Slavoj Zizek article - Wokeness is here to stay

Yes, post modernism very much feeds on, and is a product of, individualistic, consumer society in which the emphasis is on finding your 'true self' which is, and can be, totally self created or manufactured, or else bought off the peg.

Individual self fulfillment above all else.

Not everyone has a natural political instinct, but most people, especially younger people, do have access to social media and it is this that shapes their group affinity or sense of belonging.

I think there are large sections of every age group and demographic who have no interest at all in politics or in pretty much anything beyond their small circle of personal life. It often strikes me how poor the 'general knowledege' of many people is, and how little interest some people have in the wider world.

This makes sense.

I think young people in the past did accept that there is such a thing as reason, and material reality. This POV says those things are racist/sexist/colonialist constructs.

There was a thread about school uniform yesterday with the usual argument about whether it is good or bad to "permit" children to butt up against uniform rules and whether it stops wider rule breaking.

Material reality has moved a long long way from my childhood.
Want to watch children's TV? It ended at 17:40.
Want another biscuit? The packet has run out
Want something from the shop? It's only open between 9 & 6.

The boundaries and barriers of every day life have changed. Things are possible for young people that weren't available to my generation. Is it any wonder that "No" is ignored by people who have learned it means OK if you insist?

What hasn't changed is human psychology and the tendency of the crowd to turn on difference. Woke is often bullying. It's not about treating people well, or as equals, it's about throwing stones at someone - anyone - else to try to look good. No one expects the woke inquisition.

But what is different in today's 'woke' politics is the deep radicalism that is on display and one that is totalitarian and authoritarian in nature and tolerates no dissent. Like others have said it is zealous in nature and clung to like an article of faith.

If you were part of fringe left politics in the 70s and 80s, the radicalism and zealous and authoritarian nature will be nothing new. I dare say the same could be said of the fringe/far right, but I have no experience of that.

What is new is that woke politics are utterly divorced from traditional political concerns like economics, class, wealth, taxation, productivity, etc.

The feminism of the 70s was deeply concerned with economic justice, as was the black power movement.
The gay rights movement was possibly new in this respect, being concerned with changing the law and society's attitudes rather than changing the economy.

At some point from the 80s onwards, "progressivism" dropped economic concerns and became more and more about identity.

So a quasi religious political movement?

I’m not sure it really is political engagement.

the concept of NO DEBATE (and the capitals are always at least implied) I exactly the opposite of political engagement.

Surely wokeness amongst young, mainly but not exclusively m/c folk, even if a bit self righteous, preachy, patronising etc is better than the complete lack of political engagement that many show ? I saw a youtube thing a few months ago and most of the young adults didn't even know what a union was..... Their opinions might not be entirely to our liking particularly from a GC viewpoint but at least it means they are interested and prepared at some point to debate as they mature.

I've been reflecting upon what to seems to me to be an inordinate lionisng of youth in recent years and this adds to, but also stems from, in part, the big generational divide that we are now constantly told exists. We are told older people have all of the privilege and younger people have been left out in the cold.

Increasingly we have very young local councillors ( one in my city was just 19 years old on election) and also MPs. Greta Thunberg became a spokesperson for the world in her early teens and very one hung on her every word. Scotland has been wanting to give the vote to 16 year olds for a long time.

Perhaps some older people feel guilty for their supposed privilege and so are inclined indulge youthful idealism. I know a lot of older traditional leftists are left baffled by the 'woke' ( what I consider to be U.S originated Campus ideologies and theories) politics of the younger Momentum crowd, but just go along with it and don't question it too much. they consideer these issues side issues in a 'manufactured culture war'.

As you suggest most young people get caught up in idealistic political or social movements, as this is the nature of youth, as I'm sure many of us posting here did too. Young people always believe that they are the first to see, or to reveal, the secret hidden inner workings of oppressive structures and so on.

But what is different in today's 'woke' politics is the deep radicalism that is on display and one that is totalitarian and authoritarian in nature and tolerates no dissent. Like others have said it is zealous in nature and clung to like an article of faith.

