Liberation delayed: the trap of ‘war on woke’

The right wields Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), ‘woke’, and ‘identity politics’ as threats, as part of the latest moral panic. In the second part of a two part article, Shanice McBean asks if the left are shaping the debate or surrendering to it? 

This article was first published on Shanice McBean’s blog.

What do the terms ‘DEI’, ‘woke’ and ‘identity politics’ mean? Absolutely everything. These terms are what Stuart Hall would call floating signifiers: they are crafted to be empty and hollow, and therefore become limitless and expansive. We come to understand their meaning through engagement with the social, cultural, and political field. Viewed this way, linguistic meaning is reproduced not through objective essence, or dictionary definitions, but through human activity and exchange. Not fixed, but relational. Not scientific, but symbolic. Meaning is the product of struggle, and unbounded linguistic possibility is the playground of the elite: something the right know all too well, and the left seem yet to grasp.

‘DEI’, ‘woke’ and ‘identity politics’ are antagonists in the latest moral panic, designed to shore up a narrative of the US – and by extension the West – under siege. This narrative transforms grievances born of capitalism in crisis into domestic threats: visible, conquerable, extinguishable. It massages the bitterness of those who always loathed gender and racial progress, and brings their resentments back into the political mainstream. Those apoplectic by the gap between themselves and the underclasses becoming smaller get the sweet release of being able to put a ‘Negro’, or a ‘whore’, back in their place. There is a dark comedy to the absurdity of ‘DEI’ being trotted out to explain, and blame, everything. But this is precisely the point: it is everywhere, doing every thing. The threat is ever present, so soldiers of the culture war must be vigilant and ready.

This means the left should be cautious and critical about the timing of current debates on the virtues and sins of identity politics. Over the years there have been countless radical critiques of identity politics: for example its articulation through a ‘post class’ neoliberal political subject. Yet in an embarrassing admission of our own weakness it’s only in the slipstream of a right wing moral panic that these critiques have become animated. Given this we should ask: are we doing the work of creating alternative paradigms, or have we found ourselves trapped in the quicksand of reaction?

‘Identity politics’ and ‘woke’ in the right wing paradigm are symbols of everything related to racial and gender liberation. They don’t care about the nuances of left wing critiques. And they certainly don’t care about the reality of oppression in our lives. They are concerned with rolling back social progress and entrenching a reactionary, authoritarian hegemony – period. What is intended, then, by left wing media platforms jubilantly pumping out content such as ‘woke is dead’ or ‘woke is over’? What is woke? Who killed it? Why? These are vital questions. By using these terms in the amorphous way the right does, we give up contestation, we give up struggle, and cede meaning and truth to their side.

Sometimes there is conceptual foul play at work, where a left wing chauvinist decries ‘woke’ because deep down he was always uncomfortable with how much women, or Black folk, had to say. He wants to say ‘I don’t care about race’, but settles with ‘woke has gone too far’. And that’s exactly the function of a floating signifier: they make an unpleasant pill slowly, but surely, easier to swallow. I will charitably assume that on the whole there isn’t a gleeful celebration of the death of movements for gay rights, or against police violence, or domestic abuse on the left. But if so, this needs to be made explicit. As great as it is we’re back in the business of generating ideas, we are not yet in the business of setting the terrain of the debate.

Our paradigm must be for liberation, always. Liberation of the global working class, and liberation of all the oppressed. Without this we become mere observers of a world in free-fall – or worse, co-conspirators in its destruction – and give up our role as agents of change. Meaning comes through struggle. If we are not generating our own meaning, we are not in the struggle.

You can read part one here.

If you are interested in reading more by Shanice McBean, please check out Abolition Revolution published by Pluto Press.