WOKE and proud of it....

[Gary Childress]

If you read queer literature, such as Halperin's original book Saint Foucault, (1995) "...queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers. It is an identity without essence..."

That seems like it's probably a good definition of what "queer" generally refers to. Is there something erroneous or nefarious about that definition? Should Halperin have used a different definition, and if so what?

No, I think Halperin is telling the truth. How could he not be: his book is the one that essentially launched the movement. But is queer anything good? Look at what they say, and you tell me.

Well, I started a separate thread in the "gender philosophy" forum for the discussion, perhaps it would be worthwhile discussing it there. I coincidentally kicked it off with questions similar to the one you ask above.

[Immanuel Can]

"All this anti-Marxist talk must be giving you hives"

I call for the immediate unionized cooperative ownership of all the means of production and distribution of the world's major industries by the working class.

You poor soul. You still think in terms of "unions" and "the working class."

Nobody in the West is "working class" in Marx's sense anymore. He was talking about factory-wage slaves, essentially. They don't exist now...at least, not in the West, though there are plenty elsewhere. It was the spread of the middle class that destroyed Marx's predictions. The Neo-Marxists, the Cultural Marxists, know that...even if you haven't figured it out yet. That's why they switched to cultural issues: they'd already lost the class war argument.

As for unions, they are a dead issue. A corporation that has problems with a union can simply rely on the government to side with them, or can move the whole operation offshore, and cannot be stopped from doing so. Strikes and whatnot are, at most, a nuisance now...not an effective bargaining chip. And most of the unions have decided that their own survival as a union is much more important than any of the people they serve, and have turned to the question of how to perpetuate bargaining for power for themselves, not how to serve their workers.

Nothing of what Marx predicted is ever going to happen. You're stuck in the 19th Century. Sorry.

[Immanuel Can]

That seems like it's probably a good definition of what "queer" generally refers to. Is there something erroneous or nefarious about that definition? Should Halperin have used a different definition, and if so what?

No, I think Halperin is telling the truth. How could he not be: his book is the one that essentially launched the movement. But is queer anything good? Look at what they say, and you tell me.

Well, I started a separate thread in the "gender philosophy" forum for the discussion, perhaps it would be worthwhile discussing it there. I coincidentally kicked it off with questions similar to the one you ask above.

Well, I know the answer to that question. And anybody who doesn't...well, God help them. They're going to need it.

[Gary Childress]

No, I think Halperin is telling the truth. How could he not be: his book is the one that essentially launched the movement. But is queer anything good? Look at what they say, and you tell me.

Well, I started a separate thread in the "gender philosophy" forum for the discussion, perhaps it would be worthwhile discussing it there. I coincidentally kicked it off with questions similar to the one you ask above.

Well, I know the answer to that question. And anybody who doesn't...well, God help them. They're going to need it.

If you say so.

[Immanuel Can]

Well, I started a separate thread in the "gender philosophy" forum for the discussion, perhaps it would be worthwhile discussing it there. I coincidentally kicked it off with questions similar to the one you ask above.

Well, I know the answer to that question. And anybody who doesn't...well, God help them. They're going to need it.

If you say so.

I do.

[Gary Childress]

Well, I know the answer to that question. And anybody who doesn't...well, God help them. They're going to need it.

If you say so.

I do.

Is it your opinion, or is it a fact?

[Consul]

I have copies of Lindsay's books and even read them. I'll leave it up to political scientists specializing in (the history of) Marxism to decide whether his work is "consistently good". Note that, being a mathematician, Lindsay isn't one of them!
Anyway, I am by no means saying that any right-wing criticism or critique of the actual, real (Cultural) Marxism (including Neo- & Post-Marxism) is unfounded and unwarranted.

Let me ask this: If you think Lindsay’s work is incomplete or let’s say inferior, then who would you suggest is doing better critical work?

First of all, "not consistently good" and "consistently bad" aren't synonyms.
Lindsay’s books do contain good stuff (that survives fact-checking); but what I don't like about Race Marxism, The Marxification of Education, and The Queering of the American Child (whose main author isn't Lindsay but Logan Lancing) is that the justified criticism therein is overshadowed by a wild rhetoric of demonization, distortion, and exaggeration.

