This insidious, illiberal ideology has nothing to do with protecting the marginalised.
Most will already have some idea of the problem commonly referred to as ‘wokeism’ or ‘cancel culture’. Because these terms are so slippery, it can be very hard to define them in a universally accepted way and therefore to criticise them. This is made especially hard when advocates of the theories behind this particular form of activism insist that the word ‘woke’ is a just pejorative used by right-wing bigots to prevent people from talking about social justice. Or they maintain that cancel culture is a myth created to shield those with privilege from accountability and to delegitimise the marginalised who call out bigotry.
Nevertheless, ‘wokeism’ refers to a real phenomenon with identifiable characteristics. It is not simply about opposition to racism or other bigotries. Equally, cancel culture refers to a real phenomenon that extends beyond heaping scorn on celebrities and other high-profile people on social media for something they’ve said or done. It affects many more people who have been bullied, pilloried, shamed or fired simply for expressing an unpopular idea or for asking the wrong question.
Continue reading @ Spiked Online.
Christopher - I can see a lot in the perspective which she is opposed to. Having been introduced to Gramsci at an early age, the idea of a common sense power structure - so common sensical that we take it for granted - makes sense. The Woke response however is to silence criticism and deflect probing of its own perspective. Critical Race Theory, for example, seems to me to be akin to original sin, a concept that we reject when the Christians come along with it.
ReplyDeleteValerie Tarico, whose stuff has often featured here, has drawn attention to Religious Trauma Counselling being used to treat recovering Wokeristas.
The victim/victimiser, persecuted/persecutor narrative of Social Marxism still abounds. I've got a hunch though that once the abuse of children and minors, those with gender dysphoria issues, comes to an end the power and influence of these ideologically possessed folk will hopefully diminish and recede.
ReplyDeleteThe Critical Social Justice movement has all the traits of a fundamentalist cult.
ReplyDeleteI think this article, whilst an interesting enough read, doesn't really reveal much about the (alleged) sinister side of "wokeism."
ReplyDeleteA few things sprung to mind.
"In their framework, these identity-based power systems include ‘whiteness’, ‘patriarchy’, ‘colonialism’, ‘heteronormativity’ and ‘transphobia’. They are believed to infect all aspects of society and even the most benign everyday interactions. The belief that people are unable to avoid being racist, sexist, or transphobic because they have absorbed bigoted discourses from wider society is a tenet of faith that originated in postmodern thought, particularly that of Michel Foucault."
I studied Foucault, albeit many years ago, as part of a sociology degree. Patriarchy and heteronormativity were also discussed at length. Power was of course part of these social structures, but it was far more complex than this article allows for. The multiple ways that patriarchy negatively impacts men for example was debated at length, and heteronormativity was discussed at Queer Theory seminars and lectures. It seems to me that where things have gone awry is the misappropriation of these terms by excitable social media addicts with a strange case of entitlement and an identity that celebrates supposed oppressed status. I've never considered these types of people to have any sort of meaningful power, and I include most MRA types in this. Yes, they can make life unpleasant for people, but sadly that is commonplace in the digital sphere. I have slowly come to accept that the hysteria that emanated from this tragic figures has seeped into the "real world" with unjust results. Speaking of which...
"When teachers are fired for including black conservative intellectuals like Glenn Loury in Black History Month, or firefighters face disciplinary action for saying they do not care what race or gender identity an individual has when saving their lives, or graduate students are at risk of not being allowed to finish their PhDs for the crime of referring to people who give birth as ‘mothers’, we can safely say that we are living in a culture in which people are punished for thinking the wrong way."
I tried to find the actual events that these examples of punishment "for thinking the wrong way" but couldn't. Clearly, if the article is accurate, it is absurd. But I have found that the most overly sensitive, the most aggrieved, and the least coherent are no the so-called "woke" but those whose identity is intricately tied up with opposing wokeism - Piers Morgan is a good example of this type of person, and you can see him here struggling to define what he is bitterly opposed to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J8BQ-SSBt8
I think that there is a degree of social contagion about fears over wokeism - almost a fear of the unknown.
