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- Опубліковано 8 чер 2021
- Wokeism: What It Is and What It's Not?
In this video, professor Moeller talks about some common misconceptions about wokeness, and discusses what being woke is really about.
(Sorry if you came early and saw our glitchy video, something went wrong with the video rendering/processing)
Video mentioned: Kant’s Ethics: Homophobia, Child Killing--and Derek Chauvin:
• Kant’s Ethics: Homopho...
Related video: The Political Commodification of YOURSELF! #SELFIE Protest:
• The Political Commodif...
The Curious Philosophy of Care:
• The Care Paradox -- Wh...
Further reading: Slavoj Žižek: The difference between ‘woke’ and a true awakening
www.rt.com/op-ed/526235-zizek...
Two follow up videos:
Is Wokeism Civil Religion? | A Debate with Then & Now:
• Is Wokeism Civil Relig...
Jordan Peterson: The Mirror of Wokeism:
• Jordan Peterson: The M...
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Hans-Georg Moeller is a professor at the Philosophy and Religious Studies Department at the University of Macau, and, with Paul D'Ambrosio, author of "You and Your Profile: Identity After Authenticity" .
(If you buy this book, or any other by Hans-Georg Moeller, from the Columbia University Press website, please use the promo code CUP20 and you should get a 20% discount.)
Thanks a lot to Jim Lei Wanjun for selecting images for illustrations!
You might be interested to check this out: Slavoj Žižek: The difference between ‘woke’ and a true awakening
www.rt.com/op-ed/526235-zizek-woke-cancel-culture-awakening/
Fantastic video. Thanks! I have a lenghty comment on a particular thing: I think Zizek's critique of idpol/wokism is not so much exclusevily about "class", as you say in the video, but about universality and how idpol is used by the "bourgeoisie" (he probably would say "white liberals" to provoke) to reserved to themselves the position of universality (the position of the servant in Hegelian terms). And this is central to the conceptualisation of the "left" as a politics of universality, whereas the "right" would be a politics of particularity (private property, etc.).
What I think Zizek rightly points out is that, for instance, feminism, by focusing on the exploitation of the female body, creates a political subject (woman) that through its particularity creates a universal change. This is what "intersectional" feminism misses, the point is not that feminism should be also about men, trans, animals, etc. but that by focusing on the liberation of women (by keeping women as its political subject) the feminist struggle actually gets rid of a universal system of exploitation (gender). So universality is about a particular that changes the universal. Now, of course, this is the case as well with class struggle and what Zizek means by idpol's exclusion of class, as you say. It's a subtle but important distinction, I think, because it's not to say that class is more important that sex or race, but that by focusing on the particularity-universality dialectics of these struggles we can actually find a conection between them. Sorry for the diatribe, thanks!
In my uneducated opinion I think you might be misunderstanding when Peterson says "cultural marxism" Marxism does not advocate for the working class but advocates for the working class to rise up and abolish class entirely, so Jordan Peterson is saying the American/Canadian left uses or atleast attempts to use females and gay people to abolish the very idea of gender and uses black, Hispanic, and asian cultural groups to remove Anglo American culture from corporate and political seats of power. In this context peterson uses the word "marxism" as a shorthand for collective grievance against a common enemy
What is alt-right to you? Because I don't think you know what it means.
By far the best analysis of woke-ism comes from New Discourses, they've basically dedicated to analysing it and it's origins with very thorough research into the "academic" papers that leads to it
Edit-
Never mind, you covered them anyway in the video. However it occurs to me that everyone hates wokeism regardless of what they would otherwise disagree on, it's just annoying to absolutely everyone
I am astonished by how close our thoughts are, when I was speculating on the possible common denominators between wokeism and protestantism! It's not a coincidence that wokeism has risen up mainly at countries with strong protestant tradition!
But I'd like you to elaborate more on the relations with post-modernism. Of course post-modernism is anti-essentialist and some aspects of wokeism are essentialist, but when the debate turns against e.g biology and gender or race, they become constructivists. I think it depends more on who the ideological opponent is and then they adopt the opposite perspective.
Anyway, great analysis. Try critiquing political correctness also!
As a disabled lesbian of Lower income background I actually resent wokisms disinterest in class struggle. My hometown is dying and my nephews' future looks bleak, emotionly why would I ever care if pop culture has people superficially similar to me in it?
I didn't hear the word representation yet but I think you are onto it. Representation is a useful tool in some cases but it is entirely the wrong tool to solve material inequality, and by not shifting gears leads in the end to minority representation as a weapon of the ruling class. Instead of allowing people to progress together like a union does, in the current climate of wokeism representation has the opposite effect because it promotes individualism and ignores the root causes (or rather allows the root causes to be cast aside by the moral absolutism of wokeness). For example: inequality in the black community in the US is greater than in the general population, and as we know the black population is less wealthy than average, but to many black people the idea of progress has the face of the black celebrities and millionaires, which by definition most people will not reach, so any real political path of material progress is replaced by vicariously enjoying the success of others. It's not much different than medieval peasants dreaming of royalty. These dreams may have a place in personal happiness but for actual progress they are too useful as a diversion to the powerful.
@Jack Smith 🇰🇵☦️🥔 of coarse it matters to me, I'm unsure how that alters the stance in any context. I'm also unsure why you think a single comment in a single context provides any real insight into my political or personal perspectives.
That is one reason why societal problems are hard to solve. I do not know what exactly the problem of your hometown is. If I know it, because i read about them or seen them on the media or social network. The media know about the media. The people who cried for "woke", either working in the media (as advertisers or political analyst) or they are in college (where are they supposed to be critical) or youtube (another part of media). Wokism is the media policing itself, at least to me. I could not give a shit about it. My role models are mostly dead people. I am autistic, and the protrayals of autistic people is often too ignorant, too stupid or too boring for me to even be offended. Rather read about the real ones.
as the video said, being woke is basically a left wing of the neo liberal party. basically its an illusion of change, where people are busy fighting each other, while the rulling class is untouched. i see it as a huge misdirection of resources, directed by the elites, so that the energy of woke people is spent on unimportant things, where as before they would fight for unions, vacation pay, living wage, housing thats affordable for all, etc.
@@clairestark9024
I think this Jack Smith fellow is a 'third way-ist'. Let's see.
"To not abolish Wokeism, but to critically shed light on it. To question it. So that it does not turn to a fundamentalist frenzy"
I think more people need to see the final words of the general talk(well the whole thing but the internets attention span is short), just in general. Sadly critical thinking and debate are definitely not emphasized where they should be. Great video
Isn't it ironic the output of Critical Theory is thinking uncritically?
@@redryan20000
How so?
@@redryan20000 what lol
@@thanatos_0. What criteria for an explanation are you looking for?
@@redryan20000
A 'critical' one.
The irony in the mentality of "Unapologetically Me." is that these people are often viciously unforgiving.
I misheard that as "unapologetically mean" and I didn't miss a beat. The second time it was brought up I heard it correctly.
@@emanuellandeholm5657 no, you heard it correctly the first time.
It's a free pass to act only in your own interest.
Why is this ironic?
The mentality of "Unapologetically Me." is a response and defiance to bigots who would condemn others for being themselves. But this is not born of a desire to be forgiven by bigots or forgiven for being themselves. If Bigots were to also adopt the mentality of "Unapologetically Me" I don't see why it would be ironic for them to not be forgiven for it. Being "Unapologetically Me" does not come with a desire or interest in being forgiven.
@@Taniseth in the eyes of these people, everyone's a bigot to the right of chairman Mao.
it really sucks how this African-American colloquialism has been rebranded, tarnished, and diluted into this big mess that doesn't even mean anything anymore.
@@scrapmachine1 those are just racists. turning sour because of media rhetoric despite an issue that's clearly dire enough to act on it never had any intention of supporting the cause. But the thing is, $$$ donations is just as much slacktivism as other shit. People just donate to groups and expect things to be better rather than putting the work out there. The problem is when people do minimal research and BLM chapters were popping out of the woodwork because every source of revenue is going to collect a few grifters- but few pay out as continuously as MAGA chuds.
@@scrapmachine1 of course they love empty gestures while contributing nothing of substance
@@oku12 As a black woman, I'm stating that the founders of BLM are grifters and faux-Marxists, I don't support the org I support the cause. And I realize that the cause would be better supported in time and work rather than dollars and cents.
@@trikkinikki970 I'm not an American, but it seems to me that these "racists" might just have methodological issues with the movement. I.e., they support the aim of racial equality, but just think there are better and worse ways to go about it. In any case, the conversational atmosphere on much of social media (not least on Twitter) is clearly not doing much else but just solidifying and facilitating social divides (and there's much of empirical research in social and moral psychology to support this).
@@trikkinikki970 donating money isn't slactvisim. You are donating time to a cause just as someone would on the ground just through the proxy of labour in your 9-5.
Sometimes people don't have time to be both an "activist" and work to make their ends meet.
"Wokism is the left wing of the neo liberal ideology."
I have never heard that idea before but it makes so so much sense
Or it could just be people who feel others should see and realize the ways in which certain groups are disadvantaged and marginalized and have been for a very long time. "Be woke", "wake up", these are terms that pertain to that and that's all it is. It isn't some religious or menacing thing that some people ascribe to it due to their own constructed idea of "wokeness"
@@Scoring57 The problem is that the traditional left (class struggle, unions, worker rights) has be replaced by this new woke left. and by calling it a left wing of a neo liberal as he did, you realize that this movement fits in perfectly to the corporations, and even to the cia. We are fighting against each other while we are all going to the poor house. Housing in canada went up 25% in one year, and that hits both poor whites and poor blacks, but no one gives a f, as we are all woke and divided
Capitalism co-opts everything. Radicalism is sanitised and sold back to us. From the conspicuously absent socialism of MLK to corporate pride, to Che Guevara t-shirts, capital removes anything that actually threatens it and turns into a new avenue for profit.