"What we are witnessing is a cultural revolution in America. It is Maoism with American characteristics, and that implies that it is an ancient esoteric cult religion put into destructive practice so that it might save the world by destroying it completely.“

(James Lindsay, in: Lancing, Logan, & James Lindsay. The Queering of the American Child. Orlando, FL: New Discourses, 2024. p. 221)

What he doesn't mention is that brute violence (terror, torture, incarceration, execution) was part and parcel of Mao's "cultural revolution". Do we see queer activists doing the same in American society, at American kindergartens, schools, and universities?
This is not to say that purely psychological indoctrination is harmless—it isn't!—, but the comparison with Maoism is nonetheless very flawed.

Lindsay coined the term "Race Marxism" (for Critical Race Theory), and in the latest book we find "Queer Marxism" (for Queer Theory). The entire contemporary "Woke Left" (post-70s Academic Cultural Left) with all the various cultural/critical studies/theories it spawned is demagogically denounced as part of the World Marxist Conspiracy—the conservatives' & fascists' favourite bogeyman.

But how genuinely Marxist are (e.g.) critical race theory and queer theory really? Lindsay & Lancing don't seem to be much interested in an objective, scientifically defensible answer. What matters most to them for propagandistic purposes is that their conservative audience reads the term "Race/Queer Marxism" as a name of Pure Evil: "Wokeism" = "Woke Marxism/Maoism/Stalinism"!
The entire Woke Left is portrayed as a satanic brood of "abnormals" with evil intentions—Lindsay's & Lancing's political message being: Let's make America great again by making it normal again!

"America’s children shall not be queered, and their future will be bright and normal."

(James Lindsay, in: Lancing, Logan, & James Lindsay. The Queering of the American Child. Orlando, FL: New Discourses, 2024. p. 222)

For example, Brian Leiter writes that "CRT is not by any stretch of the imagination a "Marxist" theory (and has little to do with Frankfurt School Critical Theory), so what is it about?"

See: https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/ ... schoo.html
———
As for your question: I'm not a political scientist, and I have no ready-made list of competent right-wing critics of the left; but, for example, Roger Scruton's Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left (2019) is recommendable.

What are your thoughts on Lindsay’s view of queering?

"The practice of Queer Theory is called “queering.” The word “queer,” in this sense, is a verb. “To queer” is “to destabilize the social, cultural, and political normalizing structures that work to solidify identities and in doing so skew power toward the “norm.” Put simply, “to queer” is to challenge and eliminate normalcy. “Normalcy” means “the condition of being normal, as in usual, typical, or expected.” So, to queer is to challenge and eliminate the idea that anything can or should be considered normal.“

(Lancing, Logan, & James Lindsay. The Queering of the American Child. Orlando, FL: New Discourses, 2024. p. 17)

"As Janet Jakobsen outlines, we can differentiate the uses of “queer” in three ways (1998, 516-517 ["Queer Is? Queer Does? Normativity and the Problem of Resistance"]):

* As a noun (example: “this is the queer space”).
* As an identity that resists traditional categories (example: “I identify as queer”).
* As a verb (example: “let’s queer gender!”).

These ways of using “queer” are often in tension with one another. Jakobsen suggests that the last option – queer as a kind of doing rather than being – holds the most political potential because it focuses on resistance (rather than description) and practice (rather than identity).
To undertake “queering” is to deploy queer as a verb, to challenge and resist expectations or norms. For example, “queering femininity” might mean thinking about how femininity can be more than an oppressive gender ideal, and can be embodied in non-normative ways (McCann 2018 [Queering Femininity: Sexuality, Feminism and the Politics of Presentation])."

(McCann, Hannah, and Whitney Monaghan. Queer Theory Now: From Foundations to Futures. London: Red Globe Press, 2020. p. 3)

First of all, there is a relevant distinction between ethical normality ("normative normality") and statistical normality ("frequentative/quantitative normality"). If most people are straight, being straight is statistically normal—which is not to say that it is also ethically normal, in the sense that being straight is how one ought to be, that straightness is the only good, right, "natural", "healthy" sexual orientation.

