I am not sure exactly what “woke” is supposed to mean, but from what I have observed in not-so-academic debates that flirt with theory, it is an individualistic liberal appropriation of the so-called “constructivist” argument. In other words, the value system of “woke” derives from critical theory and the “constructivist,” or rather poststructuralist, social argument. All is “social construct” and there is no ontological foundation in the “woke,” i.e., popular, understanding of the poststructuralist claim that there is no reality accessible to the (human) Subject apart from that of Language. We are the “meanings” and “values” or “significations” a society assigns to us or rather assigns us to be.
Foucault-Lacan inspired Butlerian poststructuralism argues that one becomes a subject as an effect of the Discourse-in-Power and individuals are merely its effects. For decades, Butler had to combat the accusations that this is a conservative argument leaving all too little room for change except “subversion,” which according to the early opponents would be a too slow, incremental change (if any substantial change?) from within the system as it is. Evidently, Butler’s epistemology of resistance to systemic oppression implies complicity with the ruling system and an unconvincing strategy of “fighting the enemy from within.” This strategy works within the confines of a system, which in our case remains capitalist, and one of (liberally) reformed patriarchy. Therefore, the presumed changes cannot be systemic, paradigm changing.
Consequently, the rights won by way of this strategy can be revoked just as easily as they have been attributed to the system which is at its core still patriarchal, capitalist, and of a liberal-secular Western culture. Furthermore, within the epistemic Butler inspired critical theory framework, culture is evidently unchangeable destiny. Thus the “subversive” strategy Butler(ians) advocate is available only to the liberal West. If you are queer elsewhere, you first need to submit to your culture – because it is what gender is embedded in and determined by claims Butler at way too many place to bother to cite now – and to its limitations with regard to the possible appropriation of the proposed “revolutionary” strategy (of subversion). If you are from Iran and you protest the veil – tant pis, Butler(ians) cannot help you and are not even on your side.
However, the very core of Butler’s gender theory from the 90’s, i.e., the hermeneutics of subjectivation and the concept of performativity are convincing to this day, and they could have a realist and even a historical-materialist appropriation. Yet again, the application of the constructivist argument in contemporary Western societies comes down to several falsifications of the Butlerian argument:
– one is an autonomous subject – unconditioned by the all-powerful Discourse – and one can re-invent one’s subjectivity, identity and the material reality to match their “true identity” or “true self”;
– the latter implies a belief that there is such thing as “true identity,” and unchanging underling true essence of an identity, and the malleable physicality should be adjusted to that essence. (Obviously this contradicts the anti-essentialist argument of the Butler inspired poststructuralist epistemology of subjectification);
– it is linked with an old American liberal traditional belief system, that of the “American dream”: you can become whatever you wish to be, you can manufacture yourself in some sort of an entrepreneurial fashion, applied to the materialization of the “true” cultural and gendered “essences.”
The popular application of so-called constructivism contradicts the very tenets of the poststructuralist, critical theory centered politics. It also displays a strategy of emancipation that is flawed and, in a way, solidifies the system it is supposed to fight “from within.” The recent changes in political power in the United States, the installation of the illiberal democratic system of Trump and MAGA, proves that these rights can easily be revoked as they have been mere addenda, an apparently removable “band aid” to a representative democratic system sustained through the political-economic base of capitalism. Same goes for Europe both West and East as it emulates the political and cultural trends in the US, particularly those concerning how one thinks of gender. Multiplicity of gender and overcoming patriarchy can therefore be defended only in radical terms that challenge the patriarchal fundaments of the capitalist philosophy (which sustains the political-economic base and vice-versa). One of the prerequisites of doing so is to challenge the principle of sufficient philosophy as François Laruelle would put it, but that is a complex argument to go into now, and will be, therefore, developed in some future essay (in the meantime, for reference, you can take a look at my Capitalism’s Holocaust of Animals in which I develop this argument).
What is to be done? The answer is never conservative, should never be revisionist. So, we cannot walk back on the claims to equality for women and non-conforming gender subject-positions. We should in fact ask for more and for substantive changes instead of dressing up the old system in the colors of subversion. We must abandon the postmodern (poststructuralist – yet postmodern seems more fitting here) plea to quit combatting the grand narratives and building of revolutionary counter-narratives. Instead, we must propose a roadmap of building class consciousness under which we subsume the feminist struggle against patriarchy which is the prerequisite for the other forms of gendered emancipation.
The time is ripe: in the era of an ever-greater automation of labor, in an era in which labor and in particular wage labor is effaced from the (capitalist) equation of creating surplus value, in an era when our labor is relegated to the realm of re-productive instead of productive labor, humanity is one step away from being reduced to resource rather than active agency. The possibility of establishing a class of a global proletariat is being gradually abolished, humanity is presumably no longer needed as labor force, and to be a proletarian implies to be a waged laborer. Automated production, even if emulating human morphology, will not be a proper workforce or labor that could be exploited because it will not be waged. So, the phantasms of fellow robotic post-human rights are clearly outdated sci-fi. Increasingly, we are being reduced to biology, flesh, physiology that our subjectivities can “rent” or sell for advanced technological production. (Waged labor is essentially the same thing, but the agency of a citizen and a producer is recognized or added to it, as is the status of a co-sovereign in a modern nation state.) There won’t be UBI because why would hyper-accelerated capital even bother with it? There won’t be “citizens” and “workers” because these forms of agencies will soon become obsolete.
The liberal dialectic of humanization of women and gendered and racialized minorities is being replaced by dehumanization of all of humanity. Waged labor is erased as a creative and ultimately productive force, in order to render the Spirit of the Machine-of-Capital the only reality on planet Earth. This is the final contradiction of capitalism: without exchange and trade and a mass population of purchasing power capitalism doesn’t exist, it remains in a vacuum of an empty proclamation that it is a thing simply to sustain private property of those who control society. Private property is, as Marx taught us, a mere legal act, a mirage that can easily be erased, a piece of paper that can easily be torn out of the stack constituting the social contract. There is nothing that justifies the already passive amassed capital of a handful of billionaires and the states to preserve them. The emperor has no cloths: Let’s stop pretending that socially produced good belongs in the hands of a few instead of all of us. Recognizing the inherent patriarchalism of this system presupposes a fusion of the feminist and socialist struggle against present system in its metastasizing form. The only “conservative” proposal I will make here is that we need to restore the possibility of thinking in terms of grand, revolutionary narratives.