I think it will recede with time, but we are talking about 20 years or more - as the dark aspects of these ideologies become ever more evident. But in the meantime there needs to be a continual push-back and challenge to help it on its way.

I think it’s just a shift in ‘what good looks like‘ without changing anything about the underlying structures of power.

This is why it’s not a progressive movement in the least. It doesn’t want to change how power functions in society, just to shift the terms to enable the (self appointed) leaders of this movement to dominate.

The moral claim about what is and is not good or worthy remains the basis for
dominating others.

If you analyse political speeches of all kinds, you’ll see variations of the phrase ‘it is right that’ are unbelievably prevalent. What this movement is doing is shifting the ground for what is considered ‘right’ to what suits them. They are controlling the moral orthodoxy. They’re not doing anything radical like challenging domination based on moral orthodoxy.

It’s so effective because of this superego dynamic where the dominated can derive pleasure of a sort from feeling that they are trying but ultimately failing - the ambivalence around their moral worth is precisely the point.

John Gray's 'Seven Types of Atheism' touches on several of these things.

'“Mechanically reversing the traditional pieties of the west like flipping a series of switches, the devotees of extremity have created a pious tradition of their own, carried on to a stultifying extent in the institutions of culture, particularly the art world and some wings of academe.”'

johnpistelli.com/2021/11/15/john-gray-seven-types-of-atheism/

It’s about controlling the narrative in such a way that people are busy flagellating themselves for daring to ask questions or even consider doing so.

Yes, for sure. It is functioning like a religion, in that there are mysterious movements that normal people can't understand, only the self appointed chosen ones.

What they really want is what they are achieving: a position of moral authority from which they may terrorize all others, without effectively changing social relations of domination.

So are we seeing a new form of religion being created? Which is to say a new system of power and hierarchy being set up?

As to why the establishment, corporations, etc. have jumped on the 'woke' bandwagon:
Zizek's article talks about 'superego' and how it is a psychological mechanism for institutions to be terrorized by the woke minority.

I can't explain the universities, but in the corporate world I think it is much simpler - corporate wokeness is a substitute for greenwash.
Greenwash was giving the appearance of doing something about the environment and climate change, whilst actually doing as little as possible. The problem was that it was all too easy for activists to point out that the corporate emperor had no clothes, and that in fact the corporations were still carrying on business as usual behind the scenes.

Given that the goal of the corporations is to carry on business as usual whilst having the appearance of paying more than lip service to 'progressive causes', wokeness is so much more easy to adopt than greenwash. Rather than having to hide your carbon emissions, all you have to do is change the signs on the toilet doors and run a few 'diversity and inclusion' workshops.

really interesting.

In short, what we have here is the worst combination of politically correct badgering with the brutal calculation of financial interests.

This is an important point. as is the religious point that follows it.

All of them were exposed to a superego pressure that is far from an authentic call to justice. The black woke elite is fully aware it won’t achieve its declared goal of diminishing black oppression—and it doesn’t even want that. What they really want is what they are achieving: a position of moral authority from which they may terrorize all others, without effectively changing social relations of domination.

This is also very useful analysis. The goal isn’t removing oppression at all. It’s ensuring that you are in control of it snd reconfigure it to suit you.

And it is exactly the same with much of the ongoing “woke” movement: The woke awaken us—to racism and sexism—precisely to enable us to go on sleeping. They show us certain realities so that we can go on ignoring the true roots and depth of our racial and sexual traumas.

I like this final paragraph. The sleight of hand is important. It’s about controlling the narrative in such a way that people are busy flagellating themselves for daring to ask questions or even consider doing so. And it’s so effective because the flagellation is part of the enjoyment of it all for those involved.

I know very little about philosophy, so forgive my blundering. But I did see something like this in the pomo theory I was taught in higher ed. An abandoning of the idea that we could agree on anything, a splintering and fragmentation and undermining of all systems of knowledge.