I'm anything but a fan of queer theory, which does abound with rubbish and abstruse, impenetrable prose; but what is positive about it is that it dares to analyze and criticize ethical normalities (social norms) which are usually taken for granted by most people, as if they were unalterable laws of nature. Traditional norms such as "Only straight sex is morally good/right!" deserve to be questioned!

""Good" sex: Normal, Natural, Healthy, Holy" vs. ""Bad" sex: Abnormal, Unnatural, Sick, Sinful, "Way Out""

(Rubin, Gayle. "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality." In Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, edited by Carole S. Vance, 267-319. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984. p. 282)

You seem here to soften, or to broaden, your first statement of contrast between Kellner’s essay and that of the second reference you submitted.
Where does legitimate criticism begin?

It must be fact-based, i.e. faithful to what people actually (mean to) say and (intend to) do, fair, and charitable, in the sense of not reading everything (indiscriminately) in the most negative way as an expression or indication of irrationality, stupidity, insanity, immorality, or perversity.

For example:

"Michel Foucault, a French communist who escaped allegations of pedophilia only in death, is widely considered the progenitor of Queer Theory. Foucault’s influence can’t be overstated. He is one of the most cited researchers of all time, and contemporary Queer Theory publications are riddled with his name. Queer Activists use Foucault’s ideas about power, knowledge, and normalcy as a lens through which they view and interpret society, sex, gender, and sexuality."

(Lancing, Logan, & James Lindsay. The Queering of the American Child. Orlando, FL: New Discourses, 2024. pp. 33-4)

The part beginning with "…is widely…" is faithful to the facts, but what Lancing writes before about Foucault is untrue and unfair:

1. The allegations of pedophilia are still nothing more than unsubstantiated rumours.

2. Yes, Foucault had been a member of the French communist party for almost a year. Nevertheless, he was not a communist. (Nor was he an orthodox Marxist.)

See: Gabriel Rockhill: Foucault: The Faux Radical
———

"Foucault’s most obvious political separation from Sartre appears in his attitude toward Marxism and the Communist Party that was its primary representative. Early on, Foucault did feel the tug of the Marxist viewpoint. ‘I belong’, he told an interviewer, ‘to that generation who as students had before their eyes, and were limited by, a horizon consisting of Marxism, phenomenology, and existentialism’ (RR, interview, 174). (The influence of existential phenomenology—especially of the early Heidegger—on Foucault is most apparent in his long introduction to the French translation of Ludwig Binswanger’s essay Traum und Existenz.) Particularly because of the influence at the École Normale of Louis Althusser, who was the leading theoretician of the French Communist Party, Foucault’s early intellectual attachment to Marxism was strong. In his first book, Maladie mentale et personnalité, he characterized non-Marxist approaches, including the existential, as providing only ‘mythical explanations’, and maintained that mental illnesses arise ultimately from ‘contradictions’ determined by ‘present economic conditions in the form of conflict, exploitation, imperialist wars, and class struggle’ (86). In one sense, Foucault went even further than Sartre, and was for a time a member of the French Communist Party. But he was very soon disillusioned with both the theory and the practice of Marxism. He quit the Party after only ‘a few months or a little more’ (‘Michel Foucault répond à Sartre’, DE I, 666)—in fact, it was closer to a year—and, in a 1962 second edition of his book on mental illness (retitled Maladie mentale et psychologie), covered his tracks. He eliminated almost all Marxist elements, including his entire concluding chapter, which had argued that Pavlov’s theory of the reflex was the key to understanding mental illness, and added an entirely new historical dimension based on his just-published doctoral thesis, The History of Madness.

