Keith Parsons: The Defection of the Woke Part II
Guest essay on Wednesday, 1 May 2024
The hits keep coming—
THE DEFECTION OF THE WOKE
PART II
Keith Parsons
Michel Foucault 1926-1984
In Part I, we saw that the activism of today’s Woke has its intellectual roots in postmodernist theory and particularly the works of Michel Foucault. The Marxist claim that ideas are epiphenomena, determined by economics and themselves causally impotent could not be more wrong. Ideas that emerge in scholarly books can play out in the streets fifty years later. In fact, I would say that few forces have had a more profound effect on history than ideas. In the sixth century BCE, a few Ionian Greeks got the unprecedented idea that maybe nature could be explained in natural terms. In the thirties CE, a small band of the followers of a rabbi whom the Romans had executed as a common criminal got the idea that he had risen from the dead and began to preach in his name. At the end of the seventeenth century, a small number of intellectuals began to conceive of universal rights and governments not based on divine right but the consent of the governed. Ideas are powerful. It is therefore a grave mistake to dismiss academic theory as “merely academic.”
In Part I we saw that Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay offered a thorough history of the development of Theory and how it molded the themes of today’s woke movement. Susan Neiman in Left is Not Woke (2023) directly challenges these themes. Neiman’s book is slim, only about 150 pages, but it is rich in argument, and the arguments are potent. She attacks the pessimism of the Woke, adducing clear and important cases of progress. She also rejects the over-emphasis on “identity.” Neiman robustly reaffirms universal rights and equality as the ideals most likely to help the marginalized and oppressed. In my view, the book’s one flaw is a digression to attack evolutionary psychology, clearly a particular concern of hers. While I would not support any kind of reductive biological determinism, I think that the most solid basis for the assertion of universal rights must be a grounding in universal (and hence biological) human nature. More on this below.
Neiman distills her concerns about what has happened to the left down to three points:
What concerns me most here are the ways in which contemporary voices considered to be leftist have abandoned the philosophical ideas that are central to any left-wing standpoint: a commitment to universalism over tribalism, a firm distinction between justice and power, and a belief in the possibility of progress (2).
And these ideas matter:
These are not only matters of style or tone; they go to the very heart of what it means to stand on the left. The right may be more dangerous, but today’s left has deprived itself of the ideas we need if we hope to resist the lurch to the right (3).
I would put it even more strongly: Ideas issue in activism, and the activism of the woke left focuses on concerns—the promotion of DEI, advocacy for transgender people, antiracism programs—that are perhaps worthy causes in normal times, but our current situation is very far from normal. In our current crisis, such concerns are like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. We are in free fall towards fascism. This is not rhetoric or hyperbole. The fascists are quite candid about their aims. Check the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which seeks to gut federal agencies (the "deep state") by firing federal employees en masse and replacing them with tens of thousands of right-wing apparatchiks.
Neiman notes the most ironic thing about the woke left. Traditionally, it was the right that identified people by accidents of birth such as sex, race, nationality, ethnicity, etc., and the left that regarded these as incidental and held that what is important about people is their principles and character. The Woke perversely invert this, focusing precisely on stigmatized identities:
It [woke] begins with concern for marginalized persons, and ends by reducing each to the prism of her marginalization. The idea of intersectionality might have emphasized the ways in which all of us have more than one identity. Instead, it led to focus on those parts of identities that are most marginalized, and multiplies them into a forest of trauma (5).
Traditionally, the left emphasized internationalism, universality, and the oneness of humanity. Consider the second stanza of The Internationale:
So come brothers and sisters
For the struggle carries on
The Internationale
Unites the world in song
So comrades come rally
For this is the time and place
The international ideal
Unites the human race.
Concomitantly, the left opposed every tribalism of race, creed, color, religion, or nationality. The left was emphatic that beneath the contingent differences humans are fundamentally connected in numerous ways (11). By contrast, the right made a fetish of “blood and soil,” the ties of race and nation. The woke left justifies its return to tribalism as “strategic essentialism,” accepting such identities but this time to benefit rather than harm. For instance, instead of discriminating against black people and in favor of white people, we should now discriminate against white people and in favor of black people. What could go wrong?
