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Much of my academic training is in intellectual history.
So to understand the ideas about group identity that have become powerful so quickly, I did a TON of reading.
Here's the true story of the origins of "woke"—and how it explains many themes of today's left.
A loooong 🧵.
So to understand the ideas about group identity that have become powerful so quickly, I did a TON of reading.
Here's the true story of the origins of "woke"—and how it explains many themes of today's left.
A loooong 🧵.
The new ideas about race, gender, and sexual orientation constitute a novel ideology, which radically departs from the traditional left.
They are inspired by three main traditions: postmodernism, postcolonialism, and critical race theory. And they focus on the role that groups do—and should—play in society.
That's why I call them the "identity synthesis."
They are inspired by three main traditions: postmodernism, postcolonialism, and critical race theory. And they focus on the role that groups do—and should—play in society.
That's why I call them the "identity synthesis."
If you have mainly encountered the themes of the identity synthesis in op-eds or on social media, you may think it's just silly.
But while I do believe that this novel ideology is a trap, its main themes are rooted in the work of serious thinkers whose ideas are worth taking seriously. They are:
* A deep skepticism about objective truth taken from Michel Foucault.
* The use of “discourse analysis” for explicitly political ends inspired by Edward Said.
* A doubling-down on identity rooted in the concept of “strategic essentialism” coined by Gayatri Spivak.
* A preference for public policies that explicitly tie the treatment a person receives to their group identity, as advocated by Derrick Bell.
* And a profound skepticism about the idea that you and I will be able to understand each other if we stand at different intersections of identities, loosely based on the work of Kimberlé Crenshaw.
Let me explain.
But while I do believe that this novel ideology is a trap, its main themes are rooted in the work of serious thinkers whose ideas are worth taking seriously. They are:
* A deep skepticism about objective truth taken from Michel Foucault.
* The use of “discourse analysis” for explicitly political ends inspired by Edward Said.
* A doubling-down on identity rooted in the concept of “strategic essentialism” coined by Gayatri Spivak.
* A preference for public policies that explicitly tie the treatment a person receives to their group identity, as advocated by Derrick Bell.
* And a profound skepticism about the idea that you and I will be able to understand each other if we stand at different intersections of identities, loosely based on the work of Kimberlé Crenshaw.
Let me explain.
A quick service interruption:
This is gonna be long. A better way to learn about this intellectual history is to read the article I published on the topic in today’s @theatlantic!
(The best way to read it is… to buy my new book: The Identity Trap!)
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
This is gonna be long. A better way to learn about this intellectual history is to read the article I published on the topic in today’s @theatlantic!
(The best way to read it is… to buy my new book: The Identity Trap!)
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
In the beginning, there was Michel Foucault.
The few intellectual histories of “wokeness” that exist so far have called it a form of “cultural Marxism.”
But Foucault, the thinker who had the most influence on these ideas, even though he would have been deeply skeptical of what came of them, explicitly rejects what he called “grand narratives,” including Marxism.
Over anyone who pretended to be on the left,” he once complained, the orthodox Marxism of the French Communist Party “laid down the law. One was either for or against; an ally or an adversary.”
He became an adversary.
The few intellectual histories of “wokeness” that exist so far have called it a form of “cultural Marxism.”
But Foucault, the thinker who had the most influence on these ideas, even though he would have been deeply skeptical of what came of them, explicitly rejects what he called “grand narratives,” including Marxism.
Over anyone who pretended to be on the left,” he once complained, the orthodox Marxism of the French Communist Party “laid down the law. One was either for or against; an ally or an adversary.”
He became an adversary.
In book after book, Foucault argued against modern societies’ complacent assumption that they had made progress in the way they punish criminals or treat the mentally ill. Doubting claims to objective truth, Foucault believed that societies had become not more humane but merely more effective at controlling their subjects.
Power, Foucault argued, is much more indirect than the top-down model traditionally taught in civics classes. Because real power lies in the normative assumptions embedded in the discourses that structure our society and the identity labels we use to make sense of the world, it is “produced from one moment to the next, at every point.”
This belief made Foucault deeply skeptical about the perfectibility of our social world. People would always chafe against the form that power takes at any given moment in history: “Where there is power, there is resistance,” he wrote. But this resistance, if successful, would itself come to exercise a power of its own. Even the most noble struggle, Foucault warned his readers, would contain within itself the seed of new forms of oppression.
Foucault left his devotees with a complicated legacy. They recognized that his philosophy allowed them to question the prevailing assumptions and institutions of their age but were disappointed by his pessimism about the possibility of creating a less oppressive world disappointed them. So they set out to infuse the prospect for political agency back into his ideas.