Foucault’s subsequent attitude toward Marxism was complexly ambivalent. The Order of Things, for example, made the shocking claim that Marx’s economic thought was not at root original or revolutionary, that the controversies it occasioned ‘are no more than storms in a children’s wading pool’ (OT, 262). But when pressed on this point in a later interview, he explained that he was speaking only of Marx’s significance for the specific domain of economics, not of his unquestionably major role in social theory (‘Sur les façons d’écrire l’histoire’, interview with Raymond Bellour, DE I, 587). It is hard to avoid the conclusion that, throughout his writings, Foucault took Marxism quite seriously but was quite happy to tweak the pretentious sensibilities of contemporary French Marxists, for whose sake he would introduce teasing remarks into his writings and interviews. So, for example, he says, to the reproach that he doesn’t cite the text of Marx in places where this would be appropriate, that of course he does refer quite obviously to Marx on many occasions, but doesn’t bother to give explicit footnotes to guide those who don’t know their Marx well enough to pick up the reference (P/K, ‘Prison Talk’, 52). On the other hand, Foucault is quite explicit in acknowledging in Discipline and Punish the importance of the Marxist work of Rusche and Kirchheimer for his history of the prison.

Foucault’s most direct statement of his attitude toward Marxism occurs in an interview with Paul Rabinow about a month before his death: ‘I am neither an adversary nor a partisan of Marxism; I question it about what it has to say about experiences that ask questions of it’ (‘Polemics, Politics, and Problematizations’, EW I, 115). Here Foucault is treating Marxism as an example of what, in this interview, he calls ‘politics’, by which he seems to mean a general, theoretically informed framework for discussing current political issues. His point is that such frameworks should never be simply assumed as an adequate basis for political decisions, but should be regarded merely as resources that may (or may not) suggest viable approaches to problems we face."

(Gutting, Gary. Foucault: A Very Short Introduction. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. pp. 23-4)

[Gary Childress]

What he doesn't mention is that brute violence (terror, torture, incarceration, execution) was part and parcel of Mao's "cultural revolution". Do we see queer activists doing the same in American society, at American kindergartens, schools, and universities?
This is not to say that purely psychological indoctrination is harmless—it isn't!—, but the comparison with Maoism is nonetheless very flawed.

From what little I've seen of Lindsay's talks, I have the much the same impression so far. I think it's a little reckless to reduce all leftist thought to "cultural Marxism", just as it is a mistake to reduce all conservative thought to "white supremacy". I think there is a lot of misunderstanding in this world that could be cleared up with good education and learning (and a lot of discussion).

[Consul]

I think it's a little reckless to reduce all leftist thought to "cultural Marxism"…

Yes, it is, since Marxism in general and cultural Marxism in particular is only one form of leftism.

By the way, the "paleoconservative" political philosopher Paul Gottfried writes:

"Nothing intrinsically Marxist, that is to say, defines “cultural Marxism,” save for the evocation or hope of a postbourgeois society. Those who advocate this new Marxism, however, are driven not by historical materialism but by revulsion for bourgeois Christian civilization. The mistake of those who see one position segueing into another is to confuse contents with personalities. For example, the late Bella Abzug, who was descended from a family of Russian Jewish radicals, began her political career as a Communist who denounced the American government for arming England during the period of the Soviet-Nazi Pact. Abzug later became an outspoken feminist, who by the end of her life was championing gay issues. But while this self-styled rebel spent her career inside and outside of Congress on the left, it is not clear that her feminism or gay rights advocacy flowed out of her Marxist or Stalinist loyalties. Such commitments might have derived from her self-image as a marginalized Jew cast into a hostile culture. All the same, her series of positions while on the “left” do not show theoretical unity. Unlike Abzug, Marx and Lenin disliked the bourgeoisie as oppressive capitalists but did not reproach them for failing to address feminist and gay issues. The triumphant Soviets did consider abolishing marriage as a “bourgeois institution,” but quickly reconsidered and finished, like later Communist regimes, by imposing a puritanical morality. Today antibourgeois social planners, like the descendants of the Frankfurt School, call themselves Marxists and parade under red banners, but they are playing with names and symbols. Such proponents represent historical and theoretical Marxism in about the same way that “liberal” Episcopal Bishop Spong of Newark is now fighting for Christian dogmatic theology."