Neiman deftly demolishes the assumption that the incredible diversity of human identity can be reduced to a few simplistic categories like race, gender, or sexual orientation:
The life of a black person is dramatically different in America and Nigeria...And being Nigerian is only an identity description outside the country; in a land whose citizens are divided by fraught histories and more than five hundred languages, saying you're Nigerian means nothing at all. Being a Jew in Berlin and a Jew in Brooklyn are experienced so differently that I can assure you they amount to different identities. A Jew in Tel Aviv is another identity again...Is there an Indian identity that holds equally for Hindus and Muslims, Brahmins and Dalits? Can you identify someone as gay without mentioning whether he lives in Tehran or Toledo (13)?
Again, I would go further and note that only a fanatic identifies completely with a group, and that, in general, each of us identifies much more as an individual than as a member of any group. We consider it insensitive or hostile to be reduced to an assigned category ("Oh, you are one of them.").
In previous posts, I have mentioned my late, great friend Gerry. He was an African American man who grew up in a tough neighborhood in Philadelphia and was raised by an even tougher single mom. He was a man of deep culture and wide learning. He was apparently familiar with the entire standard repertoire of classical music and could recommend recordings of any piece. His knowledge of film was equally encyclopedic. I thought that I knew something about the Second World War, having read a couple of dozen books; Gerry had read ten to every one of mine. Gerry was also a man who lived his all too short life with great gusto, enjoying good company, good food, and a hearty laugh. He certainly embraced his identity as black, but his blackness was far down the list of things that mattered to him. It is silly and offensive to reduce the identity of such a complex and accomplished person to his race.
Neiman recognizes that the motivations of the Woke were originally commendable—the recognition of those who had been treated abominably (15). Then a strange thing happened. Victimhood became a positive value, granting one the honorific and sanctified status previously reserved for Christian martyrs. Now people even speak colloquially of those who wish to gain support and sympathy as "playing the victim card." Even Donald Trump preposterously whines that he is the victim of a politically-motivated "witch hunt." Further, victimhood now is supposed to confer special wisdom and insight—an idea known as "standpoint theory." Neiman has no trouble debunking this conceit, noting that the experience of oppression, alienation, and powerlessness tends more to leave its victims broken and traumatized rather than wiser and better. She dispenses with standpoint theory with a quick quip: "I'd prefer to go back to a model where your claims to authority are based on what you have done to the world, not what the world did to you (19)."
Neiman recognizes that tribalism, the division of humanity into us and them, is deleterious, even if it is motivated by empathy for victims. The idea that the law should apply equally to all persons was one of the great achievements of the Enlightenment, even if the devisers of that principle could not transcend their own prejudices. Indeed, as Neiman notes, all of the great civil rights and anti-colonial movements opposed tribalism in all its forms, insisting that injustice inflicted on anyone should outrage everyone. A return to tribalism is regressive and dangerous. If rights are not universal, but pertain only to particular groups, then who gets to enjoy which rights comes down to a power play. As articulated by Thrasymachus, the bad boy of Plato's Republic, "justice" would be whatever benefits the stronger.
The Woke castigate the Enlightenment ideals of universalism as a smokescreen for Eurocentrism and colonialism. Neiman notes that, on the contrary, Enlightenment thinkers invented the critique of Eurocentrism and colonialism, as any reader of Candide should see (32). I used to teach Candide. There is nothing subtle about it; Voltaire lays it on with a trowel. I daresay that no postcolonial theorist has ever written so potent an exposé of the evils of colonialism.
At bottom, the Woke rejection of the Enlightenment rests on nothing deeper than sheer ignorance:
They [the Woke] forget that the Enlightenment emerged from a blasted landscape, on a continent soaked with blood. Those who dismiss Enlightenment thinkers as naive or optimistic not only ignore their writings but; more importantly, they ignore the history that formed the background to their thought. It was a history of waves of plague without cure, and ever-returning religious wars in which countless people died...Women were regularly burned alive as suspected witches, men thrown chained into dungeons for writing a pamphlet (33).