I wonder if it's arguable that from wokeism emerged a climate that saw Harvey Weinstein jailed, and something of a revolution In terms of the social acceptability of sexual harassment, mainly of men, but also (as with recent documentaries about Kevin Spacey and Michael Jackson), men and boys also.
Wokeism, like Greta Thunberg, seems to evoke inexplicably strong reactions in some people, for reasons I find hard to understand. What I metaphorically see is two angry people emoting down a Twitter account.
I find TPQ to be a rarefied place in which this subject can be discussed rationally.
There is one large caveat to all of this, and that is the trans issue. This is one area where I would not feel comfortable discussing my views in the workplace, and think that the excitable, entitled victim-identified types I mentioned earlier are of a more sinister variety.
Woke is menacing. Its cancel culture and censorship are corrosive when allowed any control over intellectual life. An idea in my view can be considered worthwhile to the extent that its advocates allow it to be critiqued. Wokerati try to shut down criticism and seek to behave like some intellectual vanguard, pompous and pontificating. A porous society requires a robust intellectual culture, not the castrated one the dictatorship of the woketariat wants to impose. Because society is secular to a greater degree than ever before does not mean it needs a secular priesthood brandishing a woke bible screaming at the sinners they accuse of not thinking the way they think we should think.
ReplyDelete@ AM
ReplyDelete"Wokerati try to shut down criticism and seek to behave like some intellectual vanguard, pompous and pontificating. A porous society requires a robust intellectual culture, not the castrated one the dictatorship of the woketariat wants to impose."
It seems to me that these terms are only used to describe those who claim (or are ascribed) some link with liberalism, yet the `behaviours you describe are to my mind more often associated with reactionary and/or right-wing politics. The treatment of Jeremy Corbyn, Dianne Abbot, individuals who somehow disappoint the self-appointed Poppy commissars. Then there are the "oppression Olympics" participants like Twitter MRAs, and a significant swathe of reactionaries best summarised by Stewart Lee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkCBhKs4faI
A major difference I think is that the likes of Suella Braverman and a load of other populists have far, far more power than the "wokerati" could ever dream of.
I've always believed the menace of wokeism is significantly overstated. The term itself has become so utterly misused and manipulated by genuinely menacing right-wingers and populists that to focus on it at all is to play Nigel Farage and Liz Truss's game.
I've said it before on this blog, but I still think it's one of the oldest tricks in the book.
That is a tactic of deflection - projecting the censorious ethos of the wokerati onto the far right. The Woke project is just a new form of political correctness: it doesn't matter about being factually correct just so long as we are politically correct. Your deflection, as I see it, from Woke reminds me of the Usual Suspects film with its emphasis on the devil's best trick being his ability to convince people he did not exist. I think Slavoj Žižek was close to the mark when he wrote:
DeleteSome claim that “wokeness” is on the wane. In fact, it is gradually being normalized, conformed to even by those who inwardly doubt it, and practiced by the majority of academic, corporate, and state institutions. This is why it deserves more than ever our criticism—together with its opposite, the obscenity of the new populism and religious fundamentalism.
I am glad you find the blog one of the places that the thing can be discussed without rancour.
If you want to see who controls you first see who you're forbidden to criticise.
ReplyDelete(Apologies if this is a duplicate, too many windows open).
ReplyDeleteIt's not that I think it doesn't exist: it's that I don't believe the impact of woke is as widespread or negative as its critics maintain. And I don't think the majority of people exorcised about "wokeism" are really able to explain what is is and why they are opposed to it.
The article did however give some solid examples:
"At work, at university and in many other vital institutions, people find themselves obliged to allow specialist trainers to dig these unconscious bigoted beliefs out of us, tell us what they are, have us affirm them and commit to dismantling them via approved processes and re-education materials. Further, these ideas have been adopted and integrated across a wide range of academic and professional fields."
I wonder what she means? Could it be classes on sexual consent for students at universities? Or diversity training for UK police forces? She doesn't say, she merely hints - something critics of "wokeism" often end up doing.
Pluckrose hints at a sinister application of power with nods to people being "obliged to allow" and subjected to "re-education materials." Again, no examples.
She goes on: "Further, these ideas have been adopted and integrated across a wide range of academic and professional fields." Again, no examples.