(Gottfried, Paul Edward. The Strange Death of Marxism: The European Left in the New Millenium. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2005. p. 10)

"[C]alling for antibourgeois family arrangements or unrestricted sexual expressiveness has little or nothing to do with dialectical materialism or with the economic restructuring of bourgeois society. Even more problematic for applying Marxist labels to the current Left is this Left’s loss of interest in socialist economic planning. While the Post-Marxist Left certainly favors progressive income taxes, extensive welfare states, and government-run educational systems, in none of these stands does it differ sharply from the center-right parties in the United States or in Europe."

(Gottfried, Paul Edward. The Strange Death of Marxism: The European Left in the New Millenium. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2005. pp. 124-5)

[Consul]

"What we are witnessing is a cultural revolution in America. It is Maoism with American characteristics, and that implies that it is an ancient esoteric cult religion put into destructive practice so that it might save the world by destroying it completely.“

(James Lindsay, in: Lancing, Logan, & James Lindsay. The Queering of the American Child. Orlando, FL: New Discourses, 2024. p. 221)

What he doesn't mention is that brute violence (terror, torture, incarceration, execution) was part and parcel of Mao's "cultural revolution". Do we see queer activists doing the same in American society, at American kindergartens, schools, and universities?
This is not to say that purely psychological indoctrination is harmless—it isn't!—, but the comparison with Maoism is nonetheless very flawed.

Paul Gottfried argues that there…

"…is a less obtrusive form of oppression, one closer to what Tocqueville called le doux despotisme. It is political management that eventually approaches total control but with less and less need for physical force. In this respect as well as in its faceless leadership, it is different from the totalitarian behemoths of the thirties and forties, which gave rise to what German historian Ernst Nolte has characterized as the “European civil war”."

(Gottfried, Paul Edward. The Strange Death of Marxism: The European Left in the New Millenium. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2005. p. 120)

Following Gottfried, Lindsay & Lancing would presumably reply that the Woke Left uses "soft violence" for its alleged cultural revolution at least.

[Consul]

"[C]alling for antibourgeois family arrangements or unrestricted sexual expressiveness has little or nothing to do with dialectical materialism or with the economic restructuring of bourgeois society. Even more problematic for applying Marxist labels to the current Left is this Left’s loss of interest in socialist economic planning. While the Post-Marxist Left certainly favors progressive income taxes, extensive welfare states, and government-run educational systems, in none of these stands does it differ sharply from the center-right parties in the United States or in Europe."

(Gottfried, Paul Edward. The Strange Death of Marxism: The European Left in the New Millenium. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2005. pp. 124-5)

I agree with Gottfried's diagnosis that the Woke Left (the contemporary, post-70s Cultural Left) is a "Post-Marxist Left". The Woke Left is a Postmarxist, Postmodernist, Postcolonialist, Multiculturalist Left.

Gottfried doesn't like the Post-Marxist Left either:

"Like Communist and fascist ideologies and practices, Post-Marxism reveals the characteristics of a post-Christian religion of politics. It emphasizes the radical polarization between the multicultural Good and the xenophobic Evil and is willing to apply force to suppress those considered wicked. Like older political religions, Post-Marxism also claims to be pointing the way toward a future in which the remnants of the adversary (still vestigially bourgeois) society are swept aside. Like fascism and Communism, Post-Marxism views bourgeois institutions, especially in this case the nuclear family and defined gender roles, as the concentrated evil that it is required to obliterate."

(Gottfried, Paul Edward. The Strange Death of Marxism: The European Left in the New Millenium. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2005. p. 23)

"The Post-Marxist Left goes beyond the totalitarian movements of the past, provocatively analyzed by Voegelin and Hannah Arendt, in emphatically rejecting the Western cultural and historical heritage. It has exerted journalistic, judicial, and bureaucratic force to destroy any self-affirming Western consciousness and European national identity. Although politically less violent than other Lefts, it is culturally and socially more radical."

(Gottfried, Paul Edward. The Strange Death of Marxism: The European Left in the New Millenium. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2005. p. 140)

[Gary Childress]

Following Gottfried, Lindsay & Lancing would presumably reply that the Woke Left uses "soft violence" for its alleged cultural revolution at least.