No doubt those who wrote the texts had more sophisticated arguments than 'fuck everything, nothing is real', but that is how it roughly filtered down to the 'clever' proponents of pomo ideas and spread among them. I remember someone trying to convince me that Derrida's 'there are no absolutes' was absolutely true.

It's just a form of nihilism, in that case? Which is an incomplete understanding and I would say often a form of philosophical Oppositional Defiant Disorder.

I see 'wokeness' as a tool of the Western elite, another means of dividing

It's certainly used that way, as are many issues. Not restricted to Western powers - Russia's been involved in stirring the issues, too.

But is that what has actually created it and pushed it forward?

most people have attached to 'Progress' as a religious substitute or secular religion

I've been told by a councillor that something was the right thing to do because it was 'progressive', as if everyone agreed on what that term meant, and that it was unquestionably the correct thing to do. The subtext was that we should always change things, and that any change was de facto for the better. I guess this is the myth of upward progress and evolving towards something perfectible, utopian idealism, etc. Which I have read is informed by and/or echoes Abrahamic religious stories, promising redemption and paradise.

Be interesting to hear how these issues play out in India and China.

@DemiColon

I kind of get what you are saying - how can we know what is true in the absence of socially-dictated morality and religion, and in the defeat of philosophy. Subjectivity has replaced the discredited idea of objective truth.

However humans need religion like they need food and water. In the absence of any other religion, most people have attached to 'Progress' as a religious substitute or secular religion. To test this out, just try arguing with someone that progress has stopped - you will be treated as a blasphemer.

The trouble is that economic progress has stopped, and gone into reverse, over the last several decades. In these circumstances, people have latched onto 'social progress' instead, because they need to believe in Progress. So after gay rights and black rights and women's rights and disability rights, next on the list is trans rights - it is the last shiny new thing to fight for, to give the illusion that one can still be fighting for progress, still be on the right side of history.

I think part of the vacuum is the lack of any other political outlet - their are no significant 'fights' for the energetic youth to join, all there is left is so-called democratic capitalism.
Decades ago students and young people could join all sorts of political parties and ideologies, but I think most of these groups have just about vanished.

Enlightening article by Zizek. Made it very clear why the TRAs will allow 'no debate', for debate is itself violence, just as the actual statistics of incarceration in the US are violence - they do not conform to the message. (This applies to stating biological fact in the trans debate.) The point about feminists backing Muslim men trying to silence a Muslim woman pointing out how much Islam oppresses women is telling and reminds me of the feminist views on FGM up till the 80s; that FGM was a cultural choice by the women involved and no-one else had any right to intervene, that to do so was actually wrong. It's what we now call virtue-signalling, that is, I am with the oppressed and people who say that these oppressed people are oppressive/are not as oppressed as they think, are even worse oppressors and 'ism' of choice as well. It's double-think. I see 'wokeness' as a tool of the Western elite, another means of dividing those who should be standing together against our exploitation so that the 1% of the 1% can maintain their hold.

I feel the article posted contradicts and/simplifies his earlier stances on these subjects. In something that’s consistent about Zizek, it’s his inconsistency. I used to know a lot of postgraduate male students who very much liked him for the way he brings in Lacan when he feels like it, and made them feel clever when they recognised his references to Fanon or Hegel.

Anyway, I find his 2016 article more fleshed out, whether you agree of not, and more consistent with his previous philosophy
’ To recapitulate, not only do I fully support the struggle of transgender people against their legal segregation, but I am also deeply affected by their reports of their suffering, and I see them not as a marginal group, which should be “tolerated” but as a group whose message is radically universal: it concerns us all; it tells the truth about all of us as sexual beings. I differ from the predominant opinion in two interconnected points that concern theory: (1) I see the anxiety apropos sexual identities as a universal feature of human sexuality, not just as a specific effect of sexual exclusions and segregations, which is why one should not expect it to disappear with the progress of sexual desegregation; (2) I draw a strict distinction between sexual difference (as the antagonism constitutive of human sexuality) and the binary (or plurality) of genders. Both these points are, of course, totally misread or ignored by my critics.‘

zizek.uk/a-reply-to-my-critics-re-the-sexual-is-political/

Sory for all the typos I shouldn't try and write this late at night but cant resist adding this in light of the comment about bullying which certainly seems to be true in most areas of politics.