These ideas apparently being "that all white people are racist, that being non-racist isn’t possible, that masculinity is pathological, that sex is not biological and exists on a spectrum, that disbelief in the concept of gender identity is killing people, that language is literally violence and that everything needs to be decolonised."
I work for an organisation that I imagine Pluckrose would consider full of people "obliged to allow specialist trainers" to do all sorts to "re-educate." It isn't, not remotely.
Pluckrose again:
"In a matter of a few years, these ideas went from being discussed in obscure academic departments and journals to enjoying significant social prestige and political capital and having immense influence on mainstream media, major corporations, institutions of higher education, and the policies and proposals of major political parties."
Pluckrose again gives no examples. With the exception of the Scottish Government's Gender Recognition Act, which was severely opposed (and trans rights more generally), I can't think of any mainstream media, major corporation, or major political party actively promoting any of the ideas she ascribed to "critical social justice theory." I'm out of the loop with universities, but I imagine it's again dramatically overstated.
What I think is very real however, is the number of people who *feel* "you can't say anything any more." That is very real. I think that's because of loud voices complaining repeatedly that "you can't say anything any more" rather than Critical Social Justice Theorists telling people not to say things any more.
I find it telling that those opposing "wokeism" usually rely on the loose term itself rather than the specific instance or episode that they are talking about.
Are Pride marches woke? Was #MeToo? Was knocking down statues of slavers? Taking the knee at football matches? If I supported one of these things but not the others, would I be considered woke?
Stewart Lee again nails it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt8Dxpb3b6E
Its critics target it very well. You would be more familiar with Scottish politics than most of us but there is hardly a clearer example of identifying the problem than in the issue around putting a rapist in a women's prison. The Woke were so woeful they couldn't even answer the question 'what is a woman?'
DeleteMarxists like Žižek have been very specific as has critical reasoning philosophers such as Peter Boghossian who 6 years ago completely ridiculed the Woke academy with his hoax submissions. They Woke were so far up their own backsides they lost the ability to evaluate what was utter nonsense. They allowed 7 rubbish articles through for publication because they carried Woke words like Imperialist astronomy.
How you fail to see it in the Trans discussion is baffling.
Woke poses a serious challenge to intellectual life and logical reasoning. It poses a threat on a par with the far right / Christian fundamentalist anti-science lobby. This is why Žižek calls for both of them to be opposed.
Maybe humour is the best response - Titania McGrath destroys them with it.
@ AM
ReplyDelete"How you fail to see it in the Trans discussion is baffling."
The trans discussion is pretty much the only area where I *do* see it - I said this (perhaps not very clearly) here:
"There is one large caveat to all of this, and that is the trans issue. This is one area where I would not feel comfortable discussing my views in the workplace, and think that the excitable, entitled victim-identified types I mentioned earlier are of a more sinister variety."
I think debate has indeed been stifled, careers ruined etc for people holding entirely rational viewpoints. Where I do see a flavour of that which see more of is the lack of backbone in some institutions defending their people who are subjected to this type of behaviour. An interesting example is this case: https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/11/15/women-are-being-silenced-by-trans-ideology/
I didn't listen to it, but Stephen Nolan did a podcast investigation into Stonewall which I believe touched on some of these themes.
The other area where I see some limited malign influence is the arts: https://www.thepensivequill.com/2022/08/the-cancellation-of-jerry-sadowitz.html
An interesting discussion. I wonder if there is a more productive debate to be had around where and how political correctness/wokeness/other names du jour have had a positive impact and where it has, to borrow the classic 1980s phrase, gone too far.
To my mind you mentioned it in passing while really saying 'move along, nothing to see here.'
DeleteIt has moved to the core of the discussion due to the Wokerati. The ability of Trans people to get on with their lives and not be hounded for it has been compromised by Woke toxicity seeking to suppress free inquiry and a wider exploration of the issues. Major life changing issues and the Woke want to ban both people and discussion about them.
This blog being at heart a free inquiry one will always push back against Woke. How could it not and at the same time maintain its ethos?
I think debate has indeed been stifled, careers ruined etc for people holding entirely rational viewpoints.
Yet you are quite prepared to blame something else other than Woke culture? Where do you think this impulse to ban and fire comes from - outside the Woke culture?