@@RaunienTheFirst Yep. Rly sad also. I hope I'll see the day when capitalism will be overcome, but I doubt it will happen in my lifetime and I'm quite young..
@@RaunienTheFirst thats well put. co-opting is they key take home message here. Example: Here in canada we co-opted the native people by integrating few of their songs on the radio, renaming few schools (de-colonilizing) but we are still here and more immigrants are coming over without asking the natives what they want. By co-opting the native story we in fact take ownership of them and put them under our wing.
This is so good. When other philosophers talk about this topic, it sounds like some cryptic wisdom. This explaination is much more analytical and easy to understand. Thank you!
Yes, the way they explain things is extremely clear, more people need to know about their videos and style of explaining things clearly, I hope more people adopt this clear manner as well, please promote this videos widely if you can, I really hope people learn from these and how to be like this regardless of their views, simply explaining things in a clear way without rhetoric and hostility and attacks riddled throughout, is such a better experience for dealing with all kinds of information, and they introduce extremely sophisticated and nuanced ideas without any difficulty at all throughout their videos.
I'm irritated by some of the comments (very few luckily so far) which seem to not even recognize the tremendous value even the "style" of these videos or the "manner" in which he speaks is of extreme importance in improving the way all sorts of people might discuss things and how they might discuss things.
I really hope that people might bring these videos to the attention of other more popular UA-cam channels and shows so that they might invite them to speak on there and get cross promotion and bring more people to this channel and these videos. One that I've suggested is Triggernometry, but there are certainly many more and I'm probably not that informed overall about the popular channels which may happily host the professor for interviews discussing all sorts of things. Maybe even Russel Brand might like to talk to them, but I think they would have to make some rounds on smaller channels that keep end up getting more and more attention to their way of discussing ideas.
I'm utterly unimpressed with extremely popular speakers like "Jordan Peterson" is who is fully of vacuous mumblings and hypnotizing people with his scatter-brained demeanor, while the professor here is so entirely precise and clear, the content is real, repeatable, it is not like how I've asked so many obsessed fans of Jordan Peterson "What can you repeat from their lecture? What did you take from it or learn?" and they are unable to explain or repeat anything, have not extracted anything, have sat there for hours without learning a thing and just coming away thinking that they are smarter or something. A humungous difference honestly.
I agree. I can't really stress how good it is. The way the whole discourse is handled, the critique of particular topics and ideas. I think it is logical and each point is well-argued. Regarding the topic itself - just whoa... I think it hits the jackpot. The idea of "wokeism" being a kind of a religious movement is mind-blowing to me, but at the same time, it really filled some gaps I had with all the earlier explanations.
It seems almost like people keep it intentionally vague cuz specific definitions would lead to people not being able to use the term loosely to refer to stuff they don't like.
@@aFoxyFox. Absolutely. So important to have these discussions beyond ‘us vs them’. But that’s not easy when we struggle to occupy a shared mental world and even a shared fact world.
that’s because they’re not engaging in philosophy, they’re engaging in sophistry
Curiously, wokeism never seems to extend to class consciousness.
It plays along the edges but always disingenuously. Wokeism will bring class in the discussion but only if it can twist it to talk about another axis of oppression. Like, they'll talk about poverty but not on its own merit and will instead devote time to musings like "How poverty affects women of color?" and thus the entire debate is dominated by unproductive rants against boogeymen such as "the patriarchy" and "whiteness".
"Curiously, wokeism never seems to extend to class consciousness.
"
Curiously, the Marxist will not take this as a point against Marxism, but a point confirming the cunning power of the upper class to "obfuscate the real problem", thus confirming marxist theory. Race is a more powerful social force then money in this society. This is the obvious truth that for the life of me I cant understand why radical Leftists don't understand. If this radical racial consciousness continues we are going to end up opening a can of worms that we wish we hadn't.
Are you sure?
You don't think it takes into account the economical and societal grouping of Black people in western society?
I don't know why you guys are so opposed to the idea that for them race is another kind of class, is it that hard to accept??
@@fgc_rewind "Race is a more powerful social force then money in this society" The irony of Oprah and British royalty discussing this in idyllic villa to millions on international media.
@@fgc_rewind You have no idea what you’re talking about. Have you even read Marx?
I really loved your deconstruction of wokeism, although I would argue that wokeism is not capitalist in itself, but the capitalists, being very adoptive (to markets) in itself, applied wokeism to marketing in order to surivive in the modern soc. media markets.
"the capitalists, being very adoptive (to markets) in itself, applied wokeism to marketing in order to surivive in the modern soc. media markets"
this is often why I roll my eyes when a lot of activists (especially anti-capitalist ones) act as if this isn't the case. Like they'll say that they have no power when, in reality, their views are considered good marketing to a mass audience. Then I roll my eyes even more when they support companies doing it. Wokeism can be so easily exploited by capitalists to the point where it is actually just a part of engaging well in the free market.
I go beyond: They didn't just adapt, they created it. They couldn't have simply adapted or adopted it because the social struggles of the 20th century were anti-capitalist. Modern ""progressive"" thinking (it is so just in appearance, not essence) is mandatory in the corporate world because it's inoffensive, created from their think tanks. Anyone with an office job can attest to it.
@@ottz2506 you're contradicting yourself. The hollow attempt at wokeness you exemplified is by your own admission a non-true representation of it, aside from the fact that it being refurbished under capitalism means that anything authentically non-capitalist really has no power in a capitalist society unless it's rendered harmless by slow paced immune response.
The fact that companies can use activism signifiers to do marketing doesn't make it activism nor an authentic "woke" effort. Disney /=/ civil rights associations, activists, etc.
The trivialization of activism in social media under a capitalist society is a strawman: a capitalist society that disheartens the meaning of all for profit would have already rendered anything from animals to traditional family useless and meaningless if we go that route with the same rigor you do with wokeness + the social system reinforces capitalism as the core of itself at all cost in any way possible, hence why capitalism managed to do their chick version of "rebellion" to help swallow that uncomfortable pill like a way to generate antibodies.
not much of a contradiction. Wokeism is so easily exploited by the free markets and capitalism because it is ultimately capitalist. @@AlexOrozco-Social-Pariah
@@ottz2506 lmfao like the traditional family being exploited even in milk cartons and clothing companies? You evidently know no shit of the markets or economy or anything
Its a logical step for neoliberalism to market itself while disempowering actual radicalism in marginal communities. It is an osmosis being done by neoliberalism, thats why criticism of wokism when not contextualized historically bears a vague reactionary appearance.
What internet memes do to a mf
@@boringname3657 expound
I disagree. Wokeism empowers radicalism among marginalized communities (especially minority groups). The ideal scenario for neoliberalism is that of continuous conflict (even war) and social unrest by fragmenting society and eliminating the ethical substance of the state itself. Also, since in this era radical armed groups can be easily crushed by the state in any situation, armed radicalism can even be encouraged without repercussion on ruling elites, actually increasing neoliberal power in the state. All this while ignoring the material reality for the majority of the people (regardless of identity).
guy ?
Well if they were simply criticisms and people questioning things rather than rejecting the ideas and changes certain people want it wouldn't seem 'reactionary'. But when people seem to come to conclusions like, any and every instance of non-whyte representation is "woke" or even "tokenism" and mustn't exist, then they sort of *are* reactionaries at that point. And probably aligned with their whyte identity more than they realized or would like to admit
@@Scoring57 "Woke people are bad and harmful! Also marriage is a sacred bond between a man and a woman and the black character they added to marvel movie was ugly and annoying and I hated looking at them." If you disagree with this statement you're probably in a cult.
I just wanted to say that I think you're doing some very important work here. This channel and philosophy in motion is some of the most enlightening content I've seen on youtube and the warnings that you provide after your videos remind me that I should spend less time on the platform in general. Thank you!
Intersectionality as I understood it ALWAYS involved class. One of the biggest negative impacts of "wokeism" is that it has removed class as an important "intersection", and the fact that "wokeism" is championed by the corporate and capitalist class is certainly part of this negative impact.
Well said
Naw, you ain’t woke if you ain’t class conscious buddy
Thats the big problem: Class isnt just ONE random aspect of an intersectional world, which doesnt exist by the way. Class is everything and explaining everything perfectly. There isnt classism next to racism, ableism or whatsoever. Its not an aspect equal to the colour of your skin, which remains relatively insignificant for your order in society. Think of two situations and tell me which one would change more radically: being black turning white, or being black turning rich.
That's it basically...
@@user-yy7tr2hg8s "There isnt classism next to racism, ableism or whatsoever. Its not an aspect equal to the colour of your skin, which remains relatively insignificant for your order in society." - this is the very OPPOSITE of intersectionalism wtf
@@AlexOrozco-Social-Pariah Yes, there is no intersectionalism. its just victimisation.
This is probably the best video on the subject that I've seen at least. Thank you for your channel, it's brilliant and it's great to see that you've somehow combined academy & UA-cam in a seamless fashion. The idea of guilt pride being at the heart (or, rather, one of the main instigators) of wokeism is fascinating, so often the whole critique of the matter is extremely U.S.-centristic that you don't even look for relatively "outside" factors.
The comment at the end is illuminating. One of wokeism's biggest damaging effects in my opinion has been the fact that now people can advocate against justice, equality etc by implying that these are non-seperable from wokeism. We see that being done in non-western places where many radical and religious people equivocate elements of wokeism with neo-liberalism and western imperialism.
It feels like an unavoidable dilemma. Once society becomes more progressive, the powerful (non-progressive) institutions adobt and coapt superficial progressivism to keep the status quo. I wonder if this dilemma is completely unavoidable for places around the world that are still far regressive as well. Perhaps it is, which doesn't mean it can't be bypassed and adressed.
Or maybe the breakdown of a family and promoting sexual degeneracy is actually not that much of a progress...
I'm glad I woke up for this.
