearly useless when it comes to serious discussion. For that reason, I've been mostly ignoring discussions of the word "woke." DeSantis may very well use the term as you have defined it: critical race theory and race/gender education in schools. But, like "woke," critical race theory has been rendered pretty much a useless term for discussion, as it also received the Christopher Rufo treatment.

None of that changes the fact that there are serious issues under the topic of "identity politics" that merit attention. So, in my opinion, it would be a positive step to discard the word "woke" and focus on what those issues are and how they should be addressed. I think that puts us at pretty much the same destination, although perhaps by different routes. Fair?

Certainly it is fair for us to speak of identity politics instead of wokeness. At the same time, we should not forget that both sides are playing rhetorical games. The Right is, unfortunately, much more dangerous, granted. At the same time, if the solution ends up being an unproductive exercise in navel-gazing on the issue of identity politics, substantive economic relief will remain out of reach and those frustrated will look to whoever strikes out against the status quo, even turds like Trump and DeSantis.

in my opinion there are people on "both sides" that play rhetorical games. I don't understand your comment about "unproductive exercise in navel-gazing on the issue of identity politics" means. What substantive economic relief do you think is needed and how do see identify politics as getting in the way? I'm not interested in navel gazing. I'm pretty much a pragmatist.

[huckelberry]

When DeSantis, as much as I dislike him, says that Florida is woke goes to die, I think he knows exactly what he means, and I think he means that Leftist identity politics regarding race and gender. He is talking about critical race theory and gender ed in K-12 education. I don't agree that it is *just* what people don't like. I mean, maybe there are a number of meatheads for whom that is the case, but I think there are a lot of people on the Right who would agree with that definition. It seems to me that it is the Left, which currently has the default position that people on the Right are hateful rubes or message under the assumption that their audience is comprised of hateful rubes, that gets a lot of mileage out of handwaving over this failure to define woke. That's a wonderful way not to own the wokeness that has surely been operating for the past several years, unless Jen Psaki is just making this up.

That said, blaming wokeness for the collapse of SVB and the indictment of Trump, that abuse of the term seems to be exactly the worst case scenario you are talking about.

kishkumen, I found your link starting this thread interesting and provocative. As far as a definition of woke your comments here seem pretty usable. Susan Neiman said she did not wish to define woke but make an analysis. I think she focused upon a specific perhaps narrow aspect. I do not know the extent of influence of Carl Schmidt and Michael Foucalt, she sees it as extensive in colleges these days.(she may not mean university of Idaho)She points to them contributing a narrow and inflexible point of view. I could not help but being inpressed with her report of Noam Chomski stating he thought Foucalt was the most amoral man he ever met. Neiman reports that Foucalt saw no difference between justice and power and that he was contemptuous of moral justice. She sees a perhaps unintentional link to the Nazi apologist. There is harsh criticism of some aspects of woke there. I cannot help but seeing connection to some of the speech and action control aimed at by some students

Neither of these writers were on student radar way back when I was in college and worried about the war. I have read only small descriptions of these authors concerns and have felt too repulsed to consider actually reading them. I might read this book by Susan Neiman however.

[Morley]

I thought it was unfortunate that Neiman did not define woke, but that is the kind of thing a philosopher of her type is liable to do in this situation. She goes in for complexity, not succinct definitions.

So, I will define it, as I think it is the easiest thing in the world to do: woke refers to the Left's current brand of identity politics regarding gender and race.

There you go.

This reminds me of definition of art that I once read that went something like: Art is that which the larger art community decides is art.

The problem I see is that everything in your definition is a moving target. If we could now agree on who makes up the left--as well as what constitutes race and what comprises gender--we might get somewhere.

It's not surprising Neiman didn't define the term.

[Kishkumen]

in my opinion there are people on "both sides" that play rhetorical games. I don't understand your comment about "unproductive exercise in navel-gazing on the issue of identity politics" means. What substantive economic relief do you think is needed and how do see identify politics as getting in the way? I'm not interested in navel gazing. I'm pretty much a pragmatist.

I wrote an OP to raise awareness of the existence of criticism of wokeness by intellectuals on the Left. The thread is intended to show that wokeness is not simply made up, and it is intended to show that there is not a monolithic consensus regarding wokeness on the Left.

[Res Ipsa]

in my opinion there are people on "both sides" that play rhetorical games. I don't understand your comment about "unproductive exercise in navel-gazing on the issue of identity politics" means. What substantive economic relief do you think is needed and how do see identify politics as getting in the way? I'm not interested in navel gazing. I'm pretty much a pragmatist.