That may be a fair statement. Ultimately, it comes down to where are we headed, and do we want to be headed there. In so far as "queer" human beings can be accommodated as much as reasonably possible, it seems like a good movement. But there are excessive efforts and excessive responses, I suppose.

Personally, I still stand by my assessment of life and the world. It's a shit show. And we human beings are stuck in it whether we like it or not.

[Consul]

I agree with Gottfried's diagnosis that the Woke Left (the contemporary, post-70s Cultural Left) is a "Post-Marxist Left".

What is Post-Marxism?

"The past decades have seen the interweaving of two closely connected phenomena: the emergence of Post-Marxism and the intellectual revitalization of Marxism. Post-Marxism emerged as a self-adopted label in the 1980s to characterize a particular means of escape from the widely proclaimed “crisis of Marxism” that followed the decline of the 1960s radical movements in the mid-1970s and that was reinforced by the collapse of the Communist regimes in 1989–91. To be a Post-Marxist is to pursue questions in part inherited from Marxism in a theoretical and political framework that simultaneously is itself influenced by Marxism but seeks to go decisively beyond it. Thus, for example, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe argue that “[it] is no longer possible to maintain the conception of subjectivity and classes elaborated by Marxism, nor its historical vision of the historical course of capitalist development, nor, of course, the conception of communism as a transparent society,” but nevertheless acknowledge that their own work has involved “the development of certain intuitions and discursive forms constituted within Marxism” (Laclau and Mouffe 1985, 4). Among the leading exemplars of this approach are, apart from Laclau and Mouffe themselves, Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth, but in many ways it has affinities with the critiques of the domination of North by South developed by Subaltern Studies and postcolonialism. Thinkers of this kind tend to be in dialogue with mainstream approaches such as liberalism as well as the body of thought that has come to be known as poststructuralism (for example, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault), which takes its distance from both liberalism and Marxism and is influenced by Nietzsche’s critique of the Enlightenment.

But Marxism remains a powerful reference point for Post-Marxists: the evolution of Slavoj Žižek at the end of the 1990s toward a more clearly defined Marxist (even idiosyncratically Leninist) position is exemplary in this respect. Indeed, as time has passed, the boundary between Marxism and Post-Marxism has become more blurred. This is partly because some important contemporary Marxist theorists have themselves drawn heavily on poststructuralism (the influence of Deleuze, himself a careful reader of Marx, on Negri is a case in point). But some Post-Marxists have moved back toward Marxism: the most important example is provided by Badiou’s recent exploration of the “communist hypothesis” and even occasional self-description as a Marxist. This is a tribute to the continued intellectual and political power of Marxism, but it in no way settles the disputes that led to the crystallization of Post-Marxism as a distinct intellectual current."

(Callinicos, Alex, Stathis Kouvelakis, and Lucia Pradella. Introduction to Routledge Handbook of Marxism and Post-Marxism, edited by Alex Callinicos, Stathis Kouvelakis, and Lucia Pradella, 1-22. New York: Routledge, 2021. p. 1)
——————
"Post-Marxism emerged in the mid-l980s as a critique of classical Marxism on the basis of the anti-essentialist theories of Derrida, Lacan, Baudrillard, and others. Starting from the Althusserian concept of "overdetermination," post-Marxism contended that there was no "center" to social relations. It thus attacked Marxist concepts such as "dialectics," "mode of production," "base/ superstructure" and "proletariat."

Post-Marxists contended that if there is no "center", there is, in fact, no "society": instead, there is "the social," as an imaginary construct maintained by the play of social signifiers. The constitution of "the social" is, for post-Marxism, an effect of political struggle: since "antagonisms" can no longer be explained in terms of "contradictions," antagonisms are in effect "constitutive" and "contingent." In place of the Marxist concepts of class struggle and revolution, post-Marxism has appropriated Antonio Gramsci's concept of "hegemony," understood as a process of linking one antagonism to another so to construct "the people" as a progressive political force. Post-Marxism substitutes for the Marxist notion of the contradiction between the forces and relations of production the logic of "equality," which it considers to be definitive of the process of modernization. It therefore argues for a "radical democracy," which involves the perpetual "articulation" of new sites of antagonism and new political arenas where the logic of "equality" can be extended . In response, Marxists have argued that post-Marxism reduces social relations and politics to a series of contingencies which make it impossible to determine political priorities."