Good pun, not gonna lie.
pun allowed 😅
This channel is actually brilliant.
So glad there is a serious philosopher talking about this stuff.
You should talk to Ben Burgis in the US.
I don’t know if you have done any crossovers, but it does help build viewership
You're an amazing speaker professor. I know nothing about wokeism but it really felt like a heartfelt conversation. It's like a teacher who only wants to teach you and nothing else, which is rare in my experience. You have my subscription.
I agree, wish I could take some of his classes
My first instinct is to say that it's cynical to characterise wokism as mainly comprising of dogma, virtue signaling and profile curation. On the other hand, I cannot think of a single time in my life that I've actually helped a minority in any tangible way, which is why I try to avoid being explicitly progressive or woke on my social media. I do not feel comfortable labeling myself as an "ally" if all this means is saying some nice sounding stuff in a Tweet - help has to be about concrete action, not hollow shows of faux solidarity. However, I will not dismiss or condemn people who do show vocal support for minorities, because I don't know them and it'd be unfair of me to assume they're only doing it for clout. I feel most people outspoken on these issues DO care genuinely, because speaking out makes you part of the discourse and much more of a target than someone with milktoast views or no expressed views at all.
The thing is: Speaking out is action
Sure it is great to do work in impoverished communities, however, if you are working in a soup kitchen but never publicly speak out against the system that makes the soup kitchen necessary in the first place, you are not fighting but aiding the system. However, the day has only 24h for every person and every single person has to see where to go with their time and energy. Therefore, having people who are doing the practical work and people who are doing the talking can be extremely helpful, as long as both are willing to view the action of the other person as complementary to their own actions.
The problem here is: In the digital age public discourse is cheap; it always seems to be the "easy way out" and it has a very bad reputation. People who take part in public discourse are characterised as having no life.
The weirder problem is: If a privileged person, like myself, starts to talk in favour of marginalised groups, that person can very fast be part of voices which silence the actual voices of the groups they tried to support. Thus leading to less and not more representation. At the same time, not being vocal can be just as bad because it creates an environment in which people who are part of marginalised groups can't know the extent of the backlash they would have to face. Thus leading to less and not more representation.
Besides that, being vocal can pretty fast become self-serving in the sense of the civil religion concept. A "woke tweet" can just be the equivalent of a "letter of indulgence". Johann Tetzel supposedly said: "Wenn das Geld im Kasten klingt, die Seele aus dem Fegefeuer springt." - When the money clinks in the box, the soul will jump out of purgatory. The modern version could be: When the thumb presses send the tweet, your soul's salvation will be complete.
It is not like I would have a solution for that problem at the moment. And to be honest: If participation in this kind of "civil religion" is practically unavoidable I would much rather be part of the woke denomination of this religion.
Nevertheless, the ideas in this video are more than valuable, especially because it is very difficult to always critically question one's own behaviour.
Well, I am a right wing ethno nationalist and proud of it and if I don't get represented in the media I really don't care. My identity is that of my forefathers and will never change.
@@Wilhelm4131 So your playing identity politics. I mean I'm not calling out I'm just pointing that what you are doing.
Also not represented? Have you watched Tucker Carlson in a while?
I would argue that wokism is absolutely a cult or neo-religion. It is not convincing and yet you cannot argue against it without being stigmatized. I really do recent living in a world in which I have to pay lip service to such utter trash.
It's an interesting comment in light of the guilt pride concept presented. You don't feel like you've done enough to be properly woke, but still have an inclination to defend wokism on some level. Also not an attempt at a callout, I get how you feel. It just struck me as salient in light of the video.
I would love to see a video about the disparity between the way we treat the material and the ideal. How people don't seem to be able to tell the difference as they switch between referencing material reality and idealogical "truths" so fluidly they don't even know that they are doing it. It seems to me this particular characteristic of modern humans lies at the heart of our problems, because it allows us to so easily be mislead by those who exploit it.
The same thing is described as 'symbol vs substance', as well. It links to Wittgenstein's ruler about how, if you don't have complete 100% trust in the ruler you're using to measure a table, you might was well be measuring the ruler with the table. At least that's my understanding of it.
I agree with your proposition. I'd love to hear Dr. Moeller's discussion on this topic :)
@@GnaeusScipio Saw this comment and clicked to see replies hoping someone had invoked Wittgenstein, and lo and behold :)
Wow, i have never heard anyone so sane speak about this topic is such clarity before. Thanks a lot for the new perspective
This is an enormously important video. It adds to the conversation, clarifies the terms well, dispels false or partial notions, and doesn't look to engage from a place of division or conflict. More content like this, please!
Thanks for all of your questions and supports! Please feel free do leave your questions and critiques, which help continuing the discussions to go deeper.
my whole lot of criticism can mostly be countered by specifying that you were talking about the extreme forms of wokeism, at the end of the video you explained that the video is not about abolishing wokeism but only fanatic versions of it, but the way you characterised wokeism sometimes made it seem as if you just equated "wokeism" with those extreme forms of it (which undoubetly exist)
@ I’d recommend President Sunday’s channel in response to that
Your claim that Cultural Marxism is an oxymoron is false since it assumes that it’s just being a fish out of water. Cultural Marxism is just the application of Marxist conflict theory to broader social structures like race, gender, etc… starting as far back as Weber and most notably with Herbert Marcuse.
I would have liked to hear you connect your thoughts here to Nietzsche's slave morality. Wokeism as an evolution of American Christianity and German guilt seems strongly related to slave morality in my eyes.
It's either ignorant or dishonest of you to deny that wokeism is cultural marxism and play dumb to the existence of cultural marxism when western marxism is a well-established movement
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Marxism
western marxists saw that orthodox marxism's predictions failed to come true and believed that they needed to criticise the culture more.
you can see easily find many textbooks in the academic fields underlying wokeism like critical gender studies, critical queer studies, criticial colonial studies, all according to their own authors draw from cultural marxist aka western marxist influences.
for example :
"This anthology brings together various strands of contemporary theory to combine the newer insights of postmodernism, feminist, race, and queer theory, with the older ideals of a Marxist-influenced critical social theory of the first- and second-generation Frankfurt Schools. We call this new social theory New Critical Theory."
Wilkerson, William S. and Paris, Jeffrey, "Why a New Critical Theory?" Wilkerson, William S. and Paris, Jeffrey (eds.). New Critical Theory. Lantham, Maryland. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2002. Page 1.
The aim of New Critical Theory [a Rowman & Littlefield book series edited by Patricia Huntington and Martin J. Beck Matustik] is to broaden the scope of critical theory beyond its two predominant strains, one generated by the research program of Jurgen Habermas and his students, the other by postmodern cultural studies. The series will reinvigorate early critical theory as developed by Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin, and others but from more decisive postcolonial and post patriarchal vantage points. New Critical Theory represents theoretical and activist concerns about class, gender, and race, seeking to learn from as well as nourish new social liberation movements.
New Critical Theory. Retrieved on May 1, 2009.
Critical Theory has a narrow and a broad meaning in philosophy and in the history of the social sciences. Critical Theory in the narrow sense designates several generations of German philosophers and social theorists in the Western European Marxist tradition known as the Frankfurt School. According to these theorists, a critical theory may be distinguished from a traditional theory according to a specific practical purpose: a theory is critical to the extent that it seeks human emancipation, to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them (Horkheimer 1982, 244 [Critical Theory. New York: Seabury Press.]).
Critical Theory. First published Tue Mar 8, 2005. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Website. Retrieved on July 31, 2009.
markfoster [d0t] net [sl4sh] struc [sl4sh] nct [d0t] html
And the link here has references for 30+ academic textbooks and papers saying the same thing, that critical theory is developed from cultural marxists aka western marxists and that critical theory underlies the academic fields of woke grievance studies like gender studies, queer studies, critical race theory, etc.
I'm very disappointed that you would play "hide the ball" like this and try to dishonestly deny cultural marxism's influence on wokeism and claim that anyone calling it cultural marxism is wrong and doesn't know what they're talking about.
You've compromised your integrity as an educator with this video. You need to make a retraction where you apologise for giving the impression that jordan peterson and others are wrong to call it cultural marxism and where you admit that the western marxist i.e. cultural marxist movement did develop critical theory which underlies the academic fields of wokeism
As a "traditional leftist" (probably more center-left, but whatever), my biggest issue with wokeism is that it seems to create more divisiveness than it manages to solve real issues of inequality. The rich and powerful are more than happy to hear us arguing about race, class, gender, sexuality, etc., because talking about inequality from that perspective does little to address the much more important class differences. At the same time, they're happy to put out diversity statements while continuing to exploit their workers without meaningful change. If I were a selfish billionaire, I'd be paying off both left and right wing media to continue talking about toppling 100 year old statues and diversity quotas. I'm sure a lot of real billionaires have figured that out too.
With that said, I don't think wokeism is an entirely useless movement. Historical classist victories have traditionally benefited white men almost exclusively. I doubt a black slave cared much whether they lived in a republic or a monarchy. It's worth taking a multifaceted perspective to equality. Wokeism captures some aspects of this, but misses others.
I would argue that race, class and gender are fundamentally not less important than class, but that wokeism discusses race, class, gender while neglecting! class. I don't think it is helpful to devalue racism in favor of discourse about class.
Wouldn't class distinction itself be a form of 'wokeism'? If, as OP suggests, wokeism is a more radical version of idpol.. then one of the axis along which identity politics exists (I would argue the most important one) would be socioeconomic status, which relates intimately with class struggle.
@@DepressionAlgorithm Theoretically, perhaps. But nobody defines themselves that way. Or at least not in the same way someone defines their gender/race/etc. Also, it'd be really hard to criticize a company that started paying a living wage, even if they only did it to appear "woke". The same can't necessarily be said for Nike's current wokeism.