Power, Foucault argued, is much more indirect than the top-down model traditionally taught in civics classes. Because real power lies in the normative assumptions embedded in the discourses that structure our society and the identity labels we use to make sense of the world, it is “produced from one moment to the next, at every point.”
This belief made Foucault deeply skeptical about the perfectibility of our social world. People would always chafe against the form that power takes at any given moment in history: “Where there is power, there is resistance,” he wrote. But this resistance, if successful, would itself come to exercise a power of its own. Even the most noble struggle, Foucault warned his readers, would contain within itself the seed of new forms of oppression.
Foucault left his devotees with a complicated legacy. They recognized that his philosophy allowed them to question the prevailing assumptions and institutions of their age but were disappointed by his pessimism about the possibility of creating a less oppressive world disappointed them. So they set out to infuse the prospect for political agency back into his ideas.
Edward Said, a Palestinian American literary theorist, shot to fame by arguing that the way Western writers had imagined the “Orient” helped them wield power over it, causing real-world harm. Explicitly acknowledging his debt to “Michel Foucault’s notion of a discourse,” he claimed that analyzing the discourse of “Orientalism” was crucial to understanding “the enormously systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manage—and even produce—the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively.”
But to Said and his followers, it seemed clear that the goal of cultural analysis should be to help those who have the least power. They sought to change the dominant discourse to help the oppressed resist the oppressor.
Postcolonial scholars took Said’s work as a model for how to apply discourse analysis to explicitly political ends. A new wave of researchers concerned with such topics as gender, the media, and the experiences of migrants and ethnic minorities quickly embraced their toolkit. In time, the idea that a lot of political activism might revolve around critiquing dominant discourses or labeling certain cultural artifacts as “problematic” went mainstream, finding currency on social-media platforms and in traditional newspapers.
But to Said and his followers, it seemed clear that the goal of cultural analysis should be to help those who have the least power. They sought to change the dominant discourse to help the oppressed resist the oppressor.
Postcolonial scholars took Said’s work as a model for how to apply discourse analysis to explicitly political ends. A new wave of researchers concerned with such topics as gender, the media, and the experiences of migrants and ethnic minorities quickly embraced their toolkit. In time, the idea that a lot of political activism might revolve around critiquing dominant discourses or labeling certain cultural artifacts as “problematic” went mainstream, finding currency on social-media platforms and in traditional newspapers.
Foucault’s legacy left postcolonial scholars with a second obstacle. In rejecting grand narratives, he had not only turned against the idea of universal values or objective truth; he was also arguing that identity labels such as “women,” “proletarians,” and the “masses of the Third World” were reductive. Such generalizations, he claimed, create the illusion that a hugely varied group of people share some essential set of characteristics. The oppressed, Foucault observed, do not need intellectuals to speak on their behalf.
Spivak, an Indian literary scholar, strongly disagreed. Parisian philosophes, she argued, could take their social standing for granted. But the people with whom she was most concerned had none of their resources and enjoyed no such recognition. In countries such as India, she concluded in her most celebrated article, the “subaltern” cannot speak.
This presented Spivak, who had made her name as an interpreter of postmodernist philosophers, with a dilemma. How could she stay true to her distrust of dominant discourses, including identity categories, while speaking on behalf of the marginalized groups for which she felt a deep kinship? The key to doing better, she argued, was to embrace identity markers that could prove useful in practice even if they might be suspect in theory. “I think we have to choose again strategically,” she suggested, “not universal discourse but essentialist discourse … I must say I am an essentialist from time to time.”
These cryptic remarks took on a life of their own. Faced with the problem of how to speak for the oppressed, scholars from numerous disciplines followed Spivak’s example. They continued in the spirit of postmodernism to cast doubt on claims of scientific objectivity or universal principles. At the same time, they insisted on using broad identity categories and speaking for the downtrodden by embracing what they came to call “strategic essentialism.”
Spivak, an Indian literary scholar, strongly disagreed. Parisian philosophes, she argued, could take their social standing for granted. But the people with whom she was most concerned had none of their resources and enjoyed no such recognition. In countries such as India, she concluded in her most celebrated article, the “subaltern” cannot speak.
This presented Spivak, who had made her name as an interpreter of postmodernist philosophers, with a dilemma. How could she stay true to her distrust of dominant discourses, including identity categories, while speaking on behalf of the marginalized groups for which she felt a deep kinship? The key to doing better, she argued, was to embrace identity markers that could prove useful in practice even if they might be suspect in theory. “I think we have to choose again strategically,” she suggested, “not universal discourse but essentialist discourse … I must say I am an essentialist from time to time.”
These cryptic remarks took on a life of their own. Faced with the problem of how to speak for the oppressed, scholars from numerous disciplines followed Spivak’s example. They continued in the spirit of postmodernism to cast doubt on claims of scientific objectivity or universal principles. At the same time, they insisted on using broad identity categories and speaking for the downtrodden by embracing what they came to call “strategic essentialism.”
