Left Is Not Woke

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She is a member of the American Philosophical Society and the Berlin-Brandenburg Akademie der Wissenschaften, and the mother of three grown children. g. the work of Malcom Ferdinand and Romy Oppermann), are they de facto “woke” or are they genuinely of the left? In this nuanced and impassioned plea for universalism she has done a public service for readers of every political stripe. She has written extensively on the juncture between Enlightenment moral philosophy, metaphysics, and politics, both for scholarly audiences and the general public.

The refusal to find anything useful in Foucault’s analysis of power – especially given the sanctification of Foucault in many academic circles – makes what could be an important critique seem more of an unjustified personal attack. Comparing him with Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt, who, according to Neiman, shared with Foucault “a deep skepticism toward any idea of progress,” she suggests that by rejecting the Enlightenment, the contemporary Left has embraced the intellectual tenets of fascism. But because Neiman does not bother engaging with the substance of these critiques of Enlightenment, her counterarguments ring hollow. As her argument wobbles along, it becomes clear that Neiman does, in fact, mean “liberalism” when she refers to the Left.Nathan and I have both apologised to Professor Neiman and I will work to improve our review process to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again.

The intellectual roots and resources of wokeism conflict with ideas that have guided the left for more than 200 years: a commitment to universalism, a firm distinction between justice and power, and a belief in the possibility of progress. If Neiman were serious about her desire to understand Foucault’s “influence on contemporary culture,” she would have sought to explain why so many progressives, the very activists with whom she claims to empathize, have found Foucault to be such an inspiring and productive thinker. In other words, historical atrocities against the marginalized remain with us today, just in an altered form, and no progress has been made.

Furthermore, her neat dismissal of “theory”, her occasional cobbling together of a thinker’s position from a few disparate quotes, and the simplistic dichotomies that structure each chapter (universal vs.

Neiman’s insistence on the importance of universalism is particularly apposite in the current emotional responses to the Gaza conflict. Left Is Not Woke is an urgent and powerful intervention into one of the most pressing struggles of our time. Why a critique of evolutionary psychology is present in the manuscript is baffling, as the most well-known defenders of evolutionary psychology, such as Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins, are well known for their anti-woke stances.The French philosopher, who still looms large over academic discourse, did indeed question the principles of the Enlightenment. Anti-fascism is surely tribalistic, so perhaps anti-fascist thinkers are no longer leftist, perhaps even “woke”. As a result, wokeism conflicts with ideas that have guided the left for more than 200 years: a commitment to universalism, a firm distinction between justice and power, and a belief in the possibility of progress.