@@macht4turbo I can see your perspective, and I probably commented too quickly. I'd say though, in my opinion, class is *currently* a bigger issue in the US / a lot of the west, although it's talked about far less. A lot of issues of racism and sexism fall into issues of classism as well. (Rich women will never not be able to get an abortion, for example.) Also, just because something is a bigger issue doesn't mean we don't have to work on smaller issues too.
@@DepressionAlgorithm Class as a concept is hopelessly misunderstood by most people nowadays. If you were to interview people and ask them "what class do you belong to?" most would fail miserably to properly identify which economic class they belong to. Countless privileged upper class and upper middle class kids studying in prestigious universities really believe they are members of the working class simply because they adopt leftist ideals. Meanwhile several despoiled working class people believe they are the representatives of "The Middle Class" or "The Bourgeoisie" and therefore keep voting for right wing politicians who support neoliberal policies that only further despoils them. When people are ignorant of their own class, they will inevitably vote against their "class interest". If anything Wokeism is a key element in our culture nowadays that obscures class distinctions. Personally I would go further and state that class distinctions are not contained within identity politics and that identity politics very intentionally swerves away from class in order to focus on other individual distinctions. Blame it on the Frankfurt school.
I'm glad that you reference the work of so many others directly while discussing the concepts in your videos. So much content on this platform is presented from behind the screen of opinion, but I like to dig in to things I find interesting and you give a lot of leads to follow up on.
Wow. After all these years I finally found someone who actually tied the whole thing together. I've heard many of these elements before but never fully understood their connection and significance.
That's not the meaning of woke . There is no such thing as wokeism 🤦🏿♂️🤦🏿♂️🤦🏿♂️🤦🏿♂️. Woke is black slang that indicates consciousness and awareness . Oh have you tried that in and out burger, if you haven't you ain't woke yet . The destruction of this word is amazing
@@ajajala5081 The meaning has changed now
What’s the meaning then?
The thing that strikes me as someone who's spent huge amounts of time in woke internet spaces is how much of it is about building personal legitimacy, to the point that it starts to bleed into the way you talk without even trying. If you're trying to criticize something that is hurting people you of course mention that, but the *even better* formulation is when you mention that it is "disproportionately effecting black people" or gay people or whatever. If you can tie something into woke causes, even tangentially, you tend to do it. It's where you really see the neoliberal disposition of public wokeness, because the great crime of neoliberal woke discourse is not that people suffer, but that people suffer disproportionately or "unfairly" (with fairness being assessed almost solely as a matter of disproportionate harm to minority groups). COVID-19 killing half a million Americans is bad, but COVID-19 killing Black Americans in disproportionate numbers is racist and therefore a moral emergency of a different kind.
Even if you're a more traditional, economics-focused social democrat or socialist, you're actively encouraged to reframe all of your class-based observations as race-based ones. So you want to implement Medicare For All? Sure it's bad that there are so many uninsured and underinsured people, but if we point out those uninsured and underinsured people are disproportionately people of color, now we're cooking with gas. Even though this is implicit - in the United States, poor people just *means* disproportionately black people, latino people, etc. because of the nature of the way the country is stratified - you shouldn't just advocate for poor people because poor people without the modifier of an identity group is a non-entity within neoliberal woke discourse.
I remember an attempt to brand the phrase "working class" as being implicitly white by some woke or woke-adjacent liberal writers. And you can see how that happened and even sympathize with it: there is indeed a right-wing usage of working class that refers to disproportionately white cultural grouping rather than class grouping, the hard-hat rebellion, billionaire-in-blue-jeans vision of "working class". But it really shows how apart this discourse is from traditional left-wing politics that such a thing could even be proposed.
Brain M
So if something disproportionately effects a group we shouldn't be concerned about it? If something effects a group especially we shouldn't take special care and put special attention on it to alleviate that? Whyte people's logic seems to get all weird when it comes to aiding and helping particular groups. Racism and identity based discrimination has been a huge problem in the united states and pretty much the story of the country. To have any analysis of any kind, right wing or left wing, that leaves this out is crazy to me. And something only a person who doesn't actually care could ignore. But more and more we're hearing whyte people cry out as they have also become the subject of discussion, the objects of criticism and examination, and complaining that there is "anti-whyteness" or that teaching about whyte people doing bad things in history might harm their kids. Odd hw whyte people can suddenly see how your identity can effect you and that things need to be addressed on that basis when they're the ones affected. But if it's anybody else then it's "woke" or somehow their reaction is fundamentally wrong, unnatural or illegitimate
Also as far as words are concerned, they're understood by how they're used and you've basically admitted that yourself. "Working class" is almost always used separately from black americans or any other group, even outside of right-wing spaces. All contexts around the word when it's being used usually fit particular groups of people. Just like we understand what "urban" is usually implying when it's used as far as identity goes. When we're discussing whyte people the word "metropolitan" rather than 'urban' seems to be what's preferred. Or famously, "sub-urban". So what you might think is an issue with the left might simply be society at large reacting to these things and how they're understood. There are many non-political people who would still see these words in the same way and don't necessarily subscribe to left wing or right wing politics. What I find curios is how a lot of leftists seem to assume the politics of particular people or groups and think everything is ideologically involved. Some people might just be picking up on the discourse at large
@@Scoring57 you missed his point and ended up what he was describing.
@@juststop7335 describe how he did that
@@leonardotavaresdardenne9955 He took a point about how wokeism forces particular groups to the forefront of an issue and put a particular group as the forefront of the issues he gave examples for.
Honestly why am I even bothering? You see him spell white people as "whyte" and then engage in the same exact divisive rhetoric the video and the original comment is complaining about. If you can't reason it out on your own with even this little bit you might be a plant.
Well said. That "disproportionately affecting x" qualifier totally reminds me of John Oliver
Im liking your red hair's struggle against capitalism. Its a very real and individual effort. Bravo.
He's being unapologetically himself to inspire the rest of us, red-haired. I feel so represented.
It also chains him to biases.
The video has a significant part of it dedicated to ascribing the ills that Wokism is bringing to Capitalism in order to relieve the Left and Marxism of their guilt.
And that smells a bit like partisanship..
Mostly agree. One detail: I'd say that the second 'shift' is far more drastic than the first one, b/c there has been a very natural continuity between the constitutional 1789 left/right and the 19-20th century economic left/right. Basically, the demands for egalitarian and populist changes were extended from the constitutional to the economic sphere. The dominance and privilege of capitalists were naturally seen as similar to those of aristocrats and kings. A socialist and a Marxist was also self-evidently opposed to aristocracy and monarchy, s/he was basically a more extreme version of a republican, a hyper-republican or 'Republican+' as it were.
Most modern woke people, in contrast, are not self-evidently opposed to aristocracy and monarchy, let alone to capitalism and plutocracy. To them, a black or female king / duchess / CEO / billionaire / CIA agent are something to celebrate, not oppose. The woke do not *extend* the sphere of egalitarianism, they *replace* the groups in whose favour they primarily claim to be struggling. Even the theoretically 'intersectional' ones in practice deprioritise class and economic issues to a degree that is far from warranted by their relevant urgency. Furthermore, since most of them do accept capitalist and even pre-capitalist inequality and do not advocate general equality between humans in all respects, their demand isn't for *all* members of 'oppressed' groups to be equal to each other or to all members of the 'oppressor' groups; it is for an equal statistical percentage of these groups in good or bad social positions in proportion to their percentage of the population. In fact, they often even demand compensatory privilege for the groups they claim to be fighting for, rather than just equality. In these respects, their identity-based strife resembles ethnic nationalism. In addition, they also require great attention to small details of personal behaviour, gestures, private life, rather than primarily on a specific programme for institutional and social change, making wokeism similar to a religion. A related difference is that while the old 'lefts' were rationalistic (anti-religious and anti-traditionalist) in outlook, wokeism tends to be at best suspicious of rationalism and reasoned discussion and at worst hostile to them and to favour, instead, spontaneous expressions of authentic feeling and subjectivity, as well as traditions, as long as they belong to oppressed identities.
"... if you'll allow the pun, is in essence non-essentialist"
Hmmm. Yes, allowed.
I enjoyed this video a lot but it is definitely not the case that Corbyn was replaced by a more 'woke' candidate: Starmer has been gesturing towards cultural conservativism in an effort to appeal to the working class voters he lost in 2019.
Corbyn was ousted because he wasn't conservative enough!
That example of him and Sanders was just wrong. Love the rest of the video though!
Hard to parse the difference as the Labour Party is institutionally paralysed by identity politics. Starmer is aware of the problem, but it isn’t clear to him how the party can be moved out of this state.
@Jack Smith 🇰🇵☦️🥔 Yup, pretty convinced now. You're on one bud.
Starmer is a psychopath so it is hard to know what (if anything) he sincerely believes in, right now his only concern is power so he is trying to move the party back towards the centre.
Wow, this religious element to Wokeism is really interesting. That explaines, why many (religious) conservatives hate the movement so much: It is basically ursurping their place in society.
It also highlights all of the negative parts of a religion. It explains why the non-religious leftists for some reason, inadvertently invented a new religion as a replacement.
@@whoised603 This is basically the "atheism is just anothef religion" argument.
@@whoised603 Maybe because humans are susceptible to "religion-inventing" or something functionally-equivalent to it…
@@whoised603 I think the term you are looking for is ideology. All religions are ideologies, but not all ideologies are a religion.
Not really usurping as much as it is in a bloodthirsty rampage to destroy every single foundational element for a functioning society.
Let's make men women, let's destroy children's innocence, let's destroy the institution of marriage, let's make women promiscuous and hate men, let's pit everyone against each other because of the color of our skin, the list goes on... All the while real problems like infrastructure, purchasing power and education go unnoticed. The owners of CNN are laughing their a--e- off because people are tunnel-visioned on fabricated problems that don't matter, whilst they get richer and richer, at our expense.
Wokeism as a religion is not the issue, it's Wokeism as a smokescreen.
