Quoted from Heretic Can you provide an example from Foucault, Derrida, or a postmodern philosopher that clearly (or unclearly -- this is the humanities after all, ho ho) expresses this pernicious ideology? The Tablet article states that "wokese is a tool that is most easily wielded by the credentialed elite—which suggests that the allegedly vulnerable cohorts in whose name this language is allegedly spoken are actually being used by others as rhetorical camouflage." So shouldn't we be focusing on challenging the privileged few at the top of this hierarchy? Wouldn't analyzing that power structure be more useful than analyzing the "rhetorical camouflage" of wokeness? Why is everyone always talking about wokeness?

You're employing an interesting strategy, and I'll call you on it: keep probing for proof, limiting your own input. It's one of those debating strategies that allows you to keep your hands clean.

Do you disagree there is an applied postmodernism in contemporary ideas, expressed and known as, woke?

Buuut, to answer the question, intersectionality is birthed from postmodernism.

Postcolonial theory also directly birthed from Derrida's deconstruction.

Focault and Derrida (and others) didn't create identity politics / wokeness, of course; they created a framework that has been adapted and applied through theories (emphasis on theory) such as intersectionality.

My head just fucking exploded.

Quoted Text What about the belief that we must see representation at the awards? Why? It's backwards thinking. You reward quality and reinforce meritocracy, regardless of the identity bona fides involved.

Really an over-simplification. The origin of the issue is why we don't see minority representation at the awards and could that be as result of things like racism?  i.e., are we in fact not rewarding quality and reinforcing meritocracy because we are seeing things through racial and gender filters?

Take football as an example. Forgetting for a fact that there wasn't a single black player in the NFL in 1946, there wasn't a single black quarterback until 1968. And for several decades after that, hardly any at all despite the fact that league had become predominately black. Christ, Hall of Famer Warren Moon had to go and play in Canada for the first six years of his career.  There was never a black quarterback drafted number one until 2000. As opposed to last year when a record ten black QBs started and half of those are considered to be in the top ten of the NFL.

So those black football players for the last 100 years would say - meritocracy - huh???? What's that?

And, as humans when we finally accept a wrong, we tend to over-correct. Hollywood is surely doing that now. But it fades and is never ever as egregious as the crapped that caused it.

You would want us to believe that this is all rooted in a nefarious movement started by two dead philosophers years ago rather than as a reaction to real and sometimes perceived injustice.  Most people couldn't name two supreme court justices let alone two philosophers.  

So no one really disagrees that there is a wokeness permeating in film and other arts. No one disagrees that it ain't ideal. Several disagree on how long lasting and pervasive it is.  So when hyperbolic views (Everything wrong with Woke Culture (and the impact on feminism) are put to video - I yawn. The title alone is click bait. And the reason is because it's designed to be  hyberbolic because it ignores root causes. Affirmative Action in college admissions is an example - You can argue it was an over reaction. WHat you can't argue is that it had it's roots in George Wallace standing at the door of the University of Alabama denying black admissions.

Long winded way of saying that the perceived tradegy from the over correction is generally less impactful than the actual tradgey caused by the thing it was over correcting.

So rather than this being labeled Everything wrong with Woke Culture (and the impact on feminism)- it would be more accurately labeled - hey, here are a few movies where they got wokeism wrong,  Next....

Quoted from Andrew You're employing an interesting strategy, and I'll call you on it: keep probing for proof, limiting your own input. It's one of those debating strategies that allows you to keep your hands clean. Do you disagree there is an applied postmodernism in contemporary ideas, expressed and known as, woke?

I called attention to this myself when I said that I had asked a lot of questions and would now share my thoughts. Then I shared my thoughts.

My question about sources is sincere. I see Derrida and Foucault get mentioned often in these discussions. I genuinely don't know what specifically people are thinking about/referencing. I would be interested to know if there are specific works or passages that people object to. Same with postcolonialism, same with intersectionality. What are people taking as the dominant expression of these topics? Whose position, exactly, are they arguing against? If everyone knows that these people are to blame, shouldn't someone tell me what I can read to understand how and why they are to blame?

