A Review of Left is not Woke by Susan Neiman; Polity Press, 2023
So much of the “anti-woke” criticism that appears in our culture is actually a thin disguise for an attack on anything left, whether “woke” or not. Susan Neiman, however, identifies herself immediately in Left is Not Woke as a leftist and a socialist, adding a much needed perspective to the discussion of “wokeism.”
Immediately, she states that this book is not “a call for bipartisanship, or a screed against cancel culture. Nor will I speak of the liberal virtue of working to understand those who do not share your views, though I think it’s a virtue” (1).
Can woke be defined? It 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…. In the focus on inequalities of power, the concept of justice is often left by the wayside.
Woke demands that nations and peoples face up to their criminal histories. In the process it often concludes that all history is criminal.
What’s confusing about the woke movement is that it expresses traditional left-wing emotions: empathy for the marginalized, indignation at the plight of the oppressed, determination that historical wrongs should be righted. Those emotions, however, are derailed by a range of theoretical assumptions that ultimately undermine them. (5-6)
Though one might be well advised to put the word “woke” into quotation marks, in acknowledgement of its frequent use as a simple term of abuse for anything left, liberal, or progressive, Neiman’s book, is about a tendency that has, in the author’s view, driven the left down various rabbit holes that deprive it of its traditional energy, justice, and insight.
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. All these ideas are connected. (2)
These three points are central to this invigorating little book and constitute the sort of insight much of the current establishmentarian blather against “woke” has overlooked. The five chapters of the book consist of introductory and concluding chapters, plus a chapter for each of the three central points.
Neiman might have paid more attention to the “considered to be leftist” angle. Are the woke really a left that has lost its way, as Neiman seems to believe, or is woke really more the product of what might be called “liberal” thought? I sometimes think of liberals as people who share the same values as conservatives more often than either knows, but who have too much of a heart to take them to their logical, brutal conclusions. For example, both sides exalt ideas of property rights as practiced in capitalism, but the liberals are more sensitive to how these rights interfere with other rights and injure public prosperity. The liberal, therefor, is more likely to favour unions for example, but would be appalled that anyone other than a capitalist might be competent to own and run a major enterprise.
But perhaps I quibble, because Neiman points out simply, “the woke themselves have been colonized by a row of ideologies that properly belong to the right” (127).
“Woke” started out as a positive term used by the woke to refer to their own way of looking at things, but now “woke” as a word is largely the pejorative offspring of the equally pejorative “politically correct.” It seems the latter term is being retreaded or replaced by the former, having been worn out from its over thirty years of faithful service to the righteous cause of powerfully insinuating that anything left, liberal, or progressive is not only inherently pharisaical, but the only ideology in town allowed to speak, and one that only the bravest dare criticize. In reality, of course, for over 30 years nothing has been more “politically correct” than not being “politically correct.”
Suffice it to say that in order to establish a ground for a more useful and accurate criticism of the woke, it is enough to signify what “left” means, and this I think Neiman does well.
The first chapter after the introduction is called “Universalism and Tribalism.”
Let’s begin with the idea of universalism, which once defined the left; international solidarity was its watchword. This was just what distinguished it from the right, which recognized no deep connections, and few real obligations, to anyone outside its own circle. The left demanded that the circle encompass the globe. That was what standing left meant. … What united was not blood but conviction—first and foremost the conviction that behind all the differences of time and space that separate us, human beings are deeply connected in a wealth of ways. To say that histories and geographies affect us is trivial. To say that they determine us is false. (11)
Neiman sees universalism as having come under attack because of its being associated with a “fake universalism” involving “the attempt to impose certain cultures on others in the name of an abstract humanity that turns out to reflect just a dominant culture’s time, place, and interests. That happens daily in the name of corporate globalism, which seeks to convince us that the key to human happiness is a vast universal mall” (23). It is in this chapter that Neiman begins her defense of the Enlightenment, attacking the attitude that it can be dismissed as simply a bunch of hypocritical, periwigged white men. The practice of getting back to universal values, and being unafraid of accusations of trying to dominate a given discourse thereby, is a breath of fresh air. I am reminded of Todd McGowan’s Universality and Identity Politics and its even more detailed discussion of this issue.
Much of the third chapter, “Justice and Power,” is given over to an argument against the work of Michel Foucault. In brief, Neiman asserts that the powers of the world have so often claimed noble intent in their actions, while actually being motivated by the baser elements of human nature, that “the line between power and justice is increasingly ignored” (78). But while Foucault has often exposed the hypocrisy of power, he also sees it as “the driving force of everything” (63). “Power” in Foucault’s understanding, according to Neiman, “even enfolds resistance, which reinforces power. It’s power all the way down” (63). She refers to a public debate between Foucault and Noam Chomsky from the 1970s, after which Chomsky stated that Foucault was “the most amoral man he ever met” (66).