(Taylor, Victor E., and Charles E. Winquist, eds. Encyclopedia of Postmodernism. London: Routledge, 2001. p. 302)
——————
"What began in the mid-1980s and gained momentum and maturation in the 1990s was a series of fusions or integrations of postmodernism with other critical theories of society, culture, and politics, ranging from Marxism to liberalism, feminism, critical theory, and radical ecology.

1) A major first step in this movement beyond the modern-postmodern impasse was achieved by political theorists Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in their pathbreaking work Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (1985). By constructing a critical dialogue between Marxism and postmodernism, they were able to produce a post-Marxist critical theory that incorporated postmodern philosophy and cultural insights and pointed the way toward a critical postmodernism. They deconstructed both the Marxist tradition and its core concepts, purging it of its grand Hegelian vision of historical progress, its labor model of society, the centrality of class analysis, and its outdated working-class model of revolution. What remained standing was the concept of “hegemony.” Their rethinking of this idea, formulated by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, became the fundamental pivot of their postmodern, post-Marxist critical theory.

Marxists have defined cultural hegemony as the ability of the dominant social class in a capitalist society to socialize the other classes into conforming to its political system and culture. Cultural traditions, practices, and institutions play an integral role in assimilating the working classes and oppositional countercultures. Laclau and Mouffe redefined cultural hegemony as a process of democratic struggle among diverse political actors who operated according to what they determined to be a new social logic of pluralization. “Radical democracy” replaced socialism. It was decentralist and participatory, associated with the new social movements of the 1970s and 1980s, and dedicated to a postmodern cultural politics of radical pluralism.

In the language of poststructuralism and postmodernism, Laclau and Mouffe redefined society as a complex field of “discursive practices” organized around highly contested “nodal points” of power due to increased social and cultural pluralization. They concluded that “society” does not exist “as a sutured and self-defined totality.” Society as a complex field of power relations and different identities is not reducible to a single determinant logic. Rather, a multiplicity of “articulatory practices” compete for hegemony “in a field criss-crossed with antagonisms.”

In other words, human beings socially construct their world through discourses. These discourses, always shifting and diverse, are still subject to hegemony as they are selectively organized around certain privileged power points in the social field. Laclau and Mouffe defined discourse sociologically as an ensemble of social relations. They further rejected the distinction between “discursive” (conceived of as ideology) and “nondiscursive” (conceived of as material forces) activities. By affirming the material character of every discourse, they abandoned the Marxist economic base/cultural superstructure model for a more complex cultural materialist field theory of society."

(Gabardi, Wayne. Negotiating Postmodernism. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. pp. 11-2)
——————
"Post-Marxism. In a literal sense the idea of post-Marxism implies ‘after Marxism’ and as such might suggest that cultural studies has abandoned all the concepts and ways of thinking associated with Marxist theory. Indeed, the idea of post-Marxism does imply the superseding of the tenets of classical Marxism and suggests that Marxism is no longer the primary explanatory narrative of our time. However, the ‘superseding’ involved here entails the selective retention and transformation of key concepts drawn from Marxism rather than a complete jettisoning of them all.

Post-Marxism has involved the critique and reconstitution of Marxism through the application and addition of poststructuralist theory to it. This is an aspect of the wider rejection of grand narratives (including Marxism) and totalizing fields of inquiry by postmodernism. Of particular importance to post-Marxism has been the poststructuralist stress on the constitutive place of language and discourse within culture and the anti-essentialist character of all social categories. Post-Marxism has also adopted the poststructuralist view of the dispersed character of power and thus given greater credence to the micro-fields of political power and resistance than Marxism has traditionally done.

The project of post-Marxism has been particularly associated with Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe and Stuart Hall, who are critical of the essentialism, foundationalism and reductionism of Marxism. Thus, concepts such as class, history, mode of production etc. are understood to be discursive constructs rather than essential, universal concepts. Indeed, all the key cultural categories such as ‘women’, ‘class’, ‘society’, ‘identities’, ‘interests’ etc. are no longer conceived of as single unitary objects with fixed meanings or single underlying structures and determinations.