Adding this channel to my Jordan Peterson and James Lindsay playlist. Definitely enjoy the different breakdown of the same topics.
Thank you for sharing this video, it really pushed me to question my own beliefs which was very uncomfortable and nourishing at the same time.
I'm from Brazil and in the last couple of years I've seen an emergence of Wokeism here,
mostly in student activism. They used to be stereotypically socialist. Some still are, but they try to reconcile socialism and wokenism, and it always results in an awkard and forced effort.
It seems that Wokeism is something poorly imported from the USA. I mean, we do have racial issues here that have never been properly addressed, in part because left politics here has always been "socially conservative" and it has always sabotaged these issues.
I do understand that, as american liberalism became more urban and less working class, it became more focused on cultural issues rather than economical issues (or it tied economcal issues to identities, turning poor (and potentialy racist) whites away). The fact that it is spreading worldwide reveals how culturally powerful the US is.
This was fantastic, thank you. It would be really great to see you and James Lindsay discuss this idea.
I've shared this video so many times! Great breakdown, really appreciate your work!
thank you for making this incredible analysis free and accessible for all!! i have to say that i’m quite young and impressionable, and with our recent woke culture, it hasn’t been so helpful navigating morality online. think i’ve figured it out by now!!
If you can I'd pick up the collected works of Epicurus. Definitely the one set of Ethics I wish I picked up when I was young
I never comment on videos, but I found your channel yesterday and I have already watched almost all of your releases. This is a great channel, thank you very much for this great content and for making your knowledge public! As a very insignificant student of philosophy and political sciences, I am learning a lot from all of this.
I have studied in Brazil, Canada and Belgium, and so far I have been seeing an increasing dislike of philosophy in the field of social sciences/humanities. I have had professors that are no doubt very good at doing statistical and quantitative analysis, but they are quite unable to discourse about these topics in the way you do. It is a breath of fresh air to see someone doing proper philosophy for once in the field of social sciences.
I don't even agree with some of your points, but I appreciate the way you explain them - and how you criticize others, and yourself, with a level of respect for their work, no matter how much you might disagree with them or even perhaps find them stupid (the School of Life critique jumps to mind). I think this even relates to the development of wokeism of which you talk about here, which leads people to see a critique of their ideas as an Ad Hominem attack. To me, this very much seems like a defensive reaction to having one's profile shaken, so to speak.
Which leads me to a question: after watching most of your videos, I am still struggling to understand what you mean by "profile." I seem to be able to grasp it within the context, and even use it correctly (like above). But I am failing to understand it through a more precise definition. Your video on Abigail Thorn mentions profilicity as demanding a curation of profiles, but I have yet to understand what exactly you mean by a profile. Could you please explain that?
Looking forward to buying and reading your book - and to hopefully disagreeing with at least part of it.
He's referring to a generalized notion of a facebook profile, twitter profile, instagram profile, linkedin profile
That I understand, but I need a little than that. Defining "profile" as "something like a generic internet profile" is circular logic, even though it does make sense.
I very much agree with your want for a more in-depth look at the meaning of the "profile." From my understanding, based centrally on the professor's video on Abigail Thorn, a profile is a presentation of your identity to others. Furthermore, that in comparison to "authenticity," where one attempts to present to others an identity that reflects how they feel about themselves, "profilicity" is where you use a profile (or presentation) of your identity to the "general peer," and upon receiving feedback on this presentation, you then change your internal identity to match what the "general peer" agreed/disagreed with most. I believe that this relates to the idea of second-order observation which the professor also talked about in the video on identity, as supposedly in the current day our identity is based less so on the person who we might think we are, but instead more-so on what others believe we should be. As such, our identity is of a "second-order," as it is derived through our observations of others observing our "profile" or public presentation of identity. I may be completely wrong in this interpretation, but I hope it could be of some use to you.
It was very much useful, thank you! I hope you did get it right, because now I think I understand it.
I think it’s important to recognize the term’s origins in black culture/AAVE for context. It refers to a form of racial consciousness among African Americans. You provide a good discussion regarding the contemporary adoption (and co-option) of it by white people (and institutions), but that larger context is really missing, and you risk erasing/dismissing that understanding by not addressing it
The commonplace definition has shifted radically from referring to black racial consciousness, so I feel although it should be necessary to mention, it’s omission doesn’t really detract from the video?
@@bellumthirio139 No it doesn’t terribly detract from the video as a whole, it’s just a key point that, forgotten, leads to a lesser understanding of the issue as a whole. The video makes excellent points otherwise
@@bellumthirio139 Is there a term for anachronism, in which the the erroneous arrow of cause and effect points forward? This may sound convoluted, but for example, calling the Lollards (a proto-Protestant movement in England) Protestants would be anachronistic, because the Lollards originated a century or so before Martin Luther. And calling the emerging English Protestants as Lollards sounds equally erroneous, but the error isn’t retrograde. This latter erroneous labelling sounds similar to calling modern activists Woke, because although there are similarities, the developmental differences seem to warrant a new name that doesn’t muddy the jargon used in discourse and provides a clearer definition.
@@NightDoge prolepsis or prochronism, the placing of an event or object into a future which does not include it
@@bellumthirio139 rightists will explicitly attack black American racial awareness as “woke” in this derogatory sense.
This is good stuff!
Please keep on, professor. I'm sure we would appreciate such analytic takes.
This is an interesting watch. The clarification at the end was particularly important, as the guilt-pride and profile curation criticisms describe existing phenomenon, but they leave out the experiences of minority activists who must articulate their identity in order to accurately describe their political struggles. This aspect of so-called "wokeism" is not as vulnerable to criticism so it makes sense that it would not come up, but it would have been nice to see that acknowledged to mitigate conflation of "wokeism" with "bad and inauthentic" - it can be these things, just as anything can, but it is not inherently these things.
The initial criticisms of "wokeism" both suffer from the same problem: they accept that concepts which are traditionally described as being on opposing ends of a spectrum are mutually exclusive. Individuals and communities are not separable from each other - each individual human is deeply interconnected with their community, and the nature of a community is determined by (though not equivalent to) the nature of the individuals within that community. "Wokeism" focuses on subsets of the community, which are themselves communities and frequently defined by aspects of their identity, and are being mistreated by the community as a whole. This is why identity markers such as race are relevant while red hair is not - "wokeism" does not decide which identity aspects matter, it reacts to the unjust emphasis of particular identity aspects by the larger community.
Similarly, identity struggle and class struggle are two expressions of the same underlying problem: the community accepts getting ahead by taking advantage of neighbors to be an acceptable strategy. A classless society cannot be achieved without addressing identity struggles, because oppressed identities are themselves a class. Redlining, loan refusals, etc define classes based on identity, as people who would traditionally be considered in the same class have access to resources that people who face identity struggles do not.
Any way you could do an in depth video on post-modernism? I really like your content, and it is difficult to find objective commentary on this subject.
You are right about the paucity of quality coverage online.
yeah please do this
Read Cynical Theories, which he mischaracterizes badly, for an excellent summary of postmodern thought and the aspects applied and denied by critical theorists.
@@AlexADalton I argue that wokeism is very postmodern indeed, but I am in agreement with Hans Georg that calling it Marxist is a stretch. Overall Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay did well with some (though not all) of the book.
Please do not read Cynical Theory, at least not as an introduction to Critical Theory since it is extremely ideological charged, confuses several philosophical and theoretical schools and movements with one and other and is therefore either badly researched or just intelectually dishonest. You can read it since it overexaggerates problematic aspects of critical theory (which are also brought up by advocates of critical Theory such as Rick Roderick). But to cut through the bullshit you better familiarise yourself with Critical Theory. Now to your actual question: How to familiarise oneself with Critical Theory? Tough task since it’s getting harder to distinguish what the term Critical Theory actually means. The actual Critical Theorists who actually described their works as Critical Theory were authors of the later called Frankfurt School, they all worked at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt (Max Horkheimer, the director of the institute at the time coined the term Critical Theory in his Essay „Traditional and Critical Theory“). Famous authors of the Frankfurt School are Max Horkheimer, Theodor W Adorno, Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal. Unofficial members of the Institute, at least in it‘s early stages were Walter Benjamin and Erich Fromm. Later people started to talk about different generations of the Frankfurt School, an other name you might wanna look up is Jürgen Habermas, he was a student of Adorno and later became the director of the Institute. First recommendation: search for Rick Roderick on UA-cam. He was a Professor for Philosophy and gives brillant introductions to Philosophy. He gave one to Marcuse and to Habermas and he also published a book on Critical Theory. His lectures on poststructuralist and postmodern authors are great too! A friend told me „Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction“ by Stephen Bronner is also a pretty nice read. Now to a big problem of the American reception of Critical Theory: In the US Critical Theory is often inflated with several other theoretical approaches, for example Feminism, Queer Theory, Critical Race Theory, Poststructuralism or Postmodernism. Now of course there are ties between these approaches. For example Judith Butler, the famous Queer Theorist draws heavely on Poststructuralist authors such as Foucault. Angela Davis, the famous black Feminist and Anti-Racist Activist was a student of Marcuse and even spend some time abroad to study Philosophy in Frankfurt in seminars given by none other but Adorno. Lyotard, a french philosopher who‘s one of the only people who actually talks about Postmodernism in his actual writings also draws on Adorno and his aesthetic theory. The feminist Nancy Fraser also describes herself as a Critical Theorist and has even published books with Axel Honneth who used to be the director of the Institute for Social Research. So, there are definitely ties between these different disciplines and they all share this basic notion of criticizing the status quo, ideology, unwritten rules or common sense arguments. But they‘re are definitely not the same and should not be confused.
Thank you for this video! Your channel is a goldmine
Im learning lots here so thank you. I particularly like the way in which it helps me to understand much that seemingly is under the radar.