JK Rowling says she was bullied off a Harry Potter forum she joined under a pseudonym

Speaking on the podcast The Witch Trials of JK Rowling, she said: “I chose a random name that was not a Potter related name, as I was almost scared that I would somehow self-reveal.”

Rowling said she shared a “very bland” opinion about Harry Potter and “got rounded on by users who told me in no uncertain terms to get out”.

The author said she was told that she wasn’t “familiar in that room, and that I’m clearly an idiot who doesn’t know anything”.

“I left,” she said. “And I was thinking, I’ve written three and a half books where bullying is such a theme from the very first page, where bullying – and authoritarian behaviour – is held to be one of the worst of human ills, and look what just happened, from these people who call themselves such fans of this franchise.”

Rowling continued: “I didn’t care. I’m a pretty robust person. But what if I’d been some 12-year-old who was excited to go into this room, and was immediately, caustically chastised for not belonging?

“They just kicked someone out because they were new. I thought that was so interesting, that you’re passionate about these books and yet, in the course of living, you are behaving in a way that I depict as one of the worst and most stupid human behaviours.”

uk.news.yahoo.com/jk-rowling-says-she-bullied-102838005.html

Sure, but in the situation you are describing, while you may have been self-righteous, you accepted that your position had to have some kind of rational basis.

I wish I had been that educated and informed. I just couldn't bear that someone could find weaknesses in my assumptions. So if anything I would have used "irational" arguements to try and win my point. The problem was though, that just because of age so less experience / knowledge it was fairly easy to find fault in my position on any number of things. The difference was the older people just did not (not that anyone would have thought to say that at the time) just accept what I was saying because I "identified" that to be the (my) truth.

That is the difference. This endless need to pander to younger people.

If baby boomers are to be blamed for anything it is that they seem to have as parents had children who when they became parents were so terrified of being thought old, out of date, even a parent, bent over backwards to be friends to their children.

So these children, the grand children of baby boomers go to college and dont understand that the world doesn't revolve around them. That to achieve things you have to work. That sometimes things around you aren't nice.

This is a ideology that explicitly rejects rationality. You can't argue against the youth perspective because it is a perspective that says that math, or logic, are racist western constructs.

I think this is a different arguement. I think because some people have challenged the establishment in terms of education, history etc., because it erases them, others, as I said up thread, who in fact are the beneficiaries of that erasure, then ramp up the arguements to make themselves seem worthy of being considered in the vanguard.

Yet again this is where ideas and words (like woke as explained in the BBC documentaty) become meaningless as they are coopted and used to those who want status and realise they dont have any because in fact they are boringly part of the majority.

The establishment is willing to use this,

The establishment only uses it to shore up their reactionary notions of how the UK for instance should be run.

Brexit was won on an appeal to basically mythical ideas of a pre war Britain, or rather England.

The establishment benefits from each "irrational" statement, as it can use it to stir up those entrenched in tradition as needing to guard the country from losing its contrived history.

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Funnily enough I think it is about identity or rather not having one. In the past most people never moved far from where they were born. Only got scraps of news, and saw themselves willingly or unwillingly part of a community with a specific identity.

Now most people dont stay in their physical community, and get random information from any number of sources. If you listen to the news or talk shows most people actually have a very narrow idea of what is important, and only occassionally get caught up in these movements.

Maybe the problem is this generation is really the first internet generation, so in the virtual world anything is possible, and most of those following identity politics are in a postion where they can sit around thinking I could be this, that or the other. Whilst those from a less privileged background are too busy trying to survive to even spend time on it.

And I think the politicians and media going along with the identity politics think they are buying young people by pandering to them.

And of course the self id movement is an ideal vehicle for entrenched mysogyny.

I think the article fails because it is lacking in historical and political context.