This was the response of the Enlightenment thinkers:
Into this landscape the Enlightenment introduced the very idea of humanity...Enlightenment thinkers insisted that everyone, whether Christian or Confucian, Parisian or Persian, is endowed with innate dignity that demands respect (33-34).
It is this great legacy that the Woke recklessly and stupidly reject.
Neiman notes that the cynic's claim that talk of justice is just a smokescreen for the machinations of the powerful goes back to Plato's Thrasymachus (58). It is indeed true that the rhetoric of justice often masks nefarious aims. The hideous quagmires of Vietnam and the Bush/Cheney Iraq war were defended with glowing accolades to "freedom" and "democracy." Some degree of cynicism about invocations of "justice" may be justified, but the nihilism of the Woke is not. As Neiman notes, the Woke do not seek to promote justice by exposing its counterfeits. For them, the very idea of justice is passé (59). Again under the baleful influence of Foucault, the Woke view all human relations as reduced to power struggles:
For the late Foucault, power was embedded in every feature of modern life. Power was woven into the very fabric of our language, thoughts, and desires. Power even enfolds resistance, which reinforces power. It's power all the way down (63).
My question to Foucault would be "What, in principle, could count against the claim that it is power all the way down?" For instance, what would a human relationship look like that was not based on power, and how would it be different from some of the human relationships we actually see? If nothing can count against the claim that power is "embedded in every feature of modern life," then it is not an empirical claim. In that case, what are we to make of it? If, on the other hand, we can imagine relationships not based on power, what prevents us from achieving them? If justice is possible, why can it not be realized, at least some of the time? If Foucault's claim about the pervasiveness of power is intended as a straightforward empirical claim, what is its basis? As Neiman observes, logic 101 should teach us that the fact that some relationships are based on power does not mean that they all are (64).
According to Neiman, the basis for pervasive pessimism about human relationships and the impossibility of genuine altruism—whether defended by the left-wing followers of Foucault or the right-wing defenders of unrestrained capitalism—isbased upon a jaundiced view of human nature, one which, Neiman says, harks back to the doctrine of original sin (74). I wonder if Foucault would have been willing to acknowledge Augustine as an intellectual ancestor? If humans are, by nature, irremediably selfish, we just have to face up to that fact and concede the foolishness of our dreams of justice. It is at this point that she makes a rather long digression (for so a succinct book) to confront evolutionary psychology. Her motivation is that evolutionary psychology is the supposedly scientific basis for the claim that humans are irredeemably selfish.
I think that this is an unnecessary digression for three reasons: First, this is a very large topic, and it cannot be adequately addressed here. All Neiman can really do is belabor sociobiology and evolutionary psychology with some standard critiques and quotes from Philip Kitcher and Mary Midgley. Second, I do not think that the convictions of the woke left are based on science or history or indeed upon evidence at all. Their avid and uncritical submission to the authority of Foucault is indicative of conversion rather than persuasion. Foucault fit their emotional needs—their profound pessimism yet also their felt imperative to protest. Finally, the best way to show that justice is possible is to show that it is actual, that is, to adduce undeniable instances in which humans really have bent the arc of history towards justice.
This takes us to Neiman's final point about the reality of progress. First, though, permit me my own digression. Neiman affirms belief in universal rights but notes that their justification has often been disputed. In my view, the most solid basis for recognizing universal human rights lies in consideration of humans' natural (biological) nature. As I say above, this claim does not rely on any sort of biological determinism. It does rest upon the claim, back to Aristotle, that humans are rational and social animals.