Ufff here's my take based on my personal experience. I remember having this exact conversation with my sister 12 years ago. I'm an engineer and my sister an economist and we were raised by a physicist father and a mathematician mother (just to give some context). We're on our forties, now. And it went like this; remember this was 12 years ago. Before marriage equality.
Me - I'm troubled that the left seems to be focusing more about the rights of the gay community than the overall class struggle.
Sister - Why?
Me - Well, it seems more individualist approach instead of focusing on the well being of the whole community.
Sister - Yeah, but the gay community is not even recognized or seen in the same grounds that the rest of the community, not socially or legally. And whatever they say is dismissed solely in the base of their sexual orientation. So... maybe if we can level those grounds first, and have gender equality first, it'll will be more easy to focus in the class struggle once every group can be seen, heard and recognized. So equal humans first, class later.
Me - .....
I still think she's right. Case in point Angela Davis and the Black Panther Party (where she was often attacked just for being a woman).
I do like the analysis about religion, guilt, fundamentalism and capitalisms, but those things were there way before woke-ism, and they would have happened even in a non-woke discourse.
Thank you for the video.
The issue I have with that is that there will always be a group that is outside the mainstream that will be fighting for a voice. We can say "once we fix this, then we can fix this thing later". Besides, the two things aren't mutually exclusive. My suspicion is that many people just don't like the poor, they dislike their lifestyle, their lack of education and their attitude to life. If they are white working class they see them as part of the problem. If they are a minority they will also fear them for their otherness therefore put minorities that have "made it" or have "integrated" on a pedestal.
Yeah, but doesn't this discount all the successes that have been made for the working class throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries? Things like labour rights, occupational safety laws and regulations, and so on?
There has been substantial progress on the class struggle without attention to the individual identity groups, but when we say that we'll be able to focus on the class struggle by first focusing on the individual identity groups, it (first) implies a causal relationship that needs proof, and (second) that there hasn't actually been progress on the class struggle because we haven't been working on the individual identity groups which is false.
On the flipside, I could easily argue that, by focusing on the class struggle first, that individual identity group liberation will be easier, by the simple virtue that, when the lower classes are given what they need (consistent access to food, fair wages and working hours, health care), that gives the more time to focus on the things that matter to them, such as the ability to express their identity freely. Notice that the advocates for wokeism tend to largely be upper class, college educated people who have time for leisure (and thus activism), and not the working class. If the working class had more time and a better safety net, they could be as much a part of the fight as the upper class.
i understand your sister's point however i feel the opposition of socialism and (for lack of a better term) social justice is a construction. There's many examples of active socialist who were dealing with social issues that went beyond just an orthodox-marxist focus on workers. Even as early as Emma Goldman but later people like Dunayevskaya have seen support for the struggle of civil rights movements as part of a broader socialist struggle. In the end the struggle for a better society is won through many small battles - just like a single worker's strike in itself is gonna change society but might help to put pressure on the broader system
P.S. it's fair to critzise identity politics that think of civil rights under capitalism as a means to and end - but at the same time i will always defend any social struggle against JP supporters or racist/sexist/ableist "socialists"
@@tomdalgarno2372 Yes, thank you for the response, but in those cases I will also like to hear the experiences directly from those groups. Is perfectly ok for somebody outside those group to do critical analysis. But to me it sounds like a scientist explaining color to a blind person. I love Zizek theories about ideologies for instance (and he finally help me undestand lacan's graph for desire) but when he starts cracking jokes about his "Jews friends" or "native american friends", well I would like to have actually hear those jokes from them, not Zizek. The same with Chomsky, I love the guy a lot. But he was lucky to be also white and cis, so when it comes to gender for example, I'm going to pay more attention to Judith Butler and Foucault. They have lived their theories.
Cheers
It's really refreshing and reassuring to hear someone breakdown Wokeism in a level-headed and (seemingly) non-sectarian way. By the way, I think the writers of Cynical Theories agree with you that Wokeism is very different from traditional post-modernism, and I think they do a good job of tracing the lineage, despite the current lack of resemblance.
ive noticed that the position of the first volume of "BLAME!" that you own seems to change such as to ensure that it stays in frame on each of your videos. is there a reason for this? what is the relevancy of "BLAME!" to the general themes of this channel, if there is any? i greatly enjoyed the series and would be curious to hear about this.
I'm glad i stumbled upon this channel. Thank you for your work.
This is the kind of critique of an ideology that I'd like to see more of on the Internet. It's not a "takedown" or a "DESTROYED WITH FACTS AND LOGIC" video, but a "let's clearly define the ideology we're discussing, look at the important contexts, and then consider what the problematic aspects of it are before we draw some reasonable conclusions, all the while considering multiple perspectives and examining the disparate responses to the ideology with minimal bias" video.
You know, a video that tries to teach us something rather than trying to make us pissed off about it.
Well done.
Glad you put a disclaimer that this content can be addictive by nature😊. Still going to watch it
I love that you bring up Žižek. Have you ever had any discussions with him?
Thanks for the video. the content is great. this is the best channel ive found in a long while.
Absolutely love the disclaimer at the start
Okay, serious on topic question this time:
When are you finally going to get around to BLAME! 2?
I think there can be a similar parallel between religious zeal/dogmatic type of behavior and alt-right - meaning there can also be parallels of behavior and dogmatic thinking between alt-right and wokeism. Alt-right tends to be extremely essentialist, and displays a lot of the moral reductionism, and abusive categorical thinking that wokeism displays. Whenever there is a "conversation" between woke and alt-right people, it seems to be an impossible gap to bridge, where each blames the other with their own reductive ideological insults, meant to reduce each other into these abusive moral categories: "You're just a beta soy-boy degenerate" / "You're just a sexist/racist cis white man", as if that was enough to dismiss them, and as if it exhausted the entirety of their identity.
Woah, I really love this comment. I'm somewhat conservative and I really like your take on the alt-right and wokism's behavior.
Would just add that the 'woke' was created by the alt-right as a unifying antagonist. More than by people from disadvantage communities as a self-identifier.
best channel ive found period. keep doing what youre doing sir
Hello, thanks for mentioning my comment on your previous video, glad you took the time to offer a proper analysis of wokeism.
I would like to throw in my hat into the pit and offer some clarifications as to some aspects of wokeism for those who don't know. For example identity politics being its origin from the 60s and late 70s, was originally in conversation and even critique of the average Marxist analysis. The Combahee River Collective who were first writing about it were black female socialists themselves and saw a need to address certain aspects of Marxism and socialism that although not necessarily ignored, werent really giving proper consideration and incorporation of distinct phenomena that were affected by identity, as with most meta narratives. Meaning what they were looking for was a way to talk about different types of oppression that require different solutions and strategies. Now at first this was a very post modernist expression because it sought to address different permutations of oppression that were contingent on specificity and social conditioning. However as you correctly pointed out however, this critique has been largely interpolated into a much larger, hegemonic framework that is used on both sides, where you have extreme right wing conservatives or "white identitarians", on the right and wokeism on the left. At the end of the day mainstream politics and the mediums its presented as are expressions of profilicity as politics.
I highly recommend Innuendo Studio's video I Hate Mondays, part of his Alt Right Playbook Series. He talks about how the dominant Christian values in the USA is expressed although acutely on the right, comes from both sides. Although he talks about the right's essentialization of morality and the is-ought fallacy applied politically, because wokeism can be considered the neoliberal left we can apply this principal to them as well. For the right, if you are not Christian enough then you are going to hell, for wokeism of you are not "woke" enough (aside from left enough, there's a difference) then you are unable to be forgiven. And it can also be seen as someone projecting their own moral or political failings on everyone else too.
However I would like to make the distinction that wokeism is a civil religion with extreme guilt pride, as you correctly pointed out that it is a white western phenomenon. For white people this theory applies pretty precisely. So then what do we say of the people of color, or even women and queer people who will engage in wokeism. It can be for the same reason the latine woman from the CIA is participating in wokeism and that is when minorities engage in wokeism, we are in effect being reconverted and essentializing ourselves into what white people think they're supposed to see us as rather than taking the opportunity to use that identity to contribute to a larger conversation about radical change. Zizek once pointed out that the indigenous people in America didnt want to be called Native Americans because it allowed white people to essentialize in their mind this antiquated image of Native Americans with their traditions and head dresses and stuff and in the process justifies their own prejudices against them. Which yes it is part of their history and culture, their expression of that has much more to do with preventing erasure of their culture rather than their arguments for decolonization.
The job I personally think of people of color such as myself and women and queer people is to understand and communicate that our oppression and discrimination are parts of larger philosophical, socioeconomic, and political systems at play that require critique, not just that our identities are part of the mechanics of oppression, but that we should look as to why that is in the first place and what changes will actually benefit us. That way we wont let white people get away with using our oppression to feel good about themselves when they do their performative wokeness and will be forced to confront the crisis of our system.
Sorry for an essay of a comment but that goes to show that you did a really good video on this topic and I thank you for that. Keep up the good work.
as a trans woman very tired of the moralistic and sometimes authoritarians connotations of "wokenes" to the point of feeling alienated to the point of sometimes not wanting to be consider one i really loved this video, i hope it has a good reception 💜
It's a solid point. When being trans begins to alienate people because of the "wokeness" typically associated with the community. You don't end up being judged for your personality or accomplishments, you don't even get judged for being trans, you get judged for being associated with identity politics group. Interesting
The horrible thing I've noticed is that transphobia has increased for the trans people in the LGBT community when they say something that's not "politically correct" They're labeled as 'pick mes' or simply dismissed because they're white.
Transguy here, totally agree with you! I feel like "wokeism" really made things turn for the worse. "Wokeism" cares too much about being "right" and all morally superior, but it only alienated otherwise sensible people who might have been accepting enough of LGBT in general. They're certainly not making themselves any allies.