I wrote an OP to raise awareness of the existence of criticism of wokeness by intellectuals on the Left. The thread is intended to show that wokeness is not simply made up, and it is intended to show that there is not a monolithic consensus regarding wokeness on the Left.

So, there is no therefore?

[Alphus and Omegus]

"Woke" was originally a term used almost exclusively among black Americans to refer to someone who was aware of racism by particular people in their lives.

The tendency has since been taken by corporate neoliberals who try to frame all social unfairness or inequality as the product of racism so that they don't have to give up their libertarian-inflected love of unrestricted capitalism. Blaming everything on racism lets exploitative universities and businesses avoid scrutiny for their immoral conduct.

The far right has seized upon this inherent conservative hypocrisy (Kyrsten Sinema is a conservative whereas people like Ron DeSantis are reactionaries) and tried to flip the script and attempt to gain some moral high ground after decades of shamelessly arguing for plutocratic Christofascism. The current hysteria over "woke" is literally the exact same verbiage they used for many decades about other contrived controversies, eg "political correctness," "secular humanism," "cultural Marxism," and "communism."

In reality, there never has been a strong far left in the United States. There are no Democrats pushing communism. And while there are a few upper-middle-class bureaucrats who are loud and annoying, they don't have anywhere near the power of the actual censors in American politics, people like DeSantis who are literally trying to criminalize teaching and reading. There are no left wing book bans.

Don't get tricked by this flagrantly cynical projection effort to distract from the actual censorship that is happening because of powerful Republicans.

DeSantis hired a guy named Christopher Rufo who had publicly talked about his desire to fire professors who don't conform to his theocratic viewpoints and to reject students who don't either.

Oh believe me, I have not been tricked. I am fully aware of the successful war against my profession in Florida. At this point the goose is almost fully cooked.

Yes, it is really outrageous that what DeSantis is doing to destroy public education in Florida attracts so little public attention.

I don't see why anyone should want to join a political party if they don't want to. The United States is very abnormal in having only two major parties due to its electoral system. But from my standpoint, utterly defeating the fascist right must come before all other struggles.

I oppose corporate efforts to destroy the solidarity of intersectionality, but I also understand that the Christofascist right is trying to manipulate people into focusing on a small injustice while it perpetuates a far greater one by destroying our democratic system. Part of this effort is to create "red-brown" coalitions in which people with economic-centric left views are tricked into thinking that fascists are actually populists.

I'm not saying that's happening to you Kishkumen, but this is a very real strategy by far-right people. Here's an example of how this ploy worked in the UK, where a formerly socialist magazine was taken over by people funded by the Koch brothers:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... foundation

The radical right must be utterly destroyed electorally. Then the other stuff can be argued about. Conservatives need to be put in charge of the Republican party instead of Christofascists.

[Kishkumen]

This reminds me of definition of art that I once read that went something like: Art is that which the larger art community decides is art.

The problem I see is that everything in your definition is a moving target. If we could now agree on who makes up the left--as well as what constitutes race and what comprises gender--we might get somewhere.

It's not surprising Neiman didn't define the term.

So you do not see the existence of prevailing politics of race and gender on what passes for America's Left and are thus still confused about what wokeness means?

[Kishkumen]

I oppose corporate efforts to destroy the solidarity of intersectionality, but I also understand that the Christofascist right is trying to manipulate people into focusing on a small injustice while it perpetuates a far greater one by destroying our democratic system. Part of this effort is to create "red-brown" coalitions in which people with economic-centric left views are tricked into thinking that fascists are actually populists.

I'm not saying that's happening to you Kishkumen, but this is a very real strategy by far-right people. Here's an example of how this ploy worked in the UK, where a formerly socialist magazine was taken over by people funded by the Koch brothers:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... foundation

The radical right must be utterly destroyed electorally. Then the other stuff can be argued about. Conservatives need to be put in charge of the Republican party instead of Christofascists.

I am aware of that. My concern is obsession about form taking precedence over action toward results. If I am asked to choose whether we should be concerned about the future of the middle class or whether exotic pronouns are taught in schools or not, I am going to go with the former over the latter. Until the Left is robust and serious enough to do the same, we are basically screwed. Fascists use populist movements borne of the frustration that comes from being ignored and left behind. I have a feeling I know where the conversation is likely to go next, such as, maybe, who is "really" left behind, but I am convinced that the economic issues should precede those of identity. The identity obsession is often a new way for privileged whites to perform their righteousness to each other.