It was you who initially drew the attention of TPQ to the Jerry Sadowitz banning yet continue to ignore the elephant in the room.
I think I have listened to Nolan once in the past decade - something about End Of Life which he did quite well. But his urge to inflame trumps his urge to inform.
Brandon,
ReplyDeleteyour posts are both confused and confusing.
"...I have found that the most overly sensitive, the most aggrieved, and the least coherent are no the so-called "woke" but those whose identity is intricately tied up with opposing wokeism..."
In your opinion. Personally, while I find some of the anti-woke brigade to be (at best) chancers or (at worst) insufferable, not many of them are trying to get people fired from jobs for expressing the wrong opinion.
"I think that there is a degree of social contagion about fears over wokeism - almost a fear of the unknown."
then you contradict yourself when you write:
"There is one large caveat to all of this, and that is the trans issue. This is one area where I would not feel comfortable discussing my views in the workplace, and think that the excitable, entitled victim-identified types I mentioned earlier are of a more sinister variety."
Brandon,
ReplyDelete"The other area where I see some limited malign influence is the arts..."
Er, wha'?
https://unherd.com/2024/02/how-activists-captured-arts-council-england/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jun/24/cancelling-kate-clanchy-has-blocked-publication-of-our-kids-poems
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/2023/09/23/has-the-bbc-secretly-cancelled-roisin-murphy-for-her-views-on-puberty-blockers/
@ Christopher Owens
ReplyDeleteI don't see the contradiction. I linked to a video of James O'Brien interviewing Piers Morgan, asking Morgan to discuss his fears around "the wokies" and indeed what woke actually means. O'Brien first said that he finds the trans debate confusing and "very much the exception" when it comes to accusations around "wokeism" (in that things can get nasty).
Morgan didn't make a whole lot of sense: an example he gave about the singing of Rule Brittania was typical of someone trying to explain the negativity of wokeism, but he was clearly irritated - his anger is rooted in something. And I think there are many millions of people who think like that: they find it hard to distil what woke really is, but it annoys them anyway.
Morgan’s genuine belief in the scale and scope of “wokies” seems typical to me. I used the term social contagion deliberately. I was introduced to it when someone said that that was how they saw the spread of trans ideology.
"Personally, while I find some of the anti-woke brigade to be (at best) chancers or (at worst) insufferable, not many of them are trying to get people fired from jobs for expressing the wrong opinion."
Some of the most odious politicians around at the moment proudly state their anti-woke credentials: Suella Braverman, springs to mind from a crowded field. Their populism is a much greater threat than some woke Twitter warriors dogpiling on someone.
As for confused and confusing… Guilty m’lud! I find the subject intensely complex, and I engage in these discussions to try and make sense as best I can, sometimes changing my mind as I do.
From the beginning of the article you recommended:
“Most will already have some idea of the problem commonly referred to as ‘wokeism’ or ‘cancel culture’. Because these terms are so slippery, it can be very hard to define them in a universally accepted way and therefore to criticise them.”
I think woke represents a range of things to a range of people.
@ Christopher Owens
ReplyDelete"Er, wha'?"
Well, in terms of malign influences on the arts, how would you evaluate the threat from "wokeness"?
I wasn't implying that the issue ended with Jerry Sadowitz, it was just the first example that popped into head...
was familiar with the Roisin Murphy story, hadn't heard of the other two. Reading up on the Clanchy one now.
Here's a question for you - is it arguable that wokeness has had any positive effect on the arts?
Yes - and at the risk of falling prey to Godwin's law - the Nazis built good roads!!
DeleteWokeness has a positive effect for censors and the careers of the Wokerati. Social Justice movements have had a very positive effect but are being eroded by the Wokerati which is insidiously corrosive of Social Justice. Every progressive movement becomes susceptible to contamination from the same type of toxicity.
It is a bit like my view that revolution is a brilliant concept if only there were no revolutionaries who both soil and foil revolution with their self serving endeavours. Keep Social Justice free from the Wokerati and their dictatorship of the Woketariat!!
Orwell in his day was trying to draw attention to something similar:
One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.