@@porassrivastava8242 it depends on what you mean by “not politically correct”. If they are right wing advocating against the trans community’s interests so as to be accepted by some conservatives that very much is a pick me attitude. Like women who will be misogynistic for male approval. It’s a real thing and it’s corrosive
@@kstar1489
So similar to white liberals who will act toxically anti-white in order to « please » minorities?
In my experience "staying woke" at first, did not have a political leaning and was instead about having an awareness of specific issues or problems in the world and their causes, or even deep conspiracies that are unsubstantiated. It was later changed into the IDpol definition that you spoke about in the video
The bit about German Guilt-Pride and the feeling of moral superiority kinda reminds me of a Jewish joke Zizek told in one of his speeches, where a bunch rich and powerful guys each stand up to pray "Oh Lord I'm a nobody, but I beseech you" etc; then a poor man stands up and does the same, prompting one of the rich to lean over to another and ask "Who does this guy think he is, to call himself a nobody?"
Very interesting analysis, I was not expecting this much depth from a youtube video on wokeism
This is like a bolt of lightning for me. I have been thinking that Wokism is a new religion of our age, and your eloquent elaboration of this idea was very exciting to listen to.
How is it anything like religion? Are you just calling any new controversial social expectations 'religion'? There is a LOT of real evidence for things like systemic racism, whereas the bible or koran are basically fiction with 0 substantiation.
I believe that this phenomenon is rooted in the highly religious background of the United States that although a lot of its facets are highly secularized the citizens still pressure each other through the implementation of very strict social rules in which deviation from the norm is highly punished with shunning and social isolation (Hence the canceling) While posturing and virtue signaling are encouraged as a way to keep people in line. It sounds immensely stressing to live in such a society to be quite honest.
What are the social rules?
There's also an anger element. Maybe this is more present in other cultures than I suspect, but I feel US culture, more than anywhere else, emphasizes anger or frustration when it comes to disputes. I think it's gotten to the point where someone in the US will be wary of someone who _isn't_ angry, feeling as though there's some kind of manipulation afoot.
Europe is far less religious and we have the same “woke” ideas rooted in our current politics. It seems to be religious in nature but definitely not a consequence of the once prevalent religion
It is stressful to be told how you should behave and talk and think in every social situation you're put in. Did you know gay conversion therapy is still a thing? Did you know you can be killed in a lot of countries for the crime of being gay? No but I'm sure the white people being told to stop using the N word when they're trying to browse youtube have it really hard, too.
Yes there is something very calvinist about the mindset
The work of building a shine to yourself is so much more comforting than either a) devoting yourself to some kind of religious practice or b) engaging in class struggle. I can see why profile curation would thrive at the expense of those more challenging pursuits.
Great take, good job
One little thing, it goes beyond creating and to assign labels, as you yourself said later, as it takes or monopolizes the concepts of love or justice, it is a call to actions to apply those concepts by the lens of the categories it creates
What is curiously missing from this analysis is any appreciation for where the term itself originates and resultantly the cultural conditions that serve as a framework for the "movement".
It should come as no surprise that an ideal that evolves from the internal discourse of a people that were systematically locked out of material struggle and labour organisation at its zenith in the mid 20th century, is more concerned with cultural capital than political organising.
The alignment of notions of "working class" with "whiteness" readily points to a racial exclusivism that is fundamental to any historical appreciation of class and exemplifies why marginalised groups do not readily buy into class based analyses.
Millennials of the west have found themselves in a similar wilderness i.e. the post-08-crash-wasteland of broken promises and jaded futures, so once again cultural capital - easily coopted, impossible to quantify but undeniably potent, holds sway.
All this to say that it feels... odd to frame wokeism as a religion in the vein of the civil rights movement of all things on the basis that identity politics wasn't a thing in America until the 70's and American liberalism fetishises guilt???
But most civil rights activism was based in class until the 1970s. Class analysis was never seen as white-exclusive by all well-known and influential POC activists in the 21st century . Countless black civil rights leaders used the labor movement to make economic and civil rights gains.
@@danilthorstensson8902 It would completely mischaracterise the civil rights movement to describe anything other than race as foundational to it. Of course many activists and thinkers engaged in and put forward class based analyses of American society but we are talking through the prism of identity curation whereby the very existence of segregation locked black Americans out of meaningful expressions of class identity.
@@zekea7601 but many civil rights leaders thought (rightly) that the easiest and most effective way to achieve parity economically and socially was through class action. Of course race was the essential concern but it was not seen as mutually exclusive with class.
@@zekea7601 some labor unions were racist even into the 1960s but the biggest ones were not, like the AFL-CEO and the Porter’s Union. Through the 30s, 40s, and 50s, most improvements came through organized labor
Great analysis, really interesting to consider wokeism in terms of religion.
Just a note on the term Cultural Marxism, I was under the impression that it's derived from (or at least had an analogue in) the nazi propaganda term Cultural Bolshevism, which was used to discredit people and ideas by suggesting they were part of a Jewish/socialist conspiracy. Cultural marxism (even if the modern variant doesn't carry quite the same connotations) seems to function in a similar way, and gets used by conservative commentators as a scare word, more so than an actual analysis of what wokeism means. So I guess it makes sense that the term doesn't make any sense.
So lovely to find a considered commentary as opposed to the one sided, reactionary stuff that we usually get served!
That’s more or less a smear used by people who don’t understand it in the slightest. Cultural Marxism is the application of Marxist conflict theory to social issues outside of class, as exemplified by Herbert Marcuse (who is Jewish, hence the claim that it’s an anti-Semitic conspiracy, even though there is far more evidence that Marxism is the anti-Semitic conspiracy, such as Marx’s book “on the Jewish question”)
Brilliant unpacking. Thank you!
Love the channel, this breaks down wokeism very well. You put my feelings and thoughts into words and context in a way I can't. Besten Dank!
'Marxism has never been about the cultural superstructure...' stares in gramsci and situationist
Not to mention marcuse.
Look. I feel like you (and alot of orthodox marxists) have fallen into the trap of conflating liberal recuperation of leftist terms theories aesthetics and strategies. This trap is LAID by both the right and the libs. But if you leave the office, if you listen to speeches at blm rallies, you're going to hear structural critiques left and right. ALOT of the analysis that is co-opted into 'wokeism' is entirely based in trying to demonstrate how the identities we have maintain economic systems. Read Caliban and the witch and the half has never been told to get a more historical view of how these 'superstructural' axes of oppression allowed the accumulation of capital at the birth of capitalism. There are nuanced differences between 'wokism' or liberal idpol and a leftist analysis that incorporates an understanding of intersecting systems of oppression. Just like there's a difference between aoc dems play acting as Marxists and the Marxists in the 3rd world that are in direct opposition to the systemof exploitation that allows soc-dem countries play act.
@@simmerslodraw Bingo!
Gramsci and situationalists theorists are a very small minority of the left. That is only read when perusing a masters degree in academia. Ive met several leftists in person and online and I have yet to find anyone who has read Gramsci and Marcus or what ever his name is.
I was thinking the same thing. Hegemony
Not nearly to the same level
One of the better summaries of wokeism. There's an aspect of it that I haven't heard being articulated: the varying adherence to individualism.
It seems certain people are afforded more room for individualistic identity than others. In the wokeist view, if you qualify as one of the predetermined disadvantaged groups (with additional adjustments for intersectionality), your personal lived experience is valuable and your personal identity should be yours to define. Otherwise you're swept up into the default WASP stereotype with little allowance for differentiation. This might actually make sense to some degree (as members of disadvantaged groups have had their identities suppressed and ignored) but it seems worth noting that there is intentional variability in how individualism is being applied.
The response to black social conservatives is an interesting test case of this approach to individualism in combination with the heavy moralization typically associated with wokeism.
I love your work! Thanks professor :)
It’s extremely refreshing to find a criticism of wokeness that isn’t hypocritically wrapped up in Jordan Peterson’s dogma. I feel you correctly critic both as being wrapped up in each other.
I really enjoy your videos in general. They are easy to follow - for those of us without philosophy degrees - without being patronising.
31:59 that quote from Matt 12/30 perfectly describes like half of Linkedin and Twitter etc. moral posturing posts about "diversity".
Funnily, the last thing a woke person would want is to be confused with being religious.
My problem with the term wokeism is that it’s so vague, ill defined, and so often used by the right that it can basically mean anything left of conservatism. Even after watching this video I don’t think it’s this defined belief system in the way you try to equate it to Christianity. I also had a similar feeling to the term “identity politics” as if somehow people’s identity as no place in politics when it’s very much people’s identities that are in question and have historically and now involved the law around their very identity.
The problem I see is not this nebulous “wokeism” but thinking identity is the only thing, and that injustice is solved by this cynical liberal capitalist “more bipoc women ceos” will solve all the problems. This kind of pop activism is more about saying the right thing rather than advocating substantively for policy and critiquing the actual ingrained structure like our economic system and historical shaped environments. The answer is not to malign all identity politics or to say that a blurb of commitment to diversity is bad and just another form of religion (though it may mimick it in some people) but rather to point out that the often criticized for being woke term intersectionality is important in analyzing how many things, including class, contribute to injustice.
You are right that it isn’t far left (I’d say it’s really an appropriation of activist language with a superficial understanding) but more a recoloring or revamping of something closer to neo-liberalism or rather a liberalism that does address the deeper issues.
A term I’ve heard on the left is “woke-scolds” which are people more interested in signaling their moral purity and condemning (rather than critiquing) others that aren’t as woke. This separate from the pop-activism and cynical woke aesthetics employed by corporations and for profit media. Which is also separate from the pop-woke surface level beliefs many liberals have. And this is all separate from the good work on the left. But this is all kind grouped together often.
And I found it weird for you to imply Abigail is a wokeist by basically coming out as trans and being a UA-camr? I don’t understand this. Merely existing as a public figure and advocating for things doesn’t make you a “wokeist” in how you described it.