Partly because of this confusion, I don't know how to answer your question satisfactorily. I do agree that postmodernism has had a lasting effect on society. I don't think that effect has translated to significant, real-world change at this time, but I don't think that it couldn't. I don't think that the term "woke" adequately describes any real-world phenomenon, because some people use it as a pejorative and others as a compliment. I think there is very little overlap between the "wokeism" of civil rights activists and the "wokeism" of Disney movies. I think much of the anti-wokeness rhetoric I see is specifically designed to collapse this distinction.

And as long as we're talking about academic influence on mainstream ideas, I do think that people have been using this general structure of argument to assert right-wing influence on cultural institutions since William F. Buckley Jr. founded this tired subgenre in 1951 with God and Man at Yale. I think the "wokeness" argument going on in popular culture is just a boring retread of the slightly more interesting but still boring "canon wars" of the 80s and early 90s. And I think Harold Bloom and Allan Bloom were a lot more fun to engage with than these YouTube people.

Quoted from eldave1 Really an over-simplification. The origin of the issue is why we don't see minority representation at the awards and could that be as result of things like racism?  i.e., are we in fact not rewarding quality and reinforcing meritocracy because we are seeing things through racial and gender filters?

I think the disconnect between our views hinges on this.

I don't think we form our view on meritoracy or equality on correcting the past, but on the principles we want to form the future.

So factoring representation into awards might work out towards balancing out the past, but it does nothing to cultivate equality for the future. It simply flips the wrongs of the past in a different direction.

The biggest problem with woke politics is how backwards looking it is. It's a sorry irony it has been labelled progressive.

The way to set the course for equality is to reinforce the sanctity of the individual, unbiased treatment and, in the case of film, focusing on quality rather than what boxes are ticked.

Have films by / with / including ethnic minorities been ignored due to racism in the past? Almost certainly. Does it mean we should overrepresent or try and atone by favouring certain categories to apologise for that? No. Absolutely not. It's patronising to ethnic minorities and is not even serving the goal of equality, which is to be blind to the identity.

As I say, representation gets addressed at the financing stage.

I don't want to watch *insert identity marker here* films. I want to watch films about story.

Look at Brokeback Mountain. One of the greastest movies of this century. It wasn't a gay cowboy movie. It was a movie about love. The sexuality of the characters was transcended by the universiality of love and loss. Themes we can all relate to.

Had Brokeback been made in 2020, it would be claimed in the identity wars. That's how film has regressed.

Film is there to show our commonalities, not to pigeonhole us on identity charateristics we have no control over.

Quoted from Heretic I called attention to this myself when I said that I had asked a lot of questions and would now share my thoughts. Then I shared my thoughts. My question about sources is sincere. I see Derrida and Foucault get mentioned often in these discussions. I genuinely don't know what specifically people are thinking about/referencing. I would be interested to know if there are specific works or passages that people object to. Same with postcolonialism, same with intersectionality. What are people taking as the dominant expression of these topics? Whose position, exactly, are they arguing against? If everyone knows that these people are to blame, shouldn't someone tell me what I can read to understand how and why they are to blame? Partly because of this confusion, I don't know how to answer your question satisfactorily. I do agree that postmodernism has had a lasting effect on society. I don't think that effect has translated to significant, real-world change at this time, but I don't think that it couldn't. I don't think that the term "woke" adequately describes any real-world phenomenon, because some people use it as a pejorative and others as a compliment. I think there is very little overlap between the "wokeism" of civil rights activists and the "wokeism" of Disney movies. I think much of the anti-wokeness rhetoric I see is specifically designed to collapse this distinction. And as long as we're talking about academic influence on mainstream ideas, I do think that people have been using this general structure of argument to assert right-wing influence on cultural institutions since William F. Buckley Jr. founded this tired subgenre in 1951 with God and Man at Yale. I think the "wokeness" argument going on in popular culture is just a boring retread of the slightly more interesting but still boring "canon wars" of the 80s and early 90s. And I think Harold Bloom and Allan Bloom were a lot more fun to engage with than these YouTube people.