Over time, Spivak’s paradoxical compromise became a political rallying cry. Today, activists who carefully acknowledge that race or gender or ability status “is a social construct” nevertheless go on to make surprisingly essentializing claims about what, say, brown people or women or the disabled believe and demand.
The embrace of strategic essentialism also helps explain the logic behind the rise of new social customs, such as the establishment of racially separate “affinity groups” in many progressive spaces. Spivak came to believe that a commitment to identity categories such as race was strategically useful. Many progressives took this to mean that activists—and even grade-school students—should be encouraged to conceive of themselves first and foremost in racial terms.
The embrace of strategic essentialism also helps explain the logic behind the rise of new social customs, such as the establishment of racially separate “affinity groups” in many progressive spaces. Spivak came to believe that a commitment to identity categories such as race was strategically useful. Many progressives took this to mean that activists—and even grade-school students—should be encouraged to conceive of themselves first and foremost in racial terms.
Bell’s skepticism about the civil-rights movement also made him distrust the idea that the racial attitudes of most Americans were improving. “Racism,” he contended, is not “a holdover from slavery that the nation both wants to cure and is capable of curing”; rather, it is “an integral, permanent, and indestructible component of this society.” The civil-rights movement might have succeeded in making discrimination “less visible,” but, he wrote in the early 1990s, racism had become “neither less real nor less oppressive.”
According to Bell, the legal remedies implemented during the civil-rights era, such as school desegregation, would never suffice to overcome the legacy of slavery. It was high time, he wrote in a 1992 paper, for a “review and replacement of the now defunct racial equality ideology.” To win lasting progress, Bell proposed, would require more than nominal equality; it would take explicit group rights that compensated the marginalized. He and his followers called for policies that openly distinguished among citizens on the basis of skin color, so that those who had historically been oppressed would henceforth receive preferential treatment.
Bell died in 2011. A decade later, his ideas are enjoying a second life as an avowedly anti-racist left is embracing his call for race-sensitive public policy. The determination to put “racial equity” before old-fashioned forms of “racial equality” is evident today in many public policies, such as when, in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, the Small Business Administration prioritized nonwhite restaurant owners for emergency relief funds.
According to Bell, the legal remedies implemented during the civil-rights era, such as school desegregation, would never suffice to overcome the legacy of slavery. It was high time, he wrote in a 1992 paper, for a “review and replacement of the now defunct racial equality ideology.” To win lasting progress, Bell proposed, would require more than nominal equality; it would take explicit group rights that compensated the marginalized. He and his followers called for policies that openly distinguished among citizens on the basis of skin color, so that those who had historically been oppressed would henceforth receive preferential treatment.
Bell died in 2011. A decade later, his ideas are enjoying a second life as an avowedly anti-racist left is embracing his call for race-sensitive public policy. The determination to put “racial equity” before old-fashioned forms of “racial equality” is evident today in many public policies, such as when, in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, the Small Business Administration prioritized nonwhite restaurant owners for emergency relief funds.
Kimberlé Crenshaw added another key term to the repertoire of critical race theory. “Intersectionality,” she argued, helps to explain the way in which different forms of discrimination reinforce each other.
She also gave a compelling example. New legislation introduced during the civil rights era allowed Americans to sue their employers for discrimination if they experienced significant dis- advantages based on “protected characteristics” like race, gender, and national origin. During the 1970s and 1980s, many women and many African Americans made use of these provisions to protect themselves from discriminatory practices. But as Crenshaw demonstrated, the law as it was interpreted at the time did not provide adequate protection to people who suffered disadvantages because of a combination of protected characteristics.
But other scholars in the tradition later expanded this idea well beyond its original use. To them, the fact that each person exists at the intersection of different identities came to imply that outsiders could, even if they carefully listened to their stories, never come to understand,say, a homosexual Latino or a Black woman. In some of its uses, intersectionality thus came to stand for in the profound incommensurability of human experience.
She also gave a compelling example. New legislation introduced during the civil rights era allowed Americans to sue their employers for discrimination if they experienced significant dis- advantages based on “protected characteristics” like race, gender, and national origin. During the 1970s and 1980s, many women and many African Americans made use of these provisions to protect themselves from discriminatory practices. But as Crenshaw demonstrated, the law as it was interpreted at the time did not provide adequate protection to people who suffered disadvantages because of a combination of protected characteristics.
But other scholars in the tradition later expanded this idea well beyond its original use. To them, the fact that each person exists at the intersection of different identities came to imply that outsiders could, even if they carefully listened to their stories, never come to understand,say, a homosexual Latino or a Black woman. In some of its uses, intersectionality thus came to stand for in the profound incommensurability of human experience.