And when you regard Woke as just being something marginal how do you account for Keir Starver's response to his own MP expressing views that women alone have a cervix as “something that shouldn’t be said and were not right”.?
DeleteThis censorious Woke mindset sits at the heart of British political culture, not on its margins.
Are Pride marches woke? Was #MeToo? Was knocking down statues of slavers?
ReplyDeleteThe first two - no. But we see how the Woke have contaminated both.
The statues being knocked down is not something I am comfortable with. It seems to be an erasure of history. There could very easily have something much more educational and not destructive done as a response to statues of hideous people. the construction of information portals right beside the statue, for example.
Knocking down statues is something the Taliban and ISIS did with zealous glee. The woke would do well to beware becoming totalitarian like those two examples.
ReplyDeleteThe Woke have a psychology very similar to that of a religious fundamentalist. This is why recovering wokeristas are treated with Religious Trauma therapy.
DeleteJust off the phone there with a guy and I had asked him if he had read a book on Woke by University Press. He said 'fuck Woke - men can have babies. Fuck all that. I hate Woke. Who would want a book about that shit?'
I laughed as it happened in the middle of this discussion and he had rang me to discuss a few books. I thought I had jabbed him with an electric cattle prod FFS.
Lol I don't tolerate that nonsense either. I get the young want to show compassion to everyone but they've let emotions run away from common-sense.
DeleteNot only that but I checked my 15 year olds homework assignment. Some teacher actually equated eating meat with murder. I wrote a letter saying he's not to answer such bollocks under my instruction.
You did right Steve. The teacher was abusing their authority and would no doubt behave like Enoch Burke were they pulled into line. I differ from you in that I support Trans rights but I am not going to go against the science after years of relying on it to refute religious fundamentalism on matters of evolution and Young Earth. I am not going to abandon a belief in science when it comes to biology. There are men and there are women. If either want to get an operation to feel more comfortable in their bodies, I'm all for it. A man can think he is a woman if that is what he believes. But he can't insist on the rest of us thinking it also. The regressive left can't abide by that.
DeleteI worked with this Trans person for a time. They had been a she but were now a he. For the world of me I can only see him as a he because I never met him before the trans. Whereas in another case I had difficulty adjusting because I knew this woman who later turned up as a man. Not that I cared or objected - up to to them what they wanted to do - but I found it hard to adjust to. I suppose it is age. My kids adjust pretty easily with it all.
We have a Leftoid on a rant on Twitter - loving it!! We also have some intelligent commentary from a Leftist who dissents but is not one of those with a public schoolboy sense of entitlement.
I know I'm old when I can't make head nor tail of Twitter. My social media consists of this and Facebook and that's the height of it.
Delete". A man can think he is a woman if that is what he believes. But he can't insist on the rest of us thinking it also. The regressive left can't abide by that."
That's my issue with it in a nutshell. I would never be anything other than friendly and compassionate to a trans person and I'll even use whichever pronoun they prefer in polite company, but I'm not "Believing it" behind closed doors . Ultimately, that's what drives the Left berserk in their quest for total thought control.
The Leftoids, more than the Left, are obsessed with mind control. I experienced it with them during the Danish anti-theocratic cartoons when the Leftoids lined up with the clerical fascists. To my mind the world we live in very much need a progressive left that views society through a Marxian lens. We don't need these Wolfie Smith type cartoonish characters with their sandwich boards howling at all who 'sin' against the mulch in their minds. They often seem as if they have been inserted into the Left by the state to make the Left a parody.
DeleteThis whole woke debate just leaves me feeling a deep sense of betrayal. I've supported LGBT rights since the early 90s and attended loads of Pride events in Madrid and Belfast. I believe in tolerance, free speech and "live and let live", but now on so many topics I'm on the same side as many on the right. How did that happen? On trans issues especially, it all makes my blood boil when you see leftist lesbian academics like Kathleen Stock being cancelled and sacked for saying that trans women aren't lesbians WTAF? What happened to tolerance and free speech? I see people like the Trumper Riley Gaines on X and have to agree with much of what she says. The liberal left have betrayed us all.