My feeling is much of your thinking here rests on the left / right axis.

It's uncomfortable for me to be debating constantly with people on the left about these issues when I'm also on the left. Like some weird sort of factionalism.

I do think certain elements of the right have coopted 'wokeism' as a political tool. However, I think many of the right have been much more alert to these issues, for much longer, than the left.

It's a real quirk to me that so much of my fellow left are completely unwilling to address the woke issue. And yes, woke is a slippery term, and it requires a thesis to actually get anywhere on it.

So we have to try and simplify it all:

- What are your hopes for society?
- What is fairness?
- What is equality?
- Is freedom of speech sancrosanct?
- Is due process sancrosanct?

And many more.

But there are plenty other tenets of this new thinking we need to see where people stand on:

- Is it possible to be racist towards whites?
- Is white privilege real? Or is it class privilege?

And on and on.

Because all the fluff and talk aside, it comes down to these sort of questions. Where do people stand on those types of questions.

Quoted from Heretic My question about sources is sincere. I see Derrida and Foucault get mentioned often in these discussions. I genuinely don't know what specifically people are thinking about/referencing. I would be interested to know if there are specific works or passages that people object to. Same with postcolonialism, same with intersectionality. What are people taking as the dominant expression of these topics? Whose position, exactly, are they arguing against? If everyone knows that these people are to blame, shouldn't someone tell me what I can read to understand how and why they are to blame?

P.S Not ignoring this. It's just you're asking deep philosophical questions that require significant answers. It's not a quick reply here.

I'm certain you're familiar with intersectionality and the postmodernists, so do know the references I'm making, and you're posing a deeper dive on it. Which I'm not opposed to, but it's difficult to address in this type of forum, which is my fault for taking there in the first place.

I watched the entire video and obviously she's correct. It's amazing the effect the establishment can have on our psyche. Make no mistake, what she said in that video is what most people know to be true. However, the establishment tries to trick us into believing otherwise. It works.

The next phase of this, however, will be fascinating to watch play out. Caitlyn Jenner running as a Republican governor of California may just be the start of a new phase. People of color, women, trans, who're NOT a part of the WOKE cult will be the ones to destroy it.

Quoted Text The way to set the course for equality is to reinforce the sanctity of the individual, unbiased treatment and, in the case of film, focusing on quality rather than what boxes are ticked.

Yeah...of course it is. Who would argue against that? But the real question is -  how do you achieve that goal when simply stating it doesn't move the needle?   In other words, if you believed that there was an underrepresentation of participation by a particular group based on nothing other than the race or gender of that group - what steps do you take to correct that?

You might just do something woke.

Again, with the NFL. They had a dearth of black head coaches. They believed that it was due to bias, They could have just said - hey, don't be bias. Instead, they implemented the Rooney rule requiring all teams to interview ethnic-minority candidates for head coaching and senior football operation jobs regardless of whether they were the most qualified. Very, very, woke. Founded on the assumption that black individuals were disadvantage based on their skin color. Fast forward - more black head coaches hired.  

So, what worked there - a statement that says we reinforce the sanctity of the individual - or was it wokeness?  I would argue the latter.

Does it turn out to be counterproductive sometimes ----- yup. As do most things

Quoted from Andrew Buuut, to answer the question, intersectionality is birthed from postmodernism. Postcolonial theory also directly birthed from Derrida's deconstruction. Focault and Derrida (and others) didn't create identity politics / wokeness, of course; they created a framework that has been adapted and applied through theories (emphasis on theory) such as intersectionality.

Someone's been listening to Michael Knowles  

Quoted from Warren Someone's been listening to Michael Knowles

Had to look him up as didn’t know who he was! But he definitely has a strong hairdo, in all fairness.