One way to judge an intellectual history is to ask whether it can actually explain the present.
Describing “wokeness” as “cultural Marxism” doesn’t do that. Doing so simply doesn’t help to illuminate the main themes of progressive politics today; it doesn’t get what makes the ideology tick.
This account does. I offer a more formal definition of the identity synthesis elsewhere in my work—perhaps I’ll tweet about that sometime as well—but the themes explained in this thread help to explain what’s going on. Because much of progressive politics today is rooted in:
* A rejection of objective truth and universal values (cf. Foucault.)
* The use of a politicized form of “discourse critique” (cf. Said.)
* An embrace of “strategic essentialism” that inspires much of the progressive separatism we see in schools and activist spaces (cf. Spivak.)
* A commitment to race-sensitive public policy and the belief that America has not made any progress on questions like race or sexuality (cf. Bell)
* A deep skepticism about the ability of people in different groups to understand each other (cf. Crenshaw.)
Describing “wokeness” as “cultural Marxism” doesn’t do that. Doing so simply doesn’t help to illuminate the main themes of progressive politics today; it doesn’t get what makes the ideology tick.
This account does. I offer a more formal definition of the identity synthesis elsewhere in my work—perhaps I’ll tweet about that sometime as well—but the themes explained in this thread help to explain what’s going on. Because much of progressive politics today is rooted in:
* A rejection of objective truth and universal values (cf. Foucault.)
* The use of a politicized form of “discourse critique” (cf. Said.)
* An embrace of “strategic essentialism” that inspires much of the progressive separatism we see in schools and activist spaces (cf. Spivak.)
* A commitment to race-sensitive public policy and the belief that America has not made any progress on questions like race or sexuality (cf. Bell)
* A deep skepticism about the ability of people in different groups to understand each other (cf. Crenshaw.)
I want to be clear about one thing:
Many of these scholars were very subtle and interesting. I enjoyed reading them!
And many would have been horrified by what became of their ideas—or explicitly said so.
Foucault would have recognized that the attempt to reshape existing discourses for political ends, though conceived as an act of liberation, was likely to create new forms of repression. And he would have abhorred the ways in which big social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have transformed public debate into a modern-day panopticon, with every misstep subject to draconian punishment and all users trying to follow an amorphous set of rules about what they can or cannot say in an act of anticipatory obedience.
“Identity,” Said wrote shortly before his death, is “as boring a subject as one can imagine.” For that reason, he admonished, “marginality and homelessness are not, in my opinion, to be gloried in; they are to be brought to an end, so that more, and not fewer, people can enjoy the benefits of what has for centuries been denied the victims of race, class, or gender.”
Spivak even abandoned the term she coined, strategic essentialism, because she feared it had simply become the “union ticket” for straight-up essentialism. Praising the “political use of humor” by African Americans, she lamented its absence among today’s “university identity wallahs.”
Many of these scholars were very subtle and interesting. I enjoyed reading them!
And many would have been horrified by what became of their ideas—or explicitly said so.
Foucault would have recognized that the attempt to reshape existing discourses for political ends, though conceived as an act of liberation, was likely to create new forms of repression. And he would have abhorred the ways in which big social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have transformed public debate into a modern-day panopticon, with every misstep subject to draconian punishment and all users trying to follow an amorphous set of rules about what they can or cannot say in an act of anticipatory obedience.
“Identity,” Said wrote shortly before his death, is “as boring a subject as one can imagine.” For that reason, he admonished, “marginality and homelessness are not, in my opinion, to be gloried in; they are to be brought to an end, so that more, and not fewer, people can enjoy the benefits of what has for centuries been denied the victims of race, class, or gender.”
Spivak even abandoned the term she coined, strategic essentialism, because she feared it had simply become the “union ticket” for straight-up essentialism. Praising the “political use of humor” by African Americans, she lamented its absence among today’s “university identity wallahs.”
@TheAtlantic This thread is very long. But it’s a very abridged version of the intellectual history.
Please read my longer excerpt of The identity Trap in @TheAtlantic today.
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
Please read my longer excerpt of The identity Trap in @TheAtlantic today.
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
@TheAtlantic This is a brief excerpt from Part 1 of The Identity Trap.
In the next 3 parts, it:
* Shows how these ideas took over the mainstream
* Critiques their application in areas from free speech to cultural appropriation
* Explains how liberals should respond
amazon.com/Identity-Trap-…
In the next 3 parts, it:
* Shows how these ideas took over the mainstream
* Critiques their application in areas from free speech to cultural appropriation
* Explains how liberals should respond
amazon.com/Identity-Trap-…
• • •
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