DeleteThere remain people on the Left who have refused to abandon long standing beliefs and buy into the bollix that those who have a different opinion should be hounded. That is fascistic. They have moved from being left wingers to being left whiners. They have tried to cancel and de-platform not only right wingers but left wingers. They have launched a full frontal assault not just on the right to speak but also on the right to hear. How can we ever assess the strengths of a perspective if the only people allowed to explain it to us are the Woketards? I might very much object to what, say, Matt Walsh has to argue but I have a right to listen and reject it for myself. I don't need the Woke Committee of Public Safety imposing their diktat on me as it tried but failed to do at Stanford.
DeleteI support the rights of Trans people to the fullest extent possible. My support stops only at the point where there is an attempt to breach the rights of others.
All my political life I have been on the Left ideologically and remain there. But thankfully, perhaps a bit like yourself Peter, ideationally, I remain promiscuous.
The Woketards, rather than the Liberal/Left, have betrayed women.
Across Europe there has also been a rejection of this woke nonsense too. The rise of the Far Right in Europe is a manifestation of this. I suspect they will only gain popularity until the EU is abandoned and Europe once again is in a state of turmoil.
DeleteAnd what have the leaders of left/liberalism done? Corbyn? Starmer? Sturgeon? Mary-Lou? Long? What have they done to stop it? No principles. Useless. Now the far right are rising
DeleteWhich is why you might be forgiven for thinking that Woketards were created in some Russian lab for the very purpose of discrediting the Left from within, causing a knock on effect which sees a growth in the far right.
DeleteRidicule can often be more damaging to a project than critique. If the Left is an open door for ridicule then it badly needs to strategically rethink. In 1998 Ken Livingstone wrote a piece for The Independent titled 'All politicians know the sound of lost credibility: Laughter.'
His opening line was 'Spontaneous laughter is often more politically revealing than any number of sanctimonious newspaper columns and political debates.'
And here we have the Woketards handing out free passes to a show where the autocue instructs the audience to Laugh Out Loud at those on stage explaining why a dude with a dick, who has raped women, is actually a woman who should be housed in a female prison.
The ground the Left stood on is shifting beneath its feet across Europe to the right and the Woketards need to take their share of the blame instead of running around sticking their fingers in other people's ears, pontificating 'oh, you can't hear that.'
Peter - Corbyn apart, it is hard to see the others as being Left. They have failed miserably and have been moved to the right themselves by the tide. In many ways it suits them to see the Left emasculated, leaving them to stand on their hollowed out ground and claim that they are the left alternative. Starmer would have been a suitable leader of the Tories. His support for war crimes in Gaza demonstrated that he is an anti-human rights lawyer masquerading as a human rights lawyer. That shows you just how easily these types can put on postmodern glasses and rather than observe truth, create their own truth such as a dude with a dick is a woman and despite being a rapist has a right to be put in a women's prison. So fuck women's rights - the rapist dude with the dick's rights prevails over theirs. It is fuckin deranged.
DeleteNot left, but liberal. It's not only women's rights they are silent on but immigration too. Taking hundreds of thousands every year is not sustainable. The NHS is in crisis and young people can't afford to rent a fucking bedsit. The only ones benefitting are the corporations getting cheap labour. But the only leaders talking about this are the far right. If anybody tries to have a sensible conversation about it they are labelled "far right" by handwringing, virtue signalling liberals. As I said, we are being betrayed by our own "side". They are the ones shutting down common sense debate, leaving the door open for the Faragist/Trumpists.
DeleteI'm fine with immigration but not fine with suppressing any opinion that is not fine with it.
DeleteThe government have not yet explained how they are going to make it practical. They do not provide the infrastructure and leave it to the leftoids to label those who ask questions about the infrastructure deficiency as far right and racist. Time out of number I have said to people that if they accuse everybody of being far right they will create a far right much more virulent than it currently is.
Angela Nagel wrote a piece from a Marxian perspective arguing that open borders benefited the capitalist class. The response from leftoids was howling.
Currently ruminating on various comments on this thread - I think I might knock together a piece tying various threads of thoughts together.
ReplyDeleteBriefly though, I think Pride marches fit the profile of woke per the article Christopher recommended (identifying a power structure and acting as if a population is imbued with latent prejudice). They were, after all, a response to pervasive heteronormative society. Gay rights activists have been successful in transforming society. What were once protests now feel more like celebrations.