Quoted from eldave1 Yeah...of course it is. Who would argue against that? But the real question is -  how do you achieve that goal when simply stating it doesn't move the needle?   In other words, if you believed that there was an underrepresentation of participation by a particular group based on nothing other than the race or gender of that group - what steps do you take to correct that? You might just do something woke. Again, with the NFL. They had a dearth of black head coaches. They believed that it was due to bias, They could have just said - hey, don't be bias. Instead, they implemented the Rooney rule requiring all teams to interview ethnic-minority candidates for head coaching and senior football operation jobs regardless of whether they were the most qualified. Very, very, woke. Founded on the assumption that black individuals were disadvantage based on their skin color. Fast forward - more black head coaches hired.   So, what worked there - a statement that says we reinforce the sanctity of the individual - or was it wokeness?  I would argue the latter. Does it turn out to be counterproductive sometimes ----- yup. As do most things

How we equalise opportunity is the big question of the day.

No one really knows, of course, because the best intentions often go awry.

The NFL head coach example is a good one because it locks in opportunity rather than outcome.

The problem with much else woke is it focuses on the outcome only. And sees a reversal of inequality as a necessary step. Young white kids of 2021 shouldn’t be punished for the sins of white people from the 17-1900s. Obvious statement, but people are tolerating - and encouraging - it in the name of equality. It’s why we must ruthlessly focus on opportunity.

The main goal must be to bring all fairminded people around common cause. I’m a moderate at heart, and have always disliked the extremes. Post-Obama, that extreme was the Tea Party; ever since Trump it’s been the woke. It’s the fact the Tea Party wanted changes within liberal democracy, whereas the woke want to replace it, that we have to be mindful of.

What’s obvious is there’s a real lack of leadership on the global stage to set the tone.

I'm noticing a trend of non white, non straight voices on the right. Dinesh D'Souza, Eric July, Officer Tatum, Candace Owens, Dave Rubin, Milo back in the day, Dan Bongino, and more.

But now it's almost becoming woke vs non-woke. Or, crazy vs non-crazy 😂

Quoted from Andrew How we equalise opportunity is the big question of the day. No one really knows, of course, because the best intentions often go awry. The NFL head coach example is a good one because it locks in opportunity rather than outcome. The problem with much else woke is it focuses on the outcome only. And sees a reversal of inequality as a necessary step. Young white kids of 2021 shouldn’t be punished for the sins of white people from the 17-1900s. Obvious statement, but people are tolerating - and encouraging - it in the name of equality. It’s why we must ruthlessly focus on opportunity. The main goal must be to bring all fairminded people around common cause. I’m a moderate at heart, and have always disliked the extremes. Post-Obama, that extreme was the Tea Party; ever since Trump it’s been the woke. It’s the fact the Tea Party wanted changes within liberal democracy, whereas the woke want to replace it, that we have to be mindful of. What’s obvious is there’s a real lack of leadership on the global stage to set the tone.

As a note, the extreme after Trump hasn't just been the woke. Um... we had like an insurrection - remember? Those weren't woke people in the Capital or woke politicians wanting to throw out the vote. Add the Q-anon movement to that mix, egregious stabs at voter suppression, etc and I think you can see that of the extremes, the woke extreme is not near the worst of them.

And my point is that it is a given to say that equalizing opportunity rather than outcome is the ideal - we agree 100% on that. The question remains - how does one achieve that within structures that are racists or gender-biased to start with?  Just stating the ideal doesn't do anything. And part of "woke" is a recognition that problems still remain and have remained for far too effing long and concrete things need to be done to correct that. In that view, woke should not be a pejorative any more than liberal or conservative should be.

Andrew, it is odd we disagree on this so much sense I sense our actual politics are very much in-line with each other.  I am very much a fiscally conservative, moderate democrat.  Could be we are just talking at cross-purposes. Perhaps we only disagree not the degree of the impact. I think we both agree that dysfunctional wokeness is wrong/counter-productive. Perhaps our real disagreement is the severity and future of it's existence versus the problems it is attempting to address.  I probably think it is far less pervasive than you do and think it will fade into the sunset. Who knows.