Why accord universal rights to human beings? Suppose that there were an intelligent eusocial species, like intelligent ants or bees. Like the Borg of Star Trek. Individual rights would mean nothing to such a species because there are no individuals. The whole hive is one extended organism. Individual units exist only to serve the whole; they have no concept of personal happiness or well-being. Such a collective entity has but one purpose—its own existence and expansion. Humans, on the other hand, want to be happy. They do not just want to exist, they want fulfilment and significance. The best human life involves enduring satisfactions, the enjoyment of intrinsically rewarding experiences and activities—like learning and developing our minds, good times with family and friends, meaningful work, and a sense of having made a contribution.
As Aristotle put it long ago, the good for humans is eudaimonia, which is imperfectly translated as “flourishing,” “thriving,” or “well-being.” The good for every creature depends on what kind of organism it is, that is, for what kind of life nature has adapted that organism. In the movie Jaws, the marine biologist, played by Richard Dreyfuss, says that nature has made the great white shark to do three things—swim, eat, and make little sharks. A shark is flourishing if it is doing these three things well. What kind of life is flourishing for humans? Humans are rational and social creatures; we are living our best life when our rational faculties are fully operational and we are interacting fruitfully with our fellow humans. Aristotle’s famous doctrine of the “virtues” applies here. The “virtues” are those states of intellect and character that permit us to think most clearly and interact most successfully with others.
If human flourishing is the basic value, then we may judge societies by how conducive they are to flourishing. I take it as obvious that a society that recognizes certain inalienable rights is more conducive to flourishing than one that subjects people to the peremptory actions of the powerful. Consider free speech. A society that respects freedom of speech is one that respects the rational nature of its members, their ability to think and speak for themselves. By contrast, a society where the only permitted opinions are those of the Dear Leader deprives people of the exercise of their rational faculties, faculties which entail the power to dissent. When Martin Luther stood before the Diet of Worms and asserted the supremacy of the individual conscience over Church authority, he thereby asserted our sovereign right to think for ourselves. Where that right is denied, we cannot flourish.
Human rights are therefore grounded in the value of human flourishing, which in turn is grounded in human nature. It seems to me, then, that if we value human rights we must affirm certain natural facts about human beings, such as that human beings are endowed with rational and social natures and find their deepest fulfillment and satisfaction in fully actualizing those natures. Societies that stunt the development of human potentials (e.g., by not permitting women to be educated), disvalue human beings, whereas those that respect and promote the development of human potentials value human beings. To affirm this is not to assert a biological determinism that makes us robots programmed by our genes; it merely affirms certain natural human potentials and the innate good of actualizing those potentials.
Neiman and I are close in age and grew up in the same part of the world—the Atlanta, Georgia, area. It was a time and place fraught with both fear and hope. When we were quite young and impressionable, the Cuban Missile Crisis threatened us with nuclear annihilation. Atlanta was well within the range of those missiles, each carrying a three megaton warhead. (And three megatons would have been quite sufficient to have vaporized both of us.) Yet the deep south in that era was also the time of great social ferment with the civil rights movement. I can remember the Birmingham church bombing that murdered four little girls as well as the murders of the three civil rights workers, Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner. Yet I also remember Dr. King's dream and President Kennedy's stirring calls to serve our country. So, Neiman and I both early on learned the meaning of the words that title her fourth chapter: "Progress and Doom."
For the Woke it is all doom. Foucault, their guru of gloom, sees no progress anywhere. In works such as Discipline and Punish, he scorns the idea of progress in criminal punishments and expresses contempt at the very suggestion. Seriously? I live in Texas, which leads the nation in executions. (Yee ha!) Yet even in Texas capital punishment is no longer by hanging or by Ol' Sparky, the electric chair. Rather, lethal injection is the process because it is considered more humane than breaking necks with ropes or scorching with electricity. For the Romans, the effort to minimize the suffering of the condemned would have been incomprehensible. The whole purpose of execution was to make it as agonizing as possible. Nail someone to a cross and it might take three days for him to die. Execution by any means is a grim operation, and lethal injection is sometimes hideously botched, but isn't the move from crucifixion to lethal injection at least prima facie evidence that, even in Texas, extreme cruelty is now out of bounds?
