November 26, 2024 • 8 mins
The word "woke" has at least two meanings — and they’re so different, they contradict each other.
By one of them, any liberal can be proud to be called woke, because to be woke in this sense is to recognize bigotry and oppose it. But by the other meaning, liberals can’t be woke, even if they want to. That’s because if you’re this kind of woke, you reject liberalism.
Spencer explains in this chapter of The Liberal Backbone.
Find the full text and links at DastardlyCleverness.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Dastardly Cleverness in theService of Good, I'm Spencer Critchley.
As you know if you've listenedto the previous two episodes, I'm
presenting the chapters of my next book,The Liberal Backbone, as I write them.
This time it's Chapter 3:
just “What DOES It Mean to Be Woke?”
You can find the text versionof this chapter
(00:20):
and the others at DastardlyCleverness.comand at Substack.
I hope you'll follow methere at Substack./@SpencerCritchley.
Those versions have links and footnotesas well.
As always,
if you have any comments, suggestionsor corrections, I'm glad to get them.
Here we go.
(00:41):
I promised last time to clarifythe meaning of the word “woke.”
In fact, it has two meanings and they'reso different they contradict each other.
By one of
them, anyliberal can be proud to be called woke,
because to be woke in this senseis to recognize bigotry and oppose it.
But by the other meaning, liberalscan't be woke even if they want to.
(01:03):
That's because if you'rethis kind of woke, you reject liberalism.
Here's how this simple wordended up with two opposing definitions.
“Woke” was first used as an adjectivelong ago by some black Americans.
It was roughly synonymous with “awake.”
And like that word, it could signifymore than just “not sleeping.”
(01:23):
It could mean “awake towhat's really happening.” And often,
what was really happening to blackpeople was racial injustice.
In a 1938recording, the blues singer Lead Belly
sang and talked about the notorious caseof the Scottsboro Boys.
They were nine young black menwho faced imprisonment and death sentences
(01:44):
after they were convicted on trumped-upcharges of raping two white women,
an all too common kind of excusefor lynchings in the Jim Crow era.
In the recording,
Lead Belly warnslisteners to “stay woke” to the injustice
that so damaged and nearly ended the livesof the Scottsboro Boys.
(02:04):
Documented uses of woke in this senseappear sporadically
in the following decades,but rise after 2008.
That's when Erykah Badu recorded the song“Master Teacher,” with its refrain of “I
stay woke.”
Not long after, “Stay Woke” becamea slogan in protests against the killing
of Trayvon Martin and other black peopleby police and vigilantes.
(02:28):
Liberals could hear those wordsas compatible with their values,
and as fulfilling them.
Without generations of civilrights protestors
awakening everyone to racial injustice,the promise of liberal freedom
would have remained hollowfor many Americans: a check
that had been written, but not honored,as Martin Luther King said.
(02:49):
But some on the left
believe that America's checkwill always be bad, and its promise of
liberal freedom will always be hollow,unless America changes radically.
And when they adopted the word “woke,”they adapted
its meaning to match that belief.
Members of this woke left see liberalism
as a source of the oppressionit claims to oppose.
(03:11):
Not the only source, though.
They believe oppression is embedded
throughout the Western worldviewfrom which liberalism emerged.
They see that worldviewas something like the Matrix in the movies
by the Wachowskis, who,in fact, were partly inspired
by some of the ideasthat inspire the woke left.
Like characters in The Matrix, Westernersonly think they're free.
(03:34):
They don't realize they're trappedwithin an all encompassing illusion.
According to
this woke left, everything Westernersthink they know is actually
determined by whatever servesthe interests of people with power.
Everything they've been taught is true orfalse is no more than what serves power.
The same goes for everythingthey think is morally right or wrong.
(03:57):
Liberalism is seenas part of the illusion.
The liberal promise of freedom is a lie,offering only meaningless choices,
like which product to consume,or which of two parties
to vote for, when both serve the powerful.
The only true freedom is gainedby exposing the hidden workings of power.
To become woke in this second senseis to learn how to do that.
(04:20):
And that requireslearning a particular way of thinking.
It relies on what might be describedas “postmodern critical theory,”
although it's often
referred to simply as “theory,”sometimes spelled with a capital T.
According to Theory, oppressionisn't ultimately caused
by individual oppressors.
Those oppressors can hardlyhelp themselves, because oppression is
(04:43):
built into Western culture, Westernthought, and even Western languages.
For example, the argument goes,in Western culture, male dominates female.
In Western thought,science dominates nature.
And in Western languages,subjects dominate objects.
So for people immersedwithin the Western worldview,
(05:04):
even to speak can be an oppressive act.
This critique was developedover a long time.
Its sources can be traced backat least to the 18th century.
In earlier forms, its influencerose and fell dramatically.
But in recent years, in the formof theory, it's found new influence,
especially after the horrifying murderby police
(05:25):
of George Floyd in 2020.
