Link blog: Politics, philosophy, woke, liberalism

[nameandnature]

“Woke” is a new ideology and its proponents should admit it

“What I find most fascinating about the wokeness culture war – and what makes it interesting – is that it is incredibly difficult to define what it is actually about.” I largely agree with this piece: it’s a new-ish thing (although not that new, it was around in LiveJournal days before catching on more widely) and it’s fair enough to identify it and give it a name.
(tags: liberalism woke Politics philosophy)

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Originally posted at Name and Nature. You can comment there (where there are currently comments) or here.

Comments

[simont]

An essay by Paul Graham that stuck in my mind some years ago is What You Can't Say, about the general phenomenon of things that society and/or the law doesn't want you to say, for reasons other than that they're untrue, and how those things have come and gone throughout history. It cites many examples from the past (anything from "blasphemy" through "defeatism" to "un-American-ness"), but deliberately none from the present (not even as of when it was written), on the theory (I think probably rightly) that if it had, it would inevitably have been interpreted as specifically about whatever present example it had mentioned, instead of the much more general commentary it's trying to be. The thesis (as I read it) is that, going by the evidence that all previous taboos of this kind have come and gone, whatever taboo is currently fashionable will probably end up going the same way.

At the time I read that, I took it at face value, not as a commentary on any particular current thing, but as an attempt to be general enough to be timeless. I read it as saying "this too shall pass, whatever it is this year" – with the idea being that in 200 years' time when it's something totally different again that we can't even predict right now, the message would be the same.

But ging back and looking at it now, I can't help feeling that if it were written today it would be read as an anti-woke polemic in spite of its best efforts to avoid taking shots at any particular current target. Partly because of the phenomenon mentioned in your link where "free speech" has become right-wing coded, and also because most of the current speech taboos just are social-justice related stuff – derailing, appropriation, banging on about #NotAllMen, etc – so an article with the conclusion "this too shall pass, whatever it is" would leave readers in no doubt as to what it "surely" was really talking about.

[nameandnature]

So you're saying that talking about "what you can't say" is now a "dog whistle"? ;-)

[simont]

I suppose that citing an essay like that would always function as a veiled criticism of whatever is the current WYCS taboo. It may be a dog whistle for anti-woke people now – but in 200 years it'll be one for something completely different!

[andrewducker]

They summarise what Woke is fairly well (or at least what is is this week, clearly it's an evolving term).

But it's not new. The NUS brought in a "No Platform" rule in 1974. Intersectionality has been about since the early 90s (I think I first encountered it as "kyriarchy").

What's happened is that more and more people have bought into it, and its reached the point where liberal people are having to engage with it more.