I have been inside a medium-security unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (as a teacher, not an inmate). A Texas prison is not a happy place. My students each shared a small cell with another inmate. Sometimes there would be lockdowns, and they could not leave their cells for days at a time. On summer days, SE Texas nearly always has a heat index of well over a hundred degrees. Imagine the conditions in a crowded cellblock with no air conditioning. The food they are served is called "pig slop" for good reason. Nothing is convenient and everything is a hassle. Still, I would far rather be in the hands of TDCJ than in the torture chambers that were in common use until the end of the eighteenth century. I have heard apologists trying to extenuate the horrors of the Holy Inquisition by saying that sure the Inquisition tortured, but so did everybody!
Neiman notes that, contrary to the caricatures of Foucault and others, Enlightenment thinkers did not hold that progress is inevitable. They maintained that it was possible, that humans are not inevitably evil, and that hard work guided by intelligence and kindness could accomplish it. There have, of course, been setbacks. In the middle of the twentieth century, after world war and genocide, surely it seemed that the Enlightenment's dreams of progress had been drowned in blood. Yet Neiman, invoking Kant, notes that hope is necessary for moral action (106). If we give up hope, we will stop trying to make things better:
Once we know it is futile, we can all stop struggling. For solace, or at least distraction, there's always self-care or the ingestion of mind-altering substances...Whether you see the proverbial glass as half-full or half-empty is more than a matter of temperament. If you cannot see it as half-full, you will eventually stop trying to fill it (106-107).
In short, if everything is futile, the most rational thing to do is to go get drunk. On the other hand, if we hope we will strive to make things better.
Is hope rational? The best evidence that it is is that some things have actually improved. And they have. Consider public torture. It used to be considered an entertaining and edifying spectacle. Foucault begins his Discipline and Punish with a long, horrible description of the 1757 execution by torture of Robert-Francois Damiens for the attempted assassination of Louis XV. Neiman comments:
You may shudder to read Foucault's description of Damiens' death...Had you been a parent in 1757, you'd have thought no more about taking your children to watch it than you'd think of taking them to the circus today. Had you been able to afford it, you'd have paid money for good seats. Versions of torture as entertainment have a long history; the Roman Colosseum was built to display them. It's a sign of deep and visceral progress that we shudder at the thought of offering live torture to children as a treat (111).
Such examples could be multiplied. On festive occasions, it used to be thought jolly fun to fill a basket with cats and slowly burn them alive. Apparently, the screaming of the tormented creatures was considered hilarious. A man was expected to beat his wife when she displeased him, and "the more you beat her, the better she be" was common wisdom. Young children were given dangerous jobs in mills and mines where they were often hideously mangled. The disabled were fair game for ridicule, and fine gentlemen and ladies would tour Bedlam to laugh at the antics of the mentally ill. If a master raped his slave every night, that was his right.
Further, we know how we have gotten better. People who are brutalized less are less brutal. Relief of misery and want gives the kinder sentiments room to grow. Greater literacy let more people read the disturbing depictions of cruelty to people and animals in works such as the writings of Charles Dickens, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Anna Sewell's Black Beauty. Little Oliver Twist begging for a second bowl of gruel is an image that is hard to shake, as is the image of runaway slave Eliza holding her baby as she jumps across the ice floes of the frozen Ohio to escape the slave catchers. Literature can make you see the Other as Us.
Our progress in becoming less cruel is far from perfect and not ubiquitous, but where it exists it is progress. To deny this is to repudiate all moral distinctions, and this should discredit you entirely.
This review of Neiman's short book has been much longer than I intended, yet even this lengthy review cannot capture the full richness of its content. I have quoted her often to show her trenchant and often aphoristic style. The book is a ringing defense of the traditional ideals of the left and a potent rebuke to the Woke for abandoning them. Speaking personally, I found it refreshing—indeed, inspiring—to be reminded in a dark time that progress is possible, and that history's arc can be bent.
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Thank you for a compelling and positive response to a powerful message and work.