Likewise, the #MeToo strikes me as woke as per the article: the phenomena seemed based on an organic if extremely wide response to varying degrees of patriarchal structures.
Not for the first time discussing things on TPQ with yourself and Christopher, I've felt a concept I've previously dismissed becoming not only plausible but undeniable.
Pride and #MeToo will have reasonable and rationale critics, but a strong case can be made for the societal good both gave facilitated.
Applying the thinking I've outlined in the previous paragraphs and considering infamous cases such as Isla Bryson, alongside less dangerous but highly problematic imbalance in women's sport have made me see an informal but nonetheless structurally powerful "dictatorship of the wokerati" which is a term I'd previously not considered accurate or appropriate.
There is nothing wrong with identifying a power structure and then critiquing it. Providing we avoid going down the route of Critical Race Theory, project original sin on people we critique and pretend that we are the enlightened intellectual vanguard who are going to descale the eyes of the masses, and then forbid any criticism of our ideas.
ReplyDeletePride marches are fine and easily fits into the social justice model. Suffocating discussion about Pride marches is Woke and should be shunned like the Plague.
Me too lost the run of itself once the Wokerati got their erasers out. People were being judged for what they thought or said on WhatsApp and not for what they might have actually done. Trial by mob is never to be recommended. Every mob has a power centre shaping it and trying to set its own agenda. Yet, not the type of power structure the Wokerati want to unmask.
Any project that pushes against abusing gay people or women does societal good. But that good can only be effectively measured against alternative viewpoints. Otherwise we are back to the biblical fundamentalism of our god is a good god and you must obey what we think he thinks.
Don't take 'Dictatorship of the Woketariat' too literally. It is polemical rather than analytical. We had one of them on ranting on Twitter. You'd imagine by now they would realise that they are simply laughed at when they spout their nonsense to Quillers.
Brandon,
ReplyDeleteI see you and AM have already discussed most of the salient issues, so here are some from my perspective.
‘Well, in terms of malign influences on the arts, how would you evaluate the threat from "wokeness"?’
- It has made artists less likely to express themselves due to fear of backlash, even if their views are in line with the orthodoxy. A perfect example is Jeanine Cummins, who was vilified for writing about Mexican immigrants despite not being Mexican herself. As a result, her publisher cancelled her book tour (although the book ended up a bestseller due to the “controversy).
- It has also led to people who work within the arts opting for “comrade approved art” which ticks the boxes of what funders are looking for and reflects the prevailing views but has no individuality.
- Venues get attacked for hosting artists (be it comedians or musicians), putting pressure on them to cancel the performance.
Personally, that is not a healthy arts scene. That is conformity.
‘I wasn't implying that the issue ended with Jerry Sadowitz…’
I know you weren’t. I simply thought that, combined with the attempted murder of Salman Rushdie the day beforehand, such egregious examples of cancel culture would have made you realise the threat of wokeness.
‘Here's a question for you - is it arguable that wokeness has had any positive effect on the arts?’
It depends on how you’re defining “wokeness”, and this is crucial as the differing definitions allow people to create strawman arguments and ignore relevant points.
To me, wokeness is a self-centred, self-righteous mindset that has good intentions but does not understand the world through anything other than the prisms of “oppressed” and “oppressor”. Hence, you can have the likes of Munroe Bergdof (a trans woman whose family were very successful in business and is currently employed by L’Oreal) telling The Guardian that “If you think we live in an equal society, you’re living in a daydream. You need to recognise that there is such a thing as white privilege and you can be homeless and still have white privilege, because you can still have a better chance of getting out of homelessness than a person of colour…” without providing any proof of this. That, to me, sums up the blinkered insanity of wokeness: a wealthy individual telling a homeless white male that he enjoys more privilege than her.
So, to answer your question, no. Wokeness has done nothing positive for the arts.
More examples of the woke in the arts:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4490668-How-trans-activists-in-publishing-hijacked-a-childrens-book-competition-to-pursue-a-personal-vendetta
https://thecritic.co.uk/slaying-gay-culture/
https://unherd.com/newsroom/edinburgh-book-festival-bows-to-activists-over-climate-and-israel-funding/