In this same context, evolutionary psychology also comes in for a critique because of its assumptions that human behavior must always be self-interested. Neiman points out that evolutionary psychology did not start off as a product of the left. Rather, initially the left objected to it. But now, it “provides the default assumptions about human behavior accepted by most people regardless of political standpoint” (89).
“She did it because it was right” was once, by itself, an explanatory statement—though whether that was really the reason she did it was always open to question. By the late twentieth century, such statements no longer counted as explanatory, but required deconstruction revealing some form of self-interest as the real driving force. None of the thinkers who contributed to making this assumption seem natural has asked the historical question about their own premise: might that assumption itself be part of a conceptual framework constructed during the twentieth century? The supposition that any genuine explanation of human behavior must penetrate high-flown, idealistic descriptions to reach the self-interested wheels that turn us is itself a piece of ideology whose history has yet to be written. (89)
These thoughts give rise to what Neiman presents as an at least partial explanation for Donald Trump’s popularity: unlike the rest of us, he is truly the sort of human being evolutionary psychology claims we all are. His followers
admire his authenticity. With apologies to Abraham Lincoln, he functions as a license to act according to the worst devils of our nature. The baleful fascination he exerts over the many who loathe him is a result of his singularity: it’s perpetually astonishing to observe a human being who behaves so differently from the rest of us. By taking the trouble to be a hypocrite, George W. Bush paid compliments to virtue. No wonder even those who wanted him jailed for war crimes feel occasional nostalgia. (91)
Finally, the fourth chapter, “Progress and Doom” tells us at the outset, “there’s no deeper difference between left and right than the idea that progress is possible.” (92). Here again, Foucault comes in for a drubbing.
So how did Michel Foucault become the godfather of the woke left? His style was certainly radical, but his message was as reactionary as anything Edmund Burke or Joseph de Maistre ever wrote. Indeed, Foucault’s vision was gloomier than theirs…. You think we make progress toward practices that are kinder, more liberating, more respectful of human dignity: all goals of the left? Take a look at the history of an institution or two. What looked like steps toward progress turn out to be more sinister forms of repression…. Once you’ve seen how every step forward becomes a more subtle and powerful step toward total subjection, you’re likely to conclude that progress is illusory. How far Foucault believed this himself is an open question, but it’s certainly the view most have drawn from his work. (93-94)
But how much is Foucault the godfather of the left? Are the attitudes attributed to him really where the woke got them? I suspect the source is broader, that Foucault is not a singular, original tributary, poisoning the entire river, but part of a larger watershed.
Are there not other reasons for wokeism than Foucault, evolutionary psychology, and poor understandings of the Enlightenment? In other words, there may be reasons more historical and cultural than the more specifically intellectual sources Neiman is dealing with. For example, the self-righteousness characteristic of the woke may be at least in part a result of being or siding with the underdog. If some people are oppressed or marginalized, told constantly that they are not good enough because of their race or sexual orientation, for example, is it so surprising that some should end up aggrandizing themselves or putting on airs because of their sufferings? Neiman wisely points out that while being oppressed should be nothing to be ashamed of, it is no virtue either. But the manifold disappointment the left has faced since the sixties puts great pressures on people whether they are familiar with the work of Foucault or not.
There are many things philosophy is good for; one is uncovering the assumptions behind your most cherished views and expanding your sense of possibility. “Be realistic” sounds like common sense, but hidden behind it is a metaphysics that underlies many a political position, a whole set of assumptions about what’s real and what’s not, what’s doable and what’s imaginable. You can translate the advice to be realistic quite simply: lower your expectations. When you take such advice, what assumptions are you making about reality? (123)
Indeed. “Realism” may well be the ideology of our time. And it is time for the giant to be slain. Perhaps the most insidious invasion of the left by its enemies is in the erosion of hope. Hopelessness, though usually not explicit, is the real political correctitude of our times. Bruno Bettelheim, though he may not have been by any means the most astute explicator of politics, and though his theories of autism have long since been rejected, may have been on to something when he saw a link between the philosophy of the concentration camps and the darker elements of seemingly apolitical human psychopathology in the motto, “you must never hope that anything can change.”
Left is not Woke is a book that is highly useful in revivifying leftist thought. It gets down to what the assumptions are behind wokeism much better than its more conservative critics could do. Neiman’s book is lucid, insightful, and very timely.
