Thus did white supremacists march at the Arkansas state capitol in the late 1950s holding signs that read: ‘Race Mixing Is Communism. Or, as the Conservative MP Suella Braverman suggested recently at the National Conservatism conference (this time without irony), “The defining feature of this country’s relationship with slavery is not that we practised it, but that we led the way in abolishing it”. If a climate scholar foregrounds the enduring legacy of colonialism and racism on contemporary climate policies (e. They were thus the privileged vessels of reason, a precious commodity that needed to be brought to the rest of the world, by force if necessary.

But if her aim is to convince those on “the woke left” to take a second look at the universal ideals of justice and progress, why does she frame the book in such ungenerous, polemical terms?If any of them read philosophy they were far more influenced by John Locke’s view that only through agriculture could the right to property develop. Without these ideas, Neiman argues, they will continue to undermine their own goals and drift, inexorably and unintentionally, towards the right.

her assertion, “[M]any of the theoretical assumptions that support the most admirable impulses of the woke come from the intellectual movement they despise”. To build a more just, equitable, and sustainable world, we need to acknowledge past victories, recognize the contingencies of our present, and embrace a radical politics of hope for our future. And his conception of normative power has had a profound influence on generations of activists on both sides of the Atlantic, for whom his analysis provides a language and a strategy for confronting those in power, those who might tell you that your demands are unreasonable and dismiss your actions as irrational. In her aspiration to smear Foucault, Neiman goes so far as to tie him and “the woke left” to Nazism.It should not be surprising, I suppose, though it certainly is more astonishing, that Neiman likewise fails to unambiguously define what she means by “left. Woke” is also allegedly indebted to Michel Foucault (because of its apparent focus on power rather than justice) and evolutionary psychology (because of its apparent cynical attitude towards altruism and belief that all human behaviour is selfish). In subsequent chapters other obstacles to progress are identified, particularly sociobiology and neo-liberalism. If we are living in a world that the Enlightenment made, a world that in the centuries since Kant’s first editions has suffered imperialism, genocide, climate change, and more—much of it imposed by “enlightened” Europeans—it is worth asking if the Enlightenment is all its advocates purport it to be. Like a latter-day Thomas Paine, she is in the first instance pleading for understanding the commitment to social progress and the above-mentioned first principles animating it not as some otherworldly idealism but as common sense.

Yes, philosophers like Kant and Rousseau were more aware of the limitations of Eurocentric views than is often acknowledged, but there is little evidence their appeals for universalism actually had much influence on colonial expansion.Another illustrative example of Neiman’s failure to guide the reader through her argument stands out: a good portion of the latter half of Left Is Not Woke is an extended complaint directed at evolutionary psychology. In other words, historical atrocities against the marginalized remain with us today, just in an altered form, and no progress has been made. The fictitious right-wing media persona Titania McGrath published Woke: A Guide to Social Justice (2019); current US Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy authored Woke, Inc.