KStar I agree with your critique of this video. I felt that the definition was presented in an ill-defined way which detracts the word's context in reality. I've only heard "Wokeism" used by they right to denote anything left leaning that the speaker does not agree with. I've also heard the term "woke" with companies or people trying to appropriate a minority or an not well understood group with ignorance or with no care of understanding.
"Wokeism" is not a set ideology, religion, or philosophy that people come to, but is a term of alienation and a false grouping of ideas.
I felt that there were valid critiques on extreme individualism and on corporate and government attitudes. "Wokeism" is more of an insult to those who are actually spreading awareness and wanting change. I don't want to sound like I'm insulting this man as he seems very knowledgeable, but I feel this video boarders on conspiracy.
He basically just used surface level of certain buzzwords and BIASED surface level. He completely equated wokeness to performative attempts in social media and completely disregarded the intersectional aspect of the conversations around identity politics. Aside from this commonly absurd distinction of "idpolitics" like people only voted in numbers and not for the most handsome face / magnetic personality or whatever people idealized or personally identify with. Apparently there's still people that think politics are born out of thin air and in a vacuum separated from human experience.
I quite enjoyed this video. I am a Jordan Peterson listener and it was refreshing to listen to someone who disagrees with him without it being inflammatory and charged.
I liked your explanations and I enjoy the tone of your speaking voice.
Thank you and thanks to my friend who shared this link with me.
Such a concise and calm explanation. I found your video really helpful and interesting.
Great video.
I agree with you, I am supportive of what the woke fights for, but disagree with their fanatical method.
I really like what Hans-Georg has to say but I think Jim needs to think a little harder about what images he's using. Or if they even need to be used.
I think most images were helpful, and when they are you barely notice them because we are used to seeing the work of professional designers and editors. Love that when talking about a comment or book or video it is always shown, and also love the summaries for example at 31:00. But some examples that could be improved: Philosophy Tube's profile illustration being used repeatedly, one could start thinking there's a personal grudge against her which is not the professor's intention. The debatable axis at 10:46 which has blurs and out of place images as well so it can distract the viewer a bit. The tacky papyrus font in the thumbnail. That said, the images in general are a great addition to help follow the arguments.
@@DriesDD TIL that you can add blurs to videos without taking them down and reuploading them! The blur to the right of "socialism" said "fascism" when I watched this yesterday, and now it's a blur. I'm not sure what the other blurs were.
I'm glad to see he made the edits, but leaving an image that places fascism not only as left wing, but center left? That's a big oopsie.
edit: I just remembered what the blurs on the far left were - either Jacobinism and Terrorism or Jacobinism and Totalitarianism. No idea what was going on on the right.
@John Caraway lol, and I really mean it, that made me laugh out loud
Thank you for adding to the paradigm of thought, it has opened up another overview of the subject and life as a whole. I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts on David Harvey's Anti-Capitalist Chronicles.
Oh? Is that a BLAME! volume I'm spotting on the shelf?
Thank you for this great video, you're an amazing professor!
Holy shit I think you're right!
Since the professor seems to be reading the comments, I would like to express a slight disagreement. I firmly agree with most of what was said here, yet I feel like we should never forget to mention that identity politics (and therefore wokeism) come from a political of struggle not only for minorities’ empowerment, but also for the recognition of oppression.
Most of the thinkers cited by the activists on this matter (which include a few post-modernists if I’m not mistaken) were basically trying to analyse in which ways some people are socially and structurally oppressed based on their perceived identity. This approach seems quite « traditionally leftist » to me, because it’s fundamentally about groups hurting other groups. In fact those ideas were and are still co-analysed with more historically leftist themes, like class. Identity politics turned into what they are now partially because to speak about this oppression, activists had to use the concepts and identities they were put into. They had to use the words of the enemy, if you’ll allow me the expression, hence the emphasis on identity features. For instance, « race » is not considered a relevant term regarding human identity in many western countries, but it is still used by activists, because this imaginary criteria is what’s causing society to oppress them.
Anyway, I think that even thought it is not succeeding at showing it, wokeism actually comes from a very leftist place. We shouldn’t forget to mention that, because (to me at least) it’s a key element in understanding what the whole thing is about. It’s a point that many activists are still trying to make, and that is made in interesting ways (I’ll get a bit prickly here I think) by leftist youtubers, such as abigail thorne :)
I dont understand your comment. How is it leftist
Can anyone explain me why race and sex are by far the most discussed issues when in fact there are things such as intelligence that no one even pays attention to? More intelligent people have been taking advantage of less intelligent people for ages. Less intelligent people have far far less ways to earn high income than more intelligent people. They can't defend themselves in disputes very well, so they are more likely to resort to violence, which in turn causes them even more trouble.
How about this one... Night owls. For evolutionary reasons, some people are naturally night owls and some are early birds (though most people fall in between). Our society, at least in the West, has been geared toward early birds for a long time. It's all well pointed out in a video titled "Why Night Owls Die Younger", although the video itself is not related to woke topics.
There are far more factors such as being born in the US vs elsewhere (passport privilege), having English as your first language, etc., which apply to US-born black people the same way as anyone else, but don't apply to non-US white people, many of which would need visa just to visit the US, let alone work there or become citizens. I have a first hand experience of what it's like to live in a country where I can't use my first language, which affects work opportunities as well as dating, despite me being white straight man (allegedly the most privileged being on earth). Woke people like to use words like "white privilege, white fragility, male privilege" and many other, but can't see their own privileges, as well as struggles of people who they consider privileged.
Jacky
That was an interesting diatribe. I can't say that it conveyed any particular message.
Identity politics is used because those that don't fit into society are often abused.
I can't disagree with that.
Wokism is a movement from the left.
I don't think I disagree with that.
Was there a point beyond my outline?
Thought you'd taken this offline, good to see its back!
Thank you for that disclaimer at the start
I’ve never found a channel like this where I disagree vehemently but where I still find fresh, interesting and brilliant. Thanks.
Thank you for giving me a term for it! 'Guilt Pride' - very annoying trait.
Brilliant video. I would be interested in seeing a video on how the language of critical theory and postmodernism has percolated through to the woke-ism phenomenon. It's definitely there, whether by filliation or mimicry.
woke-ism stems from postmodernism, it is a variant of postmodernism.
@@Zayden. This video explicity says that is not true. So you should elaborate a bit about why you think that
Fantastic exposition. Thanks!
This channel is tremndously good. I am very happy to have found it
Yay! Couldn’t have been covered by a better channel!
9:39 I am afraid that the term "post-left" is already taken - just for sake of being precise with notions ;)
VielenDank Herr Professor for making this video.
You do an exceptional job of analysing and critiquing, and most importantly rationally explaining the phenomenon of ‘wokeism’ philosophically.
I must admit I have been frustrated in my own attempts to understand this, as it is especially complex as well as many people react immediately by labeling one as anti-left, feminist etc.
This is exactly why philosophy is still incredibly important as demonstrated here; It serves to rationally and phlegmatically explain complex social, political, cultural and so forth systems and movements in a way we can understand without becoming too emotionally entangled.
It is only once something is clearly understood that we can make clear, distinct and informed choices about how we respond.
You have helped a fellow philosophy devotee immensely and I urge you to carry on.
your warning at the start is really good
Very interesting video. I feel like a difference should be drawn between performative wokeness on the one hand and actual attempts to change society on the other. One of the most frustrating things about what you call "wokeism" is its emphasis on guilt and personal redemption, which encourages people with privilege to obsess over their own moral standing. This definitely ties with the individualistic component you mentioned, as well as the "guilt pride" as well. To me there's a massive difference between "performing wokeness" and actually trying to make a change in the world. That being said, I think that the discussion of identity and its role in politics and culture is important and even necessary, so long as identity is not taken as some marker of one's moral standing. The discourse of "vicious oppressors" and "virtuous oppressed" is not only counterproductive, but actively dehumanizing to all parties, as it reduces everyone to some sort of moral calculation within a discourse (one might even say a "game") of righteousness. I think it's still important to have serious conversations about how we talk and behave in everyday contexts, but not as a form of guilt-priding but rather as a form of critical self-reflection with the aim to improve one's behavior over time. It's the difference between Germany trying to repay its debt and priding itself in admitting that the debt is un-repayable. Even if on some level a wrong cannot be undone (a major criticism I have with retributive theories of justice), there still is the responsibility to ameliorate as much as one can-not for the sake of your own moral standing, but for the sake of those you have wronged.
😊😊😊
Thank you, I learned a lot.
However, I think there is an important link between postmodernism and wokeism: Judith Butler reshaped feminism by adopting the deconstruction concept from postmodernism, thus turning Women's Rights into identity politics. A defining idea for the gender studies departments, a little later to be extended to diversity studies...
This is one of the things the writers of Cynical Theories pointed out. I don't think he gave the right credit to them, because they didn't make the case that woke-ism is postmodern in and of itself but rather that it is based on ideas that are inherented from postmodernism and modified for the wholly different purposes he rightfully pointed out.
Appreciate that warning in the beginning.
Pretty well argued and bold video. I believe this touches on what likely is the most relevant question to ask today (in the humanities and social sciences): what happens with public discourse especially in light of omnipresent and conformity demanding identity politics.
New subscriber here: very good discussion. I find your explanation of the incorporation of guilt pride into identity compelling, the rejection of the idea that it incorporates elements of post modern thinking less so. The wokists certainly use the argument that identities - and for that matter everything else, including the concept of objective truth - are the product of social conditioning when it suits them. Wokist dogma seems often self contradictory on this point: but I agree that has never been a problem for people who are impelled by religious motives, as we see in Christianity and Islam.
I am not sure we need a new enlightenment: what we need is for people who trust in the values of the old enlightenment to defend themselves and their societies.
Thrilled to see that you attack woke-ism from the left and are something of an actual leftist.
Thanks for discussing this!
Thank you for this very articulate and thoughtful analysis!