Some on the left felt that liberalismfailed
to explainhow such things could still be happening
in a supposedly free and equal society.,but that Theory did explain it.
Even many liberals beganadopting Theory-based views on America's
social problems, especially as Theoristsbegan consulting with corporations
(05:49):
and other organizations on how they couldaddress bias within their own cultures.
Increasingly,the word “woke” came to be defined
according to Theory, not liberalism,
and so did concepts centralto both Theory and liberalism,
including freedom, equality,and anti-racism, among others.
According to the Theory-inspiredwoke left,
(06:11):
the liberal versions of those conceptshave been discredited.
So if you
want to stand up for liberalism,you're going to need
to be able to answer the woke challengeto liberalism.
That means understandingsomething about Theory.
But here we run into another obstacleto clarity:
Theory can be complicatedto the point of opacity.
(06:34):
For starters, there is no one Theory.
As I say, it's more of a way of thinking,a meta theory that shapes
other theories such as cultural, genderor postcolonial theory,
or probably the best known,Critical Race Theory.
Furthermore,the source works of these theories
are often expressed in academic prosethat can seem impenetrable.
(06:57):
And often-cited example is the workof gender theorist Judith Butler,
who has some very interesting ideas,but a very dense style.
One of her sentenceswon first prize in an annual Bad
Writing contest runby the journal Philosophy and Literature.
Here it is:
“The move from a
structuralist account in which capitalis understood to structure
(07:20):
social relationsin relatively homologous ways,
to a view of hegemonyin which power relations are subject
to repetition, convergenceand rearticulation
brought the question of temporalityinto the thinking of structure,
and marked a shiftfrom a form of Althusserian theory
that takes structural totalitiesas theoretical objects
(07:42):
to one in which
the insights into the contingentpossibility of structure inaugurate
a renewed conception of hegemonyas bound up with the contingent sites
and strategiesof the rearticulation of power.”
I'll just give that a moment to think in.
Butler isn't alone.
There's no shortage of other examplesof writing like this
(08:04):
by Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida,and lots of others.
To be fair,writing by experts in any field
can often make hardreading for non-experts.
Most of us are stumped by academic workson quantum physics, for example.
Still, I think the
particular form of complexityfound in much of the writing about Theory
(08:25):
is significant in itself,and I'll have more to say about it later.
But I won't ask you to strugglewith much of it.
For our purposes here,we only need to focus on a few key
concepts, the ones that have beenmost influential in our politics
and which have been adoptedfor the most part by non-experts.
I'll start by looking at whyTheorists believe oppression is inherent
(08:47):
in liberalism and the Western worldview,and whether liberalism has an answer.
That's coming up next time.
Thanks for listening.
Welcome to Dastardly Cleverness in theService of Good, I'm Spencer Critchley.
As you know if you've listenedto the previous two episodes, I'm
presenting the chapters of my next book,The Liberal Backbone, as I write them.
This time it's Chapter 3:
just “What DOES It Mean to Be Woke?”
You can find the text versionof this chapter
(00:20):
and the others at DastardlyCleverness.comand at Substack.
I hope you'll follow methere at Substack./@SpencerCritchley.
Those versions have links and footnotesas well.
As always,
if you have any comments, suggestionsor corrections, I'm glad to get them.
Here we go.
(00:41):
I promised last time to clarifythe meaning of the word “woke.”
In fact, it has two meanings and they'reso different they contradict each other.
By one of
them, anyliberal can be proud to be called woke,
because to be woke in this senseis to recognize bigotry and oppose it.
But by the other meaning, liberalscan't be woke even if they want to.
(01:03):
That's because if you'rethis kind of woke, you reject liberalism.
Here's how this simple wordended up with two opposing definitions.
“Woke” was first used as an adjectivelong ago by some black Americans.
It was roughly synonymous with “awake.”
And like that word, it could signifymore than just “not sleeping.”
(01:23):
It could mean “awake towhat's really happening.” And often,
what was really happening to blackpeople was racial injustice.
In a 1938recording, the blues singer Lead Belly
sang and talked about the notorious caseof the Scottsboro Boys.
They were nine young black menwho faced imprisonment and death sentences
(01:44):
after they were convicted on trumped-upcharges of raping two white women,
an all too common kind of excusefor lynchings in the Jim Crow era.
In the recording,
Lead Belly warnslisteners to “stay woke” to the injustice
that so damaged and nearly ended the livesof the Scottsboro Boys.
(02:04):
Documented uses of woke in this senseappear sporadically
in the following decades,but rise after 2008.
That's when Erykah Badu recorded the song“Master Teacher,” with its refrain of “I
stay woke.”
Not long after, “Stay Woke” becamea slogan in protests against the killing
of Trayvon Martin and other black peopleby police and vigilantes.
(02:28):
Liberals could hear those wordsas compatible with their values,
and as fulfilling them.
Without generations of civilrights protestors
awakening everyone to racial injustice,the promise of liberal freedom
would have remained hollowfor many Americans: a check
that had been written, but not honored,as Martin Luther King said.
(02:49):
But some on the left
believe that America's checkwill always be bad, and its promise of
liberal freedom will always be hollow,unless America changes radically.
And when they adopted the word “woke,”they adapted
its meaning to match that belief.
Members of this woke left see liberalism
as a source of the oppressionit claims to oppose.
(03:11):
Not the only source, though.
They believe oppression is embedded
throughout the Western worldviewfrom which liberalism emerged.
They see that worldviewas something like the Matrix in the movies
by the Wachowskis, who,in fact, were partly inspired
by some of the ideasthat inspire the woke left.
Like characters in The Matrix, Westernersonly think they're free.
(03:34):
They don't realize they're trappedwithin an all encompassing illusion.
According to
this woke left, everything Westernersthink they know is actually
determined by whatever servesthe interests of people with power.
Everything they've been taught is true orfalse is no more than what serves power.
The same goes for everythingthey think is morally right or wrong.
(03:57):
Liberalism is seenas part of the illusion.
The liberal promise of freedom is a lie,offering only meaningless choices,
like which product to consume,or which of two parties
to vote for, when both serve the powerful.
The only true freedom is gainedby exposing the hidden workings of power.
To become woke in this second senseis to learn how to do that.
(04:20):
And that requireslearning a particular way of thinking.
It relies on what might be describedas “postmodern critical theory,”
although it's often
referred to simply as “theory,”sometimes spelled with a capital T.
According to Theory, oppressionisn't ultimately caused
by individual oppressors.
Those oppressors can hardlyhelp themselves, because oppression is
(04:43):
built into Western culture, Westernthought, and even Western languages.
For example, the argument goes,in Western culture, male dominates female.
In Western thought,science dominates nature.
And in Western languages,subjects dominate objects.
So for people immersedwithin the Western worldview,
(05:04):
even to speak can be an oppressive act.
This critique was developedover a long time.
Its sources can be traced backat least to the 18th century.
In earlier forms, its influencerose and fell dramatically.
But in recent years, in the formof theory, it's found new influence,
especially after the horrifying murderby police
(05:25):
of George Floyd in 2020.
Some on the left felt that liberalismfailed
to explainhow such things could still be happening
in a supposedly free and equal society.,but that Theory did explain it.
Even many liberals beganadopting Theory-based views on America's
social problems, especially as Theoristsbegan consulting with corporations
(05:49):
and other organizations on how they couldaddress bias within their own cultures.
Increasingly,the word “woke” came to be defined
according to Theory, not liberalism,
and so did concepts centralto both Theory and liberalism,
including freedom, equality,and anti-racism, among others.
According to the Theory-inspiredwoke left,
(06:11):
the liberal versions of those conceptshave been discredited.
So if you
want to stand up for liberalism,you're going to need
to be able to answer the woke challengeto liberalism.
That means understandingsomething about Theory.
But here we run into another obstacleto clarity:
Theory can be complicatedto the point of opacity.
(06:34):
For starters, there is no one Theory.
As I say, it's more of a way of thinking,a meta theory that shapes
other theories such as cultural, genderor postcolonial theory,
or probably the best known,Critical Race Theory.
Furthermore,the source works of these theories
are often expressed in academic prosethat can seem impenetrable.
(06:57):
And often-cited example is the workof gender theorist Judith Butler,
who has some very interesting ideas,but a very dense style.
One of her sentenceswon first prize in an annual Bad
Writing contest runby the journal Philosophy and Literature.
Here it is:
“The move from a
structuralist account in which capitalis understood to structure
(07:20):
social relationsin relatively homologous ways,
to a view of hegemonyin which power relations are subject
to repetition, convergenceand rearticulation
brought the question of temporalityinto the thinking of structure,
and marked a shiftfrom a form of Althusserian theory
that takes structural totalitiesas theoretical objects
(07:42):
to one in which
the insights into the contingentpossibility of structure inaugurate
a renewed conception of hegemonyas bound up with the contingent sites
and strategiesof the rearticulation of power.”
I'll just give that a moment to think in.
Butler isn't alone.
There's no shortage of other examplesof writing like this
(08:04):
by Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida,and lots of others.
To be fair,writing by experts in any field
can often make hardreading for non-experts.
Most of us are stumped by academic workson quantum physics, for example.
Still, I think the
particular form of complexityfound in much of the writing about Theory
(08:25):
is significant in itself,and I'll have more to say about it later.
But I won't ask you to strugglewith much of it.
For our purposes here,we only need to focus on a few key
concepts, the ones that have beenmost influential in our politics
and which have been adoptedfor the most part by non-experts.
I'll start by looking at whyTheorists believe oppression is inherent
(08:47):
in liberalism and the Western worldview,and whether liberalism has an answer.
That's coming up next time.
Thanks for listening.
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