Within Marxism the concept of class is conceived of as an essential unified identity between a signifier and a specific group of people who share socioeconomic conditions. Here a class has an objective existence. By contrast, class is understood by post-Marxism to be the effect of discourse rather than a simple objective economic fact. That is, ‘class’ is constituted by how we speak about and deploy the notion of class. Further, class consciousness is a discursively formed collective subject position that is neither an inevitability nor a unified phenomenon. Indeed, classes are cross-cut by conflicting interests, including those of gender, race and age. Classes may share common economic conditions of existence but do not automatically form a core, unified class consciousness.

For post-Marxist writers, discursive concepts are not to be reduced to or explained solely in terms of the economic base as in reductionist forms of Marxism. Thus, for post-Marxist writers any notion of the ‘final determination’ of cultural phenomena by the mode of production or class relations has to be put aside. Instead the field of the ‘social’ involves multiple points of power and antagonism that do not cohere around class conflict as Marxism understands them to do. Rather, post-Marxists argue that the multiple forms of power, subordination and antagonism that occur within a society are not reducible to any single site or contradiction.

It follows that post-Marxists regard the account of hegemony as read through Gramsci as being mistakenly centred on class. Instead, they stress that history hasnno prime agent of social change nor does ideology belong to particular classes. Instead, hegemonic and counter-hegemonic blocs are formed through temporary and strategic alliances of a range of discursively constructed subjects and groups of interest. Consequently, any radical politics cannot be premised on the domination of any particular political project (for example, the proletariat of Marxism). Instead it must be constructed in terms of the recognition of difference and the identification and development of points of common interest.

Here there can be no appeal to absolute standards of legitimation or to the laws of history, as orthodox Marxism has tended to do. Rather, all progressive values must be defended within the pragmatic context of particular moral traditions including modern political ideas about democracy, justice, tolerance, solidarity and freedom. Further, the prime agents of social change are held not so much to be classes (though they play a part) as social and cultural movements that have developed from a proliferation of new social antagonisms in the spaces of consumption, welfare and habitat."

(Barker, Chris. The SAGE Dictionary of Cultural Studies. London: SAGE Publications, 2004. pp. 154-6)

[attofishpi]

Being woke is futile. It's like being nailed to a cross and trying to survive longer. The anti-woke are determined to f*** up the world. They get their way sometimes. Eventually we will perish.

Please list all the things of and how being "WOKE" makes the world a better place - than NOT being WOKE.

I'll add to this:

- am I WOKE because I have LGB friends - no issue with their sexual preferences?
- am I WOKE because I have friends of pretty much all ethnicities?
- am I WOKE because I believe in a multicultural society that does NOT overrun my own culture?
- am I WOKE because I believe in LEGAL immigration at levels that is not going to destroy my own culture of my own native people?
- am I WOKE because I believe that ISALMIC ideology is a very very EXTREME ideology that should be avoided as part of immigration to my nation?

I'm sorry your king is punishing you with woke-ness.

That's the type of response I'd expect from a WOKE. Not up for criticism\debate - just silly remarks like a little child.

My actual question is, based on my little list - can I be considered "WOKE"?

[Gary Childress]

For post-Marxist writers, discursive concepts are not to be reduced to or explained solely in terms of the economic base as in reductionist forms of Marxism. Thus, for post-Marxist writers any notion of the ‘final determination’ of cultural phenomena by the mode of production or class relations has to be put aside. Instead the field of the ‘social’ involves multiple points of power and antagonism that do not cohere around class conflict as Marxism understands them to do. Rather, post-Marxists argue that the multiple forms of power, subordination and antagonism that occur within a society are not reducible to any single site or contradiction.
(Barker, Chris. The SAGE Dictionary of Cultural Studies. London: SAGE Publications, 2004. pp. 154-6)

To be honest, I just want out of this world. Other than that, I